Police Across Europe Conduct Major File-Sharing Raids

[nsane.forums]

Police in up to 14 countries around Europe have coordinated to carry out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. Locations in The Netherlands, Czech Republic and Hungary were targeted but Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the action. Seven locations including PRQ, which hosts WikiLeaks, have been raided.This morning news is coming in which indicates that very significant raids against illicit file-sharing are taking place in locations across Europe.

Police in up to 14 European countries are said to be involved in an operation, said to be in the planning for two years, targeting the Warez Scene, the network of individuals and servers at the top of the so-called ‘Piracy Pyramid’.

Details are scarce at the moment, but it is believed that at the behest of Belgian authorities, raids have gone ahead in The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden.

Not unusually, Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the activity with a total of seven locations raided including Stockholm, Malmö, Umeå, Eskilstuna and Solna.

Armed with IP addresses, this morning police officers turned up at the Solna premises of PRQ, the company that in part hosts WikiLeaks.There is no suggestion that the controversial whistle-blowing site is connected to the operation.

“At 9:00 this morning, five policemen were here,” explained PRQ’s Mikael Viberg. “They were interested in who were using two IP addresses from 2009 and onwards. We have no records of our clients but we’re handing over the e-mail addresses for those behind the IPs. However, it’s rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Update: Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad told Swedish news outlet Expressen.se, “I can confirm that [this operation] is not about Wikileaks.”

Update 2: Thus far, four people are said to be being questioned on suspicion of breaching copyright law. Servers and computers have been seized in Sweden.

Update 3:Police raided the Umeå University.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

View: Original Article

[DKT27]

Police Across Europe Conduct Major File-Sharing Crackdown

Coordinated effort in 14 countries carried out at the request of Belgian authorities. The investigation is two years in the making and is targeting individuals involved in "The Scene" file-sharing network as well as the servers copyrighted material was illegally uploaded to.

P2P is taking a big hit today with news that police across Europe are conducting one of the largest crackdown against illegal file-sharing ever to have taken place. This morning police in 14 European countries, including Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Italy, raided the homes of a number of individuals suspected of involvement as well as the ISPs that hosted servers where copyrighted material had been illegally uploaded to.

"I have not heard of any major crackdown in Europe in violation of copyright law," said Paul Pinter, Sweden's national coordinator for intellectual property crimes. "This is a huge crackdown."

The raids were conducted at the behest of Belgian authorities who spent two years infiltrating a warez group known as "The Scene" which is composed of many layers. At the top are groups who compete with one another to obtain and upload copyrighted material to the Internet. The next layer of the network are so-called "Top-sites," data severs where the copyrighted material is uploaded to made available.

A bulk of the raids appear to have been carried out in Sweden, long considered a file-sharing safe haven, and according to Swedish prosecutors, the raids there have mainly targeted "Top-sites."

The Swedish Pirate Party "highly critical" of the raids being that one targeted the ISP hosting the servers of Wikileaks, the site currently embroiled in an international freedom of the press controversy.

"If it is found that the police have shut down Wikileaks newsroom," says Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge, "the situation will go to a whole new level. When the Swedish authorities have gone all over the constitutional limits and the weight of American pressure to get rid of an uncomfortable newsroom. The situation is now very, very serious."

Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad insists the raids have nothing to do about Wikileaks. He also notes the "special" nature of the investigation being that it involves "no investigation in Sweden, but it is a request for legal assistance from Belgium."

"The seized material will probably be transferred to Belgium for investigation there," added Ingblad. "We will then have to see what comes out of that, crimes could also have been committed in Sweden."

Caught up in the mix seems to be Swedish BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay which is hosted by the same ISP as Wikileaks. As of now The Pirate Bay is down.

View: Original Article

[myidisbb]

so thats why http://www.mediafire.com/ is down

and yet they cannt go after real terrorist ei the suicide bomber ones. sicking

[Captain Blood]

As of now TPB seems to be up again, connecting from Europe.  :rolleyes:

[Ambrocious]

Allow me to begin a conspiracy theory here.

Perhaps The Pirate Party is REALLY not what we all think it is. Perhaps it is an elaborate co-opted front to gain trust of P2P organizations and control over others, all the while claiming to stand up for the rights of the P2P groups yet at the same time actually successfully being involved in a false flag cyber Coup d'état.

This is how it works. They come to power in actual legal ways, which they have. They make it appear that they stand up for these P2P groups and the rights of others to share. But the main goal is to gain the trust over these groups in order to more surgically rout them out OR to find out intimate details about them so as to spot the weak points in their organizations so they can construct a legal matter which is carried out Via a third party (lawsuits etc.) and The Pirate Party swoops in, in strong protest of the servers being seized (I call this pulling an Emperor Palpatine) so they can gain the trust of that group/web site/organization so they can indirectly AND directly have control over the future of it's operations and continuity.

This is my theory after studying how politics work and as of now, I have no proof if it's true or not but it is in my eyes possible.