Finger Pointing In Scene Begins While University Is Included in Topsite Busts

New details are emerging from the bust we reported yesterday. It turns out, a major Swedish university was involved in the crackdown. All this is emerging as scene notices are surfacing where it appears that finger-pointing has begun.
While sites like Wikileaks and ThePirateBay may or may not have been affected by the raids, we can shed some new light on our earlier report. It turns out that Umeå University, a major Swedish university was also caught up in the raids conducted by police. Police insisted that the raid had nothing to do with Wikileaks and had more to do with conducting an ant-piracy sweep.

Meanwhile, scene notices are surfacing that would indicate that some finger pointing is going on at this point. The notice:

Though, there’s always the hint of irony when someone demands that scene related activity should be secure only to have their warning posted on a site so public as this.
Of course, there’s also the fact that you can’t really understand the scene based on one scene notice. Browsing through a bunch of scene notices, there’s definitely no shortage of notices that have a title that starts with “the truth about…” (typically ending with a ripper, top-site or whatever someone is accusing of not keeping whatever secure. Additionally, how many notices are posted on a near regular basis that have, “Please keep the scene secure!” (in context of most nfo’s, it often follows some scolding comments to put it lightly)

The general concern typically is security though. There is no shortage of concern for security amongst the scene – and rightfully so considering what is going on there. Reading through some of the notices, you can get the sense that the scene is huge. There’s no way of telling exactly how many people are involved with the scene, but the number could easily range in the hundreds of thousands of people depending on what you consider as part of “the scene”. You can periodically see NFO’s of people complaining that they spent a good deal of time tracking someone down for something as simple as spamming certain channels.
This could theoretically be one of the problems of the scene – the huge number of people. Most involved in security can argue that the weakest part of any security is the human element. In this case, it’s probably a numbers issue. If you have a group of three people, chances are, you can keep a secret club pretty well locked down. Involve five people, and suddenly, someone is leaking info about this secret club, it’ll be pretty easy to track that person down. Involve ten people, now security becomes a bit more difficult to manage. Involve fifty people, there’s a remote possibility someone will join that you don’t want. Involve a hundred, the risk becomes great. Now, imagine fifty thousand. Then you can see some of the problems you can see going on in the scene right now.
Still, going back to the possibility that these were low-level top sites, these sites had to come about from someone higher up. If one low level site can be created, another one can be created as well through alternative means.

What is probably going to happen in all of this is that the MPAA/RIAA is going to have a field day saying that they are amazing for cracking down on these sites, call for tougher legislation, dust off their hands and call it a day. Meanwhile, some low level movement is going to happen, people will shift around, get banned, join up, etc. Then new sites will crop up and, over time, things will go back to normal, then another bust will happen, lather, rinse, repeat. Sites getting busted in the scene is nothing new and more busts will happen. Nothing has really changed in the last several years on that front.
Feds will always try and track down sceners thanks to what is likely financial influence from rights holders, and the draw to be a part of the scene for people will always be there.