A sixth defendant has pleaded guilty in connection with Operation D-Elite, the govt’s first, and years long, crackdown on the infamous BitTorrent tracker site Elite Torrents.
Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher of the Criminal Division and US Attorney Gregory White for the Northern District of Ohio have announced that a 6th defendant has pleaded guilty in connection with Operation D-Elite, the first criminal enforcement action to target individuals committing copyright infringement on a BitTorrent tracker site.
Scott D. Harvanek, 22, of Tucson, Ariz., pleaded guilty to a two-count felony information charging him with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and criminal copyright infringement of a pre-commercial release work in violation of the Family Entertainment Copyright Act. The plea was entered before U.S. District Judge Christopher A. Boyko for the Northern District of Ohio who set a sentencing date for July 23, 2007, at 11 a.m. Mr. Harvanek faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release.
On May 25, 2005, federal agents shut down the Elite Torrents BitTorrent tracker site 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. Harvanek’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.
At its height, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles—including movies, software, music and games—which were downloaded over 2 million times. The virtually unlimited content selection available on the Elite Torrents network often included illegal copies of copyrighted works before they were available in retail stores or movie theatres.
Operation D-Elite targeted the admins and leading uploaders of Elite Torrents, of which Mr. Harvanek was the latter, an uploader, responsible for supplying the network with the first copy of a particular movie or other content that was then made available to the entire network for downloading, and the latest to get busted in the ongoing operation.
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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I think them fighting the BT community itself is a lost cause! But it will take them awhile to see that.
My site has offically moved to Germany this past week. We’re just one of the hundreds of sites out there proving that bittorrent will never be stopped. It’s not just bittorrent either the edonkey network has that same level of activism the other p2p nets have much less but they are still thriving as well. Nice job guys.