The infamous Star Wars III bootleg continues to haunt the BitTorrent community as the US Justice Dept announces another guilty plea as part of Operation D-Elite.
A fifth defendant has pleaded guilty in connection with Operation D-Elite, the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on a BitTorrent tracker site.
Today Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Eric F. Melgren for the District of Kansas announced that Sam Kuonen, 24, of Columbus, Ga., pleaded guilty to a two-count felony of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and criminal copyright infringement in violation of the Family Entertainment Copyright Act. Mr. Kuonen faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release. He is scheduled to be formally sentenced on July 16th.
On May 25, 2005, federal agents shut down the Elite Torrents network by taking control of its main server. After seizing the server, authorities replaced the existing Web page with a law enforcement message announcing that “This Site Has Been Permanently Shut Down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
Within only one week, the law enforcement message was viewed over half a million times. Operation D-Elite is a joint investigation by ICE and the FBI as part of the Computer and Technology Crime High Tech Response Team (CATCH), a San Diego task force of specially trained prosecutors and law enforcement officers who focus on high-tech crime. Federal and state member agencies of CATCH include ICE, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, San Diego Police Department, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, and San Diego County Probation.
Mr. Kuonen’s conviction is the fifth in a series of convictions arising from Operation D-Elite, an ongoing federal crackdown against the illegal distribution of copyrighted movies, software, games and music on BitTorrent tracker sites.
Operation D-Elite targeted the admins and leading uploaders of Elite Torrents, which at its prime, attracted more than 133,000 members and facilitated the distribution of more than 17,800 titles which were downloaded over 2 million times. Mr. Kuonen was one of the uploaders on Elite Torrents and the latest to get busted in the crackdown.
I still vividly recall Elite Torrents, and lament that no other site has come close to offering the selection, speeds, and quality for which it was known. I also recall that it was just after the site got busted that all sites went to invite only, OINK being the most notable example of this. Can you believe that OINK use to always be open registration? It didn’t matter that Elite Torrents was a private tracker site, as the govt merely seized the servers instead, forcing other sites to send theirs abroad to safe havens like the Netherlands, Eastern Europe, and of course, good ol’ Sweden.
What’s kind of funny though is how BitTorrent tracker sites spring up by the dozens each month and the govt has spent 2 years on a single one! Furthermore, they might as well forget about getting a handle on it, for as I said all the good servers have gone overseas well beyond their reach. Again the world’s best example of capitalism tries to fight the very principle behind it all – the law of supply and demand.
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THIS STORY should reinforce just how “unsafe” private bit torrent sites are.
To say that you only use private bit torrent sites because they are “safer” than public sites is only fooling yourself. They are not really that much safer than public bit torrent sites.
This story proves it.
A friend of mine lost his internet because he used bit torrent i am going to stick with emule.
after the napster fiasco people said napster was unsafe kaaza is better. when sharman’s fast track network was raided people said bittorrent is safe. now that bittorrent falls prey many will say newsgroups are safe. The fact remains that the evolution in security aspect of p2p programs is not in tune or “proportional” to the mounting US government pressure. A “uploader” facing jail time will certainly dent the torrent community though.
PUBLIC vs PRIVATE – BitTorrent download sites explored
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/6341/PUBLIC+vs+PRIVATE+-+BitTorrent+download+sites+explored
@ sonusahu….Well so far there have been ZERO arrests from someone only downloading from newsgroups.Cannot say the same thing about other p2p.
Could it happen even with newsgroups? Sure but first off if you only leech….there is not much they can get you on because you are not uploading anything to anyoneif you just leech. The most they could getr you for is having an illegal app movie songetc.on your computer. They could not charge you with sharing the material like bit torrents because you would only be leeching.
Bit Torrent has you upload while you download and so do a lot of other p2p apps…that is where they get you….the uploading or what they call…DISTRIBUTION OF A COPYRIGHTED FILE.