Echelon is a warez

Warez

Warez refers primarily to copyrighted works distributed without fees or royalties, and may be traded, in general violation of copyright law. The term generally refers to unauthorized releases by organized groups, as opposed to file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar...

 group which specializes in the illegal release and distribution of copyrighted console games, such as Dreamcast and PlayStation 2

PlayStation 2

The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...

 ISO image

ISO image

An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...

s. They also created demos

Demo (computer programming)

A demo is a non-interactive multimedia presentation made within the computer subculture known as the demoscene. Demogroups create demos to demonstrate their abilities in programming, music, drawing, and 3D modeling...

 on both platforms.

Between September 4, 2000 to April 30, 2002, Echelon's Dreamcast division released 188 game titles and 34 other various fixes, tutorials, trainers, and loaders.

On December 19, 2001, Echelon released Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X

is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square as the tenth title in the Final Fantasy series. It was released in 2001 for Sony's PlayStation 2, and will be re-released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2012...

 as their first of several hundred PlayStation 2 titles. As of 2007, Echelon continues to release games for the PS2 platform.

In 2004, Echelon was named as one of six groups targeted as part of Operation Fastlink

Operation Fastlink

Operation FastLink is a coordination of four separate, simultaneous undercover investigations by the FBI, the FBI Cyber Division, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division and Interpol. The four different investigations have not...

 by the United States Department of Justice

United States Department of Justice

The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

.

On November 15th, 2005, Echelon's Dragon Quest VIII USA PS2 nfo file

.nfo

.nfo is a commonly used three-letter filename extension of ASCII or extended ASCII text files that accompany other files and contain information about them. Such NFO files can be viewed with text editors or dedicated NFO viewers...

 stated that Echelon was indeed Kalisto

Kalisto

Kalisto is a console warez group established in March 1998 which specializes in the release and distribution of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 ISO images, briefly moonlighting on the Dreamcast platform in mid to late 2000....

: 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 the nfo ended with -- the dragon warrior of KALiSTO.

External links

• Echelon article on Everything2
  Everything2
  Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
  
  .
• Echelon demos on Pouet.