Kalisto is a

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

warez group A warez group is a tightly organised group of people involved in creating and/or distributing warez such as movies, music or software ("warez") in The Scene. There are different types of these groups in the Scene: ''release groups'' and ''courier ...

established in March 1998, a subsidiary of Fairlight, which specializes in the release and distribution of

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...

(PS1) and

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on 3 ...

(PS2)

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...

s, briefly moonlighting on the

Dreamcast The is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998, in Japan; September 9, 1999, in North America; and October 14, 1999, in Europe. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, N ...

platform in mid to late 2000.

Kalisto and the Dreamcast

Kalisto entered into the Dreamcast scene on June 26, 2000 with the release of the title '' Evolution: The World of Sacred Device''. By August 19, 2000, Kalisto had determined how to rip and redistribute Dreamcast

GD-ROM GD-ROM (an abbreviation of "Gigabyte Disc Read-Only Memory") is a proprietary optical disc format originally used for the Dreamcast video game console, as well as its arcade counterpart, the Sega NAOMI and select Triforce arcade board titles. It ...

s as

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

ISOs without the need for a swappable "bootdisk" CD-ROM. A few weeks later, with their release of '' Ganbare! Nippon! Olympics 2000'' on September 2, 2000, Kalisto claimed that Sega provided a financial incentive for them to stop releasing games for the Dreamcast platform:

Sega has offered us
stock option In finance, an option is a contract which conveys to its owner, the ''holder'', the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a specific quantity of an underlying asset or instrument at a specified strike price on or before a specified dat ...
s to stop releasing DC, so this will be it, our last release. Thanks to all who have supported us throughout our stay in the DC scene. Take note this is NOT a joke. We are really stopping all DC operations with this release. We will continue on with the PSX. Bye.

While the claim of stock options was allegedly a joke, Kalisto ceased all releases for the Dreamcast shortly after and focused on PlayStation games. (although Kalisto did return for one final rip and released the U.S. version of ''

Shenmue is an action-adventure game series created, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki. '' Shenmue'' (1999) and ''Shenmue II'' (2001) were developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for Dreamcast. '' Shenmue III,'' developed by Suzuki's company Y ...

'' on November 9, 2000) A new group called

Echelon ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program (signals intelligence/SIGINT collection and analysis network) operated by the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement:Given the 5 dialects that use ...

emerged on September 4, 2000, picking up the slack to later become the leading release group for the Dreamcast. At the time of this transition, there was much speculation that Kalisto and Echelon were one and the same. On September 19, 2000 Echelon releases the Dreamcast Self-Booting Tutorial with which it was possible to make Self-boot Dreamcast disks that work on the Dreamcast without the need of the Utopia Boot-Disk. It was later revealed on November 15, 2005, in Echelon's '' Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King'' American PS2 nfo, that Echelon was indeed Kalisto. The nfo stated "We errr Kalisto released it on November 2nd 2001 as Dragon_Warrior_VII_USA_PS1-KALISTO", referring to the previous game in the series and then the nfo ended with -- the dragon warrior of KALiSTO.

Operation Fastlink

In 2004, Kalisto was named as one of six groups targeted as part of

Operation Fastlink Operation Fastlink is a coordination of four separate, simultaneous undercover investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Cyber Division, the Department of Justice, the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) o ...

by the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

. The group lost a major archive site that was located in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Their supplier Seth "Basilisk" Kleinberg was arrested in the process.

References

{{reflist, 2, refs= {{Cite journal , last1=Basamanowicz , first1=Jonathan , last2=Bouchard , first2=Martin , doi=10.2202/1944-2866.1125 , title=Overcoming the Warez Paradox: Online Piracy Groups and Situational Crime Prevention , journal=Policy & Internet , volume=3 , issue=2 , pages=79 , year=2011 , url=https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/iccrc/MemberPublications/Publication_Bouchard_OnlinePiracyAndSCPrevention.pdf {{cite book , last1=Craig , first1=Paul , last2=Ron , first2=Mark , editor1-first=Mark , editor1-last=Burnett , others=Publisher: Andrew Williams, Page Layout and Art: Patricia Lupien, Acquisitions Editor: Jaime Quigley, Copy Editor: Judy Eby, Technical Editor: Mark Burnett, Indexer: Nara Wood, Cover Designer: Michael Kavish , title=Software Piracy Exposed - Secrets from the Dark Side Revealed , date=April 2005 , publisher=Syngress Publishing , location=United States of America , isbn=1-932266-98-4 , doi=10.1016/B978-193226698-6/50033-7 , page
199–200
, chapter=Chapter 9: Piracy and the Law , quote=In cooperation with U.S. customs agents, the Dutch anti-piracy group Fiscal and Economic Crime Service (

FIOD-ECD The Fiscal Information and Investigation Service ( nl, Fiscale inlichtingen- en opsporingsdienst (FIOD)) is an agency of the government of the Netherlands responsible for investigating financial crimes. It is part of the Tax and Customs Administr ...

) raided 20 universities within the

. The groups FairLight and Kalisto had significant European resources and many key sites hosted at technical universities within the Netherlands. The Netherlands is infamous for its fast and abundant bandwidth. Two topsites were detained from local universities along with one major archive site belonging to the Kalisto group. , chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/softwarepiracyex0000crai/page/199 {{cite book , last1=Craig , first1=Paul , last2=Ron , first2=Mark , title=Software Piracy Exposed - Secrets from the Dark Side Revealed , year=2005 , page=202 , chapter=Chapter 9: Piracy and the Law , quote=Seth Kleinberg, executive Editor of www.game-over.net, a PC and console game-reviewing Web site, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Seth faces a maximum sentence of ten years with additional costs for the damage he caused the software industry. Seth, or Basilisk as he was known in the scene, was a supplier and cracker for the group FairLight and a supplier of console games to another group called Kalisto. Seth was supplying titles that were given to www.game-over.net as review copies. Being able to supply such a large stream of releases helped Seth become a senior member in FairLight and a leading supplier in Kalisto. {{cite web , title=Evolution_The_World_of_Sacred_Device_DC-KALISTO , url=http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=8331 , archive-url=https://archive.today/20050524153330/http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=8331 , url-status=dead , archive-date=2005-05-24 , date=2000-06-25 , author=KALISTO , publisher=

The iSONEWS The iSONEWS was a warez news website. It was originally created by orm who later deferred management of the website to krazy8 and mandarin. TheiSONews supplied release details and NFOs of warez games and programs, without actually supplying th ...

, quote=Have fun with our first DC release {{cite web , title=Dynamite_Cop_SELF_BOOTING_DC-KALISTO , url=http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=9365 , archive-url=https://archive.today/20050524153346/http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=9365 , url-status=dead , archive-date=2005-05-24 , date=2000-08-19 , author=KALISTO , publisher=

, quote=today we present you the first SELF BOOTABLE game for your Dreamcast {{cite web , title=Ganbare_Nippon_Olympics_2000_JAP_DC-KALISTO , url=http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=9595 , archive-url=https://archive.today/20050524153253/http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=9595 , url-status=dead , archive-date=2005-05-24 , date=2000-09-02 , author=KALISTO , publisher=

{{cite web , title=Flag_To_Flag_Cart_Racing_USA_DC-ECHELON , url=http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=9638 , archive-url=https://archive.today/20050524153411/http://www.theisonews.com/release.php?releaseid=9638 , url-status=dead , archive-date=2005-05-24 , date=2000-07-04 , author=ECHELON , publisher=

, quote=And a new group breaks into the bustling Dreamcast scene. We had the skills to do most things that KALISTO has done while they were doing it, but hey, why bother if they're doing all releases already? Now that KALISTO has stopped, we thought it would be a good time to emerge and start releasing for the public. {{cite web , title=Shenmue_USA_DC-KALISTO , date=2000-11-09 , author=KALISTO , url=http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/dcnfos/kal-smu.txt , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151219224555/http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/dcnfos/kal-smu.txt , archive-date=2015-12-19 , url-status=live , quote=Since ECHELON didn't do this one yet, we felt the need to fill the void. ..you have to understand that we are retired in the DC scene, and this is out of the ordinary for us. {{cite web , title=Shenmue_Passport_USA_DC-KALISTO , date=2000-11-10 , author=KALISTO , quote=As promised earlier, here's the Shenmue Passport disc. , url=https://www.neperos.com/search.php?a=pk2wia073ec1255c {{cite web , title=Dragon_Quest_VIII_USA_PS2-ECHELON , date=2005-11-16 , url=http://www.ludibria.com/nfo.php?sys=ps2&sysid=932 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110714002327/http://www.ludibria.com/nfo.php?sys=ps2&sysid=932 , url-status=dead , archive-date=2011-07-14 , publisher=LUDiBRiA , access-date=2012-06-15 {{cite web , title=Xenosaga_Episode_One_5th_Year_Anniversary_Release_USA_PS2DVD-KALISTO , date=2003-02-27 , author=KALISTO , quote=Kalisto started back in March 1998 with 3 core members. ..Our infamous Sega Stock Options hoax Warez groups Copyright infringement of software

Kalisto and the Dreamcast

Operation Fastlink

See also

References