German
police have busted a massive movie piracy ring inGermany with raids made on over 750 premises between 16th and 18th of March with at least 15 people arrested. The raids consisted of 40,000 CD-R and DVD-R discs, 19 servers with a total capacity of 38TB and over 200 PCs. The content being illegally distributed
included more than 500 German-language popular films since 2001.
The Motion Picture Association claims this to have been one of the largest offensiveness in online piracy of copyrighted material. The German Federation Against Copyright Theft made an intense investigation into this piracy ring for two years before performing the raids. The operation also caught a gang in the Ruhr region which supplied the recent films on recordable discs. GristyMcFisty submitted the following news via our news submit :
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The raids on 16 and 18 March targeted a network of pirates blamed for illegally distributing more than 500 German-language versions of popular films on the Net since 2001. Among the films first pirated by these so-called "release groups" were The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Sé¶nke Wortmann's Das Wunder von Bern, and Shawn Levy's Cheaper by the Dozen. The operation is billed by the Motion Picture Association as one of the largest offensives ever undertaken against the organised production and distribution of copyright material over the Internet. The raids follow two years of intensive investigation by the German Federation Against Copyright Theft and were conducted in close cooperation with local law enforcement authorities and the German Ministry of Justice. Raids throughout Germany in Munich, Frankfurt am Main, Bremen, Cologne and the Ruhr region resulted in the seizure of 19 servers (with a total capacity of 38 terabytes), 200+ PCs and over 40,000 CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. "Over 15 individuals" were detained for questioning - somewhat low, considering 750 premises were raided. The operation also netted a gang in the Ruhr region supplying current films and the latest software on DVD-Rs and CD-Rs. The gang obtained its source material from "release groups" and operated a disc-burning lab with 24 high-speed burners. |
When it comes to fighting large scale organised crime in Germany, we can see that there are local laws that cover against this sort of activity without having to implement new legislation. It is not clear however if the recently introduced German DMCA-like legislation based on the EUCD had been used when deciding to perform the raids.
Source: The Register
