Europe release groups raided
p2p news / p2pnet: More than 30 people have been arrested following attacks on release groups in Europe.
The raids, in Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic, were organized by the Hollywood-owned German version of the MPAA, the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU).
“Rumors of the bust began circulating online today, as members attempted to warn each other,” says Slyck.
“According to warning notices online, the following top providers have, for all intents and purposes, been eliminated; RELOADED, KNIGHTS, TFCiSO, Cinemaniacs, German-Friend, ParadieseBeach and Klapsmuehle. In addition, the leader of RELOADED was reported as arrested during the raids. The GVU confirmed the following release groups were eliminated; Unreality, DRAGON, Laboratory, Heaven, code talk, GTR, ECP, TRCD, AOS, MRM, SITH, GWL, Cine VCD, AHE, Cinemaniacs.
In 2004 the GVU boasted the names of thousands of users of “illegal Internet piracy” sites were being examined by German police.
Between 8,000 and 20,000 people were “unmasked,” said Agence France Presse at the time.
“The pursuit of top providers is a primary concern to the entertainment industry, as the proliferation of pirated material often begins with these organizations,” says Slyck. “From these FTP sources, pirated material (especially movies) trickle down to the Newsgroups, IRC, BitTorrent and finally P2P networks. Initially, these raids may place a damper on spread of pirated material, however the allure of public recognition is simply too great for many to avoid. With time, their role in the online warez community will most likely be replaced.”
GVU, short for Gesellschaft zur Verletzung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen eV, says it’s, “embedded in a worldwide network … with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as the umbrella organization”.
In 2003, its pseudo cops were involved in the shut down of the p2p Unreality file share server.
“Its statutes … stipulate that it conduct its own investigations to the extent permitted by the law,” it says on its site. “This takes place before any official inquiry, to substantiate initial suspicions that may lead to a preliminary inquiry.”
Also See:
Slyck – Major Piracy Bust Against Top Providers, January 24, 2006
thousands – Big German file share probe, December 13, 2005
Unreality – German enforcers raid file share op, October 21, 2003
January 24th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
For all german speaking readers (or babelfish users):
Here is a little update, seems like GVU itself was involved in some foul scheme to get their hands on p2P-user informations.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/68760
Well, this is not very surprising, isn’t it?
January 24th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
“The pursuit of top providers is a primary concern to the entertainment industry, as the proliferation of pirated material often begins with these organizations”
There you go… among other things, one thing is competition that concerns the industry.
So what about the large percentage of insider ‘leaks’?
January 24th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
I was reading this article and a line from Star Ware unceremoniously popped into my head quite suddenly.
“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
At first I kind of chuckled to myself, but then I slowly realized that this is very likely true for the situation we all find ourselves in these days with the MPAA/RIAA and their clones around the world. I have no doubt the tighter they squeeze, not only the more do they miss who probably gets away to pirate another day, but also do they more than likely cause regular folks to turn to piracy who might not have originally. It’s called sticking it to “the man”, and I have no doubt there are many out there that don’t mind the risk involved to do it. We spend our whole lives struggling, toiling under the rule of “the man”. Do this, don’t do that, now give us your money. It’s not surprising that we see greater and greater numbers of people turning to the internet for their illicit entertainment.
January 25th, 2006 at 1:54 am
Nature abhors a vacuum.
It’s unlikely that all of the groups mentioned were ‘eliminated.’ Perhaps their hardware is no longer available, but it’s doubtful they managed to round up every member of all of the groups noted. Some of the groups mentioned have members or persons of some degree of affiliation in countries other than those mentioned, including the US, UK, and Canada. Their main distribution servers may be off-line, but collectively they have dumpsites in every corner of the globe. Some of the entities who own the machines used for hosting these aren’t even aware of what’s going on because of lax security or ignorance resulting in leaving the door wide open.
The characterization of the infringed upon material ‘trickling down’ through a heiarchy is rather amusing. Usually it’s a race to see who ‘publishes’ first in order to claim the coveted ‘proper’ designation on their release. We saw Revenge of the Sith showing up on Torrent sites about 6 hours after it was ‘borrowed’ from a company wrapping up some post-production work on it.
It’s even more amusing that whomever wrote this piece uses the term ‘warez’ in the context of films, and specifcally the ‘online warez community.’
Perhaps their next case will involve doing something about the ‘offline’ warez community as well? No doubt they’re already dredging the internet looking for it……