FBI announces piracy crackdown

  • By Curt Feldman, GameSpot
  • Posted Jun 30, 2005 3:27 pm PT

Operation Site Down scrambles agents worldwide; warez operators in San Francisco, Charlotte, and Chicago are busted in US.

On Thursday, the FBI announced that authorities in 11 countries struck back at purveyors of illegally obtained copyrighted software, movies, music, and games. In the US, agents in California, North Carolina, and Illinois made a total of four arrests, which they called "the culmination" of an ongoing undercover operation code-named "Site Down."

Investigators said they concentrated on individuals that were the "first providers" of copyrighted works to the "warez" underground. According to a search warrant unsealed in San Francisco on Wednesday, the FBI agents posed as "warez hardware geeks" to gain entry to piracy groups. The warrant's details were outlined in an affidavit obtained by the San Jose Mercury News.

In California, one Chirayu Patel of Fremont was reportedly arrested on charges of violating federal copyright protection laws. He is alleged to have operated undercover servers used to upload and distribute games, movies, and architectural software internationally. Searches and arrests also occurred in Canada, Israel, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal, and Australia. Overall, the Justice Department said yesterday's actions shut down eight major illegal servers.

"By dismantling these networks, the Department is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain--a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of the illegal digitial content now available online," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in a statement today. "By penetrating this illegal world of high-technology and intellectual property theft, we have shown that law enforcement can and will find--and we will prosecute--those who try to use the Internet to create piracy networks beyond the reach of law enforcement."

Reportedly, the FBI will announce additional arrests as early as later today.

2 Comments

  • magusat999

    Posted Sep 2, 2006 5:01 pm PT

    Good to see the FBI ensuring our safety and national security by getting all those illegal copies of "Prince of Persia" and Photoshop off the street... The Al-Queda network has suffered a major setback.

    I wonder how much it costed to provided free copyright infringement support to these companies - and how many REAL crimes could have been prevented during this waste of government resources if those same agents were actually working on REAL cases? How many people were needlessly extorted, executed, kidnapped, during this whole process? What a travesty. Sure, copyright infringement is illegal - but it isn't something the FBI should be getting into - that's something a lawyer should be handling.

  • jakeboudville

    Posted Aug 30, 2006 9:40 pm PT

    kinda interesting...

advertisement

Hot Stories

Newsmakers

Featured Stories

Submit News

Got tips? Send them in!