Major Piracy Bust Against Top Providers

[Wizard_Mon1]

January 24, 2006
By: Thomas Mennecke

In the ongoing effort against movie piracy, top providers have become gleaming target. Largely responsible for introducing highly sought after material, top providers are a highly competitive entity that prioritize public recognition over associated risks. Earlier this morning, several top warez providers found themselves shut down at the hands of local police and the entertainment industry.

At approximately 10 AM, local police in a wide spread coordinated effort raided over 300 homes and offices associated with top warez providers. The raids took place in Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic. According to GVU (translated to German Federation Against Copyright Theft), over 30 individuals were arrested in the raids.

The raids also yielded over 20 servers, which provided FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access to individuals belonging to the release groups. GVU claims the warez groups were responsible for the proliferation "of illegal copies of films, computer games, music and user software." The enforcement raids were the culmination of the GVU's investigative efforts, with legal follow-through provided by the prosecutor's offices in Duesseldorf and Frankfurt.

Rumors of the bust began circulating online today, as members attempted to warn each other. 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.

The pursuit of top providers is a primary concern to the entertainment industry, as the proliferation of pirated material often begins with these organizations. 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.

:source: Source: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1065

[Damnatory]

Damnit, they got Reloaded! :( :cry:

[Peerzy]

I use to chat with the guys from Heaven all the time, shame to see them busted, same with RELOADED. However there is always another group. Hopefully these groups can get out of any legal problems the same way as all the others have (entrapment).

[SeK612]

It's a shame that this seems happening more often. Hope none of the groups are hit too hard (Reloaded seem pretty good at game releases).

[twisterX]

theyll be back.

[maebach]

I hope so.

[suprafreak6]

Reloaded was awesome! Man, that sucks...

[silent h3ro]

RELOADED was one of the best groups for cracking games. That really sucks....

[Busyman]

I hope they get out of it too.

However, they were stealing and that's the risk they take.

We have some local pirates around here.

I think one of the main differences is that they don't look for recognition.
They are actually making money.

I remember some folks on here telling me that if no one of the recognized groups had a movie (pre-release) that it didn't exist.:lol: :lol:

"If it's not on google, it just ain't real."

[Cheese]

I remember some folks on here telling me that if no one of the recognized groups had a movie (pre-release) that it didn't exist.:lol: :lol:

"If it's not on google, it just ain't real."

I think you or they are just getting confused with the differences between a scene release and a non-scene release.

[SeK612]

They're just providing a public service. They don't have permission to release cracked games but it's not too much of a crime when they do.

TBH I feel that releases that are downloaded by a user and just used on a single P.C isn't really hurting anyway. It's generally better to stump up cash after playing a cracked release anyway to do stuff like play online.

Things get messier when you have people downloading releases and then flogging them to others or trying to sell them as a replacement for the official products. This is when I feel authorities and companies have a case against loss of earnings and crimes taking place.

[Busyman]

They're just providing a public service. They don't have permission to release cracked games but it's not too much of a crime when they do.

TBH I feel that releases that are downloaded by a user and just used on a single P.C isn't really hurting anyway. It's generally better to stump up cash after playing a cracked release anyway to do stuff like play online.

Things get messier when you have people downloading releases and then flogging them to others or trying to sell them as a replacement for the official products. This is when I feel authorities and companies have a case against loss of earnings and crimes taking place.
Not quite.

I think it doesn't hurt a company when it's something you woudn't downloaded anyway. However, there's no real way to measure hindsight.

The fact is it's all stealing. If one has 200 albums or movies and 1/4th of that would have been something the user would have bought then the companies lost money.

Another fact is that just about everyone shares the files. I think law-wise I think one should still be able to download because it's their right. The programs or clients can be used for legal distribution and for sharing stolen files. More often than not though, it's for sharing stolen files.

It's up to the companies to secure their product whether it be doing raids through the authorities or better encryption.

They are laying are product out in the street then complaining when someone picks it up. While that someone did steal it knowingly, it was in the street. Companies should not a expect a high moral standard when free shit is laid out in front of them.

I remember using a descrambler to steal PPV and premium cable channels. What cable companies did is remove most of the PPV and some of the premium channels from analog and move to digital cable where so far it has not been hacked and it has been out for a long time.

Bottomline is that all of this hurts a company's bottomline. I never ordered a PPV movie 'cause I didn't have too. Boxing events were free so I didn't need folks to chip-in for a fight party.

The impetus to buy is gone due to one not having to buy.

[abu_has_the_power]

this is fucked up. reloaded!! noooooo

they were one of the 1st to successfully crack starforce. i was waiting for chaos theory! noooooooo

[Filliz]

http://www.gvu.de/de/presse/download_pics.php?navId=30

These are supposedly pictures of the busts....

Now i might not understand completely how the scene works but this just doesn't look like places where releasing groups work. :blink:

Tis all burning hardware you see:
http://www.gvu.de/de/presse/img/download/fabrik_300.jpg

I think they somehow got their pictures mixed up :dry:

[Peerzy]

Releasing groups don't release from there own computers. They crack something then upload it to a private group only FTP and then FXP from that group only FTP onto a Topsite (Private but not group only FTP) and people on the Topsite FXP onto other sites and so on.

Those were just where the cracking went on, the release first appears on the internet on a 100Mbit FTP server in a data centre surrounded with hundreds of other servers, some used for legal websites and some used for piracy.