Justice Dept. Raids Online Piracy Networks

[ATLien]

Justice Dept. Raids Online Piracy Networks

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators have raided 120 sites across the globe to break up online piracy networks that distribute copyrighted music, movies and software, the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites) said on Thursday.



The investigation, carried out in 27 U.S. states and 10 foreign countries, targeted covert "warez" groups that distribute computer games and other works before they are officially released, the Justice Department said.


More than 200 computers have been seized so far and nearly 100 individuals have been identified, the Justice Department said.


Warez groups, consisting of tech-savvy hackers and industry insiders, compete with each other to post pirated works on secret computer servers.


From there, the works quickly spread across the Internet and become available to millions through file-sharing networks like Kazaa and Morpheus.


Server computers seized in the raids contained hundreds of thousands of illegally copied works, the Justice Department said.


Foreign searches were conducted in Great Britain, Germany, France, Israel, Singapore, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary and Sweden, the Justice Department said.

[Miniver]

this is a black day for all of us. I love new releases.

[begoodbebad]

this is a black day for all of us. I love new releases.

Me too, music and movies are great, my everyday food, but games and apps are the sweet centre of p2p for me.
I really hope they don't get Deviance,imo they make the best game releases...the best titles and best cracks and mods...very slick releases and no crap.

edit: I quickly read the story....$50 million of software seized! and get this:

One computer contained 65,000 different works

back that up on a floppy!

Can you imagine how you would feel losing 65000 downloads?

....and I bet those cops are copying as much as they can onto CD and DVD to take home a few new games for the kids.

[wonderboy2005]

I know that from a legal standpoint, this is a good thing. In reality, It is copywright infringement. Even so, I am really saddened by this, which should come as no supprise considering the intent of these forums. However, It is not the end of the world for us 'pirates.' there are millions of us, and as such, we really can't be stopped in any conventional sense. more groups will spring up in the place of the ones that were caught, along with current ones that didn't.

I did't find anything about Deviance, but the one that I personally was afraid to see caught, Fairlight, was indeed caught. Fairlight (their releases are labeled FLT-xxx where xxx is a 3 letter abbreviation of the work(s) being pirated) is responsible for the release of countless games in bin/cue format. They have always created high quality cracks and releases. If this is really the end of them, then it will be a great loss to the filesharing community.


Some interesting links:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...3&section=news
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...641EDT0693.DTL
http://www.kpho.com/Global/story.asp?S=1804255