Fairlight (group)
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- This article is about the demo/warez group. See Fairlight (disambiguation) for other meanings of Fairlight
Fairlight (FLT) is a warez and demos group initially involved in the Commodore demoscene, and in cracking to illegally release games for free, since 1987. In addition to the C64, Fairlight has also migrated towards the Amiga and later the PC. Fairlight was founded during the Easter holiday in 1987 by Strider and Black Shadow, both ex-members of West Coast Crackers (WCC). This "West Coast" was the west coast of Sweden, so Fairlight was initially a Swedish group, which later became internationalized. Strider is nowadays a naturalized USA citizen.
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Operation Fastlink
Several high ranking members of the group were busted on April 21, 2004, 8 months after the group returned from their temporary "retirement" that began on June 9, 2003 and ended on August 30, in an FBI operation called Operation Fastlink.
Police forces from eleven countries were involved, arresting about 120 people and seizing more than 200 computers (including 30 servers). One server from the U.S. raid contained 65,000 pirated titles which were alleged to be in the archive repository of the group.
The operation was coordinated by the FBI, the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit and the Business Software Alliance, and took place in 27 U.S. states. In the UK, seven computers were seized and three arrests made in Belfast, Manchester and Sheffield. In Singapore, three people (22, 30 & 34 years old) were arrested. In the Netherlands two university servers were investigated by police officers. Other arrests and seizures were made in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, and Sweden for a total of 11 countries.
According to rumor, the raid occurred just before the warez group would have released the game Hitman: Contracts. The game was released by other groups (iNSOMNiA, for Xbox and PS2, and Razor 1911, for PCs) a few days later.
The last massive warez-related raid prior to Fastlink was Operation Buccaneer which targeted DrinkOrDie (amongst others) in December 2001.
Awards
The demo division of Fairlight has received numerous awards during their career, most recently:
- 4th place in the combined demo competition (out of 18 entries) at the Assembly demo party with their entry "Come Clean".
- 1st place at BCN Party 2004 for their 64k "Fresh!". The entry was later nominated for a Scene.org Award for Best 64k Intro.
- 2nd place at Breakpoint 2005 for their 64k "Death and Taxes".
Records
Fairlight held a short-lived romance with TRSI with their cooperative endeavor, TRSi and Fairlight Recordz, formed by member Zinkfloid (a.k.a. Uyanik). Together they released several albums, including "Muffler" (2000) [1] (http://www.fusecon.com/products/scenecds/muffler.shtml) [2] (http://www.lynnemusic.com/muffler.html) and "CNCD" (1995). [3] (http://www.cncd.fi/music/) This once co-op label is now known only as TRSi Recordz and is no longer affiliated with Fairlight.
See also
- United Software Association — IBM PC-warez organization which released cooperatively with Fairlight during the early 1990s.
External links
- Fairlight.org (http://www.fairlight.org/) (official website)
- The World of Fairlight (http://www.fairlight.to/) (official website)
- Fairlight demos and cracktros (http://pouet.net/groups.php?which=44), including Come Clean (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=13036), indexed by Pouet
- "Operation Fastlink" press release (http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/April/04_crm_263.htm) published by the United States Department of Justicede:Fairlight