Fairlight (group)
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| Formation | 1987 |
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| Purpose | Warez and demo |
| Location | |
| Membership | Strider, Black Shadow, Gollum, Bacchus, Pantaloon and http://csdb.dk/group/?id=20 |
| Founders | Strider and Black Shadow |
| Website | http://www.fairlight.to/ |
FairLight (FLT) is a warez and demo 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, Super Nintendo and later the PC.[1] 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. The name was taken from the Fairlight CMI synthesizer which Strider saw Jean Michel Jarre use on some of his records.
Contents
Beginning[edit]
FairLight became known for their fast cracks. The secret was that Strider worked in a computer store where he got the latest games. He then bribed a train conductor to transport the games from Malmö to Ronneby where Gollum cracked the game and sent it back in the same way. That way they could get releases out faster than other groups.[1]
Operation Fastlink[edit]
Several high-ranking members of the group were caught 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.[2]
The operation was coordinated by the FBI, the British National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) 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 servers owned by students on 2 universities 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.
Shortly after the Operation Fastlink raids, council member [Bacchus] writes:[3]
Protections of today are ones that *very* few can penetrate and those who do, should be worthy the respect. Downloading them fast is just a matter of a fast line in combination to access to a site. Skills stay, whereas the access can be revoked instantly!
The last massive warez-related raid prior to Fastlink was Operation Buccaneer which targeted DrinkOrDie (amongst others) in December 2001.
Since October 2006 the ISO division of FairLight has started releasing again.
Notable demo releases and awards[edit]
The demo division of FairLight has received numerous awards during their career, listed below.
| Title | Type | Awards |
|---|---|---|
| My Room | demo | 1st place at Phenomena/Censor Party 1990 |
| Illusion | demo | 2nd place at The Computer Crossroad 1993 |
| 242 | demo | 2nd place at Assembly 1993 |
| Full Moon | demo | 2nd place at The Party 1993 |
| Chaosland | 40k intro | 1st place at The Party 1993 |
| Love | demo | 1st place at South Sealand Party 1994 |
| Breathtaker | demo | 2nd place at Assembly 1994 |
| Psychedelic | demo | 2nd place at The Party 1994 |
| Faktory | demo | 3rd place at The Party 1995 |
| Sumea | demo | 1st place at Assembly 1996 |
| 5o2 | demo | 5th place at Edison 2012 |
| Title | Type | Awards |
|---|---|---|
| Drop The Basics | demo | 3rd place at X'2001 |
| Pretending To See The Light | demo | 1st place at Floppy 2002 |
| Loaded | demo | 2nd place at Floppy 2003 |
| Anyone | demo | 1st place at Deadline 2003 |
| Emanation Machine | demo | 1st place at Little Computer People 2003 |
| Wok Zombie | demo | 2nd place at Floppy 2004 |
| One Million Light Years From Earth | demo | 1st place at Floppy 2005, scene.org award nominee - best oldskool demo of 2005 |
| Hello:Friend | demo | 1st place at Little Computer People 2005, scene.org award nominee - most original concept of 2005, best oldskool demo of 2005 |
| Boogie Factor | demo | 1st place at Assembly 2005, scene.org award winner - best oldskool demo of 2005 |
| LCP Memories | demo | 1st place at Black Birdie 2005 |
| WWIII | demo | 1st place at Big Floppy People 2006 |
| One Little Wish | demo | 1st place at Datastorm 2010 |
| We Are New | demo | 2nd place at X'2010, scene.org award nominee - best oldskool demo of 2010 |
| Lash | demo | 1st place at Datastorm 2011 |
| We Are Mature | demo | 6th place at LCP 2011, scene.org award nominee - best oldskool demo of 2011 |
| One Quarter | demo | 1st place at Datastorm 2012 |
| Trick and Treat | demo | 1st place at X 2012, in coalition with Offence & Prosonix |
| Too Old to Ror and Rol | demo | 2nd place at Datastorm 2013, in coalition with Offence & Prosonix |
| Title | Type | Awards |
|---|---|---|
| Together | 64k intro | 1st place at Scene Event 2000 |
| Absolut Vodka | demo | 1st place at Remedy 2000 |
| ETTV | demo | 1st place at Remedy 2001 |
| Virtual Vodka | demo | 2nd place at DreamHack 2001 |
| Tatsu | demo | 3rd place at The Gathering 2002 |
| Only Kings And Better | demo | 1st place at Remedy 2002 |
| From Dust Till Dawn | demo | 1st place at Remedy 2004 |
| Come Clean | demo | 4th place at Assembly 2004 |
| Fresh! | 64k intro | 1st place at BCN 2004, scene.org award nominee - best 64k intro of 2004 |
| Death And Taxes | 64k intro | 2nd place at Breakpoint 2005, scene.org award nominee - best 64k intro of 2005 |
| Che Guevara | 64k intro | 1st place at Assembly 2005, scene.org award winner - best 64k intro of 2005 |
| Re-Recycle | 64k intro | 1st place at Sundown 2005 |
| Deadline | demo | 1st place at Deadline Harakiri 2006 |
| Meet The Family | 64k intro | 1st place at Breakpoint 2006 |
| Liquid Lust | demo | 1st place at Birdie 2006 |
| Glitterati | 4k intro | 1st place at Assembly 2006 |
| Dead Ringer | 64k intro | 1st place at Assembly 2006 |
| Track One | demo | 2nd place at Assembly 2006, scene.org award winner - best demo of 2006 |
| Scarecrow | 4k intro | 1st place at Sundown 2006 |
| Media Error | demo | 3rd place at Assembly 2007, in coalition with CNCD and Orange |
| Panic Room | 64k intro | 1st place at Assembly 2008 |
| Frameranger | demo | 1st place at Assembly 2009, in coalition with CNCD and Orange |
| Blunderbuss | demo | 2nd place at Main 2009, scene.org award winner - best soundtrack of 2009 |
| Agenda Circling Forth | demo | 1st place at Breakpoint 2010, in coalition with CNCD |
| Ceasefire (all falls down..) | demo | 2nd place at Assembly 2010, in coalition with CNCD |
| Numb res | demo | 2nd place at The Gathering 2011, in coalition with CNCD |
| Uncovering static | 64k intro | 2nd place at Assembly 2011, in coalition with Alcatraz |
| 5 faces | demo | 1st place at Revision 2013, in coalition with Cloudkicker |
Records[edit]
FairLight held a short-lived romance with TRSI with their cooperative endeavor, TRSi and Fairlight Recordz, formed by member Zinkfloid (also known as Uyanik) and Raven from FairLight. The groups released several albums under their brand name "TRSI & FairLight Recordz", including Muffler (2000) [2] [3] and CNCD (1995). [4]
Later lives[edit]
As of writing (2012) Magnus "Pantaloon" Sjöberg works as lead software engineer at Digital Illusions. Pontus "Bacchus" Berg works in telecom. Fredrik "Gollum" Kahl is now professor in mathematics at Lunds universitet. Per "Zike" Carlbring is a professor in clinical psychology at Stockholm university.[1]
See also[edit]
- United Software Association — IBM PC-warez organization which released cooperatively with FairLight during the early 1990s.
- List of warez groups
References[edit]
- ^ a b c "We might be old, but we're still the elite". IDG. 2012-04-20.
- ^ "In brief". Computer Fraud & Security 2004 (5): 3–2. 2004. doi:10.1016/S1361-3723(04)00061-2.
- ^ Basamanowicz, J.; Bouchard, M. (2011). "Overcoming the Warez Paradox: Online Piracy Groups and Situational Crime Prevention". Policy & Internet 3 (2): 79. doi:10.2202/1944-2866.1125. [1]
Further reading[edit]
- Amiga Computing (October 1991). "Knaves and Thieves". Amiga Computing (41): 22–26. (Shows Fairlight logo and slogan: "when dreams come true")
- Hastik, Canan; Steinmetz, Arnd (2012a): Demoscene Artists and Community. In Bours, Patrick; Humm, Bernhard; Loew, Robert; Stengel, Ingo; Walsh, Paul (eds.): Proceedings of CERC 2012, pp. 43–48. (Shows screenshot of Fairlight crack intro from 1987)
External links[edit]
- The World of FairLight (official website)
- FairLight demos and cracktros, including Come Clean, indexed by Pouet
- "Operation Fastlink" press release published by the United States Department of Justice
- FairLights' CSDb entry
- FairLight PC file and information repository on Defacto2
- The history of FairLight - Recollection #3 (2010). C64 Diskmag
