FBI's covert "Operation Site Down" targets top international warez and piracy sites

There are no reviewed versions of this page, so it may not have been checked for adherence to standards.

Friday, July 1, 2005

Share this:

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced actions taken in eleven nations as part of the FBI's covert "Operation Site Down". The infiltration of so-called 'Topsites' resulted in searches, arrests, and seizures in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal and Great Britain in addition to the United States.

Messages in response posted on a communications page for warez users read:

RiSCISO, Myth, TDA, LND, Goodfellaz, Hoodlum, Vengeance, Centropy, Wasted Time, Paranoid, Corrupt, Gamerz, AdmitONE, Hellbound, KGS, BBX, KHG, NOX, NFR, CDZ, TUN, and BHP were all hit, and were all hit hard.

EdN not pre'ing for awhile, investigations still going on!

An email lists people targeted, updated in Mountain Time (UTC-7) at 6:31pm, 6:36pm, 6:38pm. The last update is at 6:41pm.

The FBI began the sting in 2003, offering hosting for software cracks and movies. As the covert site infiltrated the underground warez and piracy community, it was repeatedly expanded to provide storage for an increasingly large collection of pirated material. Eventually it held some 27 terabytes of copyrighted files, including 188 copyrighted software titles valued at more than US$300,000.

In the U.S.A. William Venya, 34, of Chatworth, Calif., Chirayu Patel, 23, of Fremont, Calif., Nate Lovell, 22, of Boulder, Colo., and David Fish, 24, of Watertown, Conn were all arrested on criminal complaints of copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.

Sources

Associated Press. "Online Pirates Nailed in Sting" — Wired News, 02:10 PM Jun. 30, 2005 PT
"Operation Site Down" — p2pnet.net, Friday 1st July 2005
Shannon McCaffrey, Knight Ridder. "Internet piracy crackdown leads to arrests, works worth $50 million" — Herald Today, Thu, Jun. 30, 2005
By Pete Carey, Mercury News. "FBI sting busts piracy net" — Mercury News, Thu, Jun. 30, 2005 - requires registration

External links

U.S. Dep't of Justice Press release: "JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES INTERNATIONAL INTERNET PIRACY SWEEP"
Scene communication board
email message

The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.
Please note that this only applies to Wikinews content created prior to September 25, 2005. All content created after that date is released under a Creative Commons license which is mentioned at the bottom of each article. This is currently the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.