Major Scene MP3 Pre-Release Group Busted By Police
Written by enigmax on June 17, 2009A major online warez release group has been severely disrupted after a police and music industry investigation. A contender for the most prolific in its field, the group has suffered arrests, with the latest coming yesterday after police and the BPI conducted an early morning raid.
While much attention is currently focused on illicit file-sharing carried out by the UK public and the closing down of sites such as OiNK, TV Links and AradiTracker, the groups at the top of the so-called ‘piracy pyramid’ receive relatively little attention. These groups are the source of much of the music on file-sharing networks, particularly when it comes to pre-release material – sometimes identifiable by ‘Advance’ or ‘Promo’ tags in the release name.
Now, according to information leaked to TorrentFreak, one of the most prolific music release groups around has suffered a significant setback after police quietly started arresting members during the last month. The latest arrest came yesterday, as police and BPI investigators conducted an early morning raid on a senior member of the group.
At this stage we cannot publish the group’s name (see update at the bottom of this article for group name) but we believe that they are responsible for more than 3,000 single and album releases. The group was relatively young and had a membership of less than ten individuals, although they aren’t all based in the UK.
The first arrest happened mid-May and the most recent yesterday, conducted in a similar fashion to earlier raids against those involved in the TV Links and AradiTracker cases.
In early morning raids, officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Hi-Tech Crime Unit backed up by senior investigators from the BPI took the suspects by surprise. Sources close to the investigation told TorrentFreak that as many as 15 officers conducted searches on the target addresses, arresting suspects and taking them away for questioning.
Hardware was of great interest to the police as they seized large amounts of electrical equipment including all computers, cell phones, various CDs and MP3 players, bank statements and sundry other items from the addresses.
After hours of questioning by police in the presence of BPI investigators, in common with the OiNK uploaders the suspects were charged with Conspiracy to Defraud (the music industry), bailed and ordered to reappear at later dates.
According to sources, all remaining group members have gone into hiding, all servers are now offline and topsite accounts have been deleted.
More on this breaking story as we get it.
Update: Our sources have agreed to let us name the group – it is DV8. Their latest release was Brokencyde-Im_Not_A_Fan_But_The_Kids_Like_It-2009-DV8 – time will tell if it will be the last.
Previously: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
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126 Responses
Take out the scene and watch CD sales drop even lower as no-one discovers new stuff anymore.
I can’t wait to see what group is it.
@3 = fail.
Wonder where those other members are at?
@5 same here…….
im sure in time there will be another to take their place tho…..
The group that was busted was DV8.
Why was the BPI there during interview? how is that legal?
Tragic.
@4 Yes i agree with Patrick
Take out the scene and watch CD sales drop even lower as no-one discovers new stuff anymore.
The group that was busted was DV8.
It’s the truth.
“More on this breaking story as we get it.”
Please do keep us up to date!
good god your slow. A music grp? Is that all youve got? is a hell of a lot deeper than that. just wait.
I AM TELLING YOU WHAT THE GROUP THAT BUSTED WAS! TORRENT FREAK WON’T DO THAT!! I WILL !!!
DV8 DV8 DV8 DV8 DV8 DV8 DV8 DV8 DV8!!!
Jeez…
Not sure i heard of DV8, what kind of music were they releasing?
*yawn* Scene releases are never the best. Always wait for someone else to do it better. Less errors, less electronic ticks from scratched discs. Even new, pre-releases have sounded scratched for some weird reason. That, or they’re spreading bread crumbs on the discs before inserting them into their players for ripping. Best when they’ll be scene no more. No big loss.
#18, you have no clue what you are talking about.
How about an article on ipredator beta testing and how this is going?
Rather than sending people over to funk.no
Its not DV8…its UTE for your info DV8 still going..
UTE, lol. They release crap, and they have not been busted.
It seams they have had a leek somewhere, remember three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
Remember the first one caught in a group will get the plea bargain for the rest.
Why does anyone who does something like this keep there stuff at home?
Get a vpn to a central encrypted node where all your data is stored, make it so that it has a different password each day and if a certain one is used the node shuts down and deletes itself.
Do not keep ANYTHING involving the work your doing at home.
Never keep anything incriminating at home or work, hell if you have to keep backups a drive in a plastic box buried somewhere inconspicuous and not in your backyard btw is where you keep it not sitting on top of comp ready to be taken.
Remember anything digital can be debated anything physical cant.
and finally DONT TALK TO THE POLICE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik&feature=related
I mean it nothing good can come from it.
-Jay
@20, I use IPREDator and its fantastic, better than relaxx which i was on before, utorrent shows me with sometimes 5m down and so far upto 3m up per sec, have not gotten disconnected even once from them unlike relaxx or flashback.name (same company)
Was a bit suspicious at first coz i had to pay for 3 months at a go instead of per month, but hey… its TPB guys, worse comes to worse they will use my money for something good like screwing the IFPI.
DV8/RAGEMP3
this is what happens when you sell your promo’s on ebay after you rip them. he deserved to go down.
@19: LOL If I didn’t have to discard at least half of the mp3 scene releases downloaded from UseNet or torrent, the comment above at #18 would have not been made. From my own experience, I Absolutely do know what I’m talking about! I’m convinced that scene releases, and quality control, are not synonymous with each other in most respects.
@23: Also, I have to agree with you. This whole business just seems too sloppy anyway. If these people had their computers in their homes, shame on them.
At #26:
Are you in the Scene? I don’t think so. So shut your mouth on stuff you don’t know jack about.
heard about this last night. now a bunch of sites are down, and i got kicked off a few. anyone got contacts in other groups i can rip for? cbf waiting for this to die down; with irc off and stuff i have no way of contacting others. yes i seriously asked that here ;)
see, this is what happens when you take your tinfoil hat off…
@4 – exactly.
The fact that they contacted silly Torrentfreak speaks for itself. No selfrespecting topsite or rlsgroup would ever contact any pathetic torrent blog.
Lametards got what they deserved.
wow… really informative.
wouldn’t surprise me if bs
Good, fuck “the scene”!
Nothing but a bunch of posers who don’t know what decade it is.
The scene is as obsolete as music labels.
it was DV8 and RAGEMP3. The main person raided was the admin of both grps. they kept info and targeted the rippers. most busted were DV8 members because the admin resold promo’s on ebay even after recieving letters from the music companies to stop. admin was from the uk…
DV8/RAGEMP3 IS WHO GOT BUSTED!!
THEY WAS SELLING THEIR WAREZ ON FREAKING E-BAY!!
@ohstfu
“a pathetic torrent blog” …….
….that YOU read and even feel interested enough to make a comment on. Sweet mate :)
@27: I appreciate the laugh. Thank you. My experiences are mine, and no apology needs to be made. As I said before, from my personal experience, I Absolutely Do know what I’m talking about. If that doesn’t sit well with you, and if you’re part of a scene, you know what to do. Improve quality control. Simple as that! Obviously some of them do stupid things to get themselves arrested. While I feel sorry for those who are in trouble, maybe that’ll encourage others to start doing things right. I just hope that starts to applying to cd rips. Hopefully, soon, shoddy scene mp3 releases will be a thing of the past.
DV8 sold rips, not rage…
DV8 sold the cd’s they ripped which were promo’s that say not for resale
@39: Technically, it was only 1 guy selling the cds, leader of both rage and dv8 – therefore he was selling promo cds of whatever he got, whether he had ripped them for rage or dv8.
HE DIDN’T RIP.. THERE WAS A GROUP FUND FOR CD’S WITH THAT GRP IN PARTICULAR
@44: What are you on about? It was the one guy. He’d buy cds from various people, rip them, sell them, use the money to buy more to rip.
look, dv8 had a grp fund that they bought cd’s from a dist. the took the advance’s and promo’s rip’d, pre’d, re-sold on ebay. he got letters from various recording labels, to stop selling shit on ebay.. he did it anyway, i told him will get busted one day, and here it is…
they siezed his shit, posed as him nailed 3 other dv8 members and they have not gone to the .us to raid the ragemp3 members.. (yet?)
@36
I`M [NUKED]-DUPE.RESPONSE.LATE.NFO.
(sigh)pwned again…….
Well you have been mis-informed. There was no group fund, and they didn’t buy from a dist. He bought from a shop that sold promos, He bought from a reviewer from Kerrang, He bought from a shopkeeper, He bought from someone else whom I can’t remember. It was the one guy. No group fubd. He bought them himself, and kept the money for himself (as it was his anyway).
they just happend to get the admin of DV8 and he happend to admin rage too…
the info tf has given is almost correct….
lol, nope, it wasn’t his money… someone else started the fund… however the rest of your info is correct…
Right, ok, i’m not going to go on as I can see you wont change what you’re saying, but I know, very well, the truth, and there was no group fund for cds. The .us rippers used their own money to buy. The .de ripper got them free/bought them from shops. The other .uk rippers bought their own aswell.
i know who u are gri, keep the rest of the details at the “sandwich shop” the fund was started with my money… i left soon after…
Oh well. Fewer poorly-ripped, badly tagged uploads floating around. What a loss.
Who are you? I’m interested to know. gri@hush.ai – i’m generally interested.
There. That’ll stop those pesky pirates from stealing the sales from the already wealthy billionaire corporations and executives. That’ll teach ‘em!
oh and…FIFTY THIRD! XD
Actually I can probably guess who you are, and I know what you mean by the fund. Email me anyway if you want, I don’t like speculating ;)
kill one…. 2 more appear! ITS BLOODY UNSTOPPABLE!!!
And i was afraid the “most prolific” grp was H3X, good thing then they aren’t ;)
At this stage we cannot publish the group’s name—
Actually you can, you just don’t want to.
gri… check your mail..
@ 37 by bored
I guess you refer to the flac format? Quality difference to a properly ripped MP3 is minimal. And if there are glitches, there will be a fix by the same or a different group/ind. The reason problems occur is because of the high competition in the scene. And no, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re probably familiar with the basics and being on some private trackers makes you feel hotshot, but you’re still a noob at the bottom of the chain, really. These things happen because the scene is made very high profile by the leaking, a result of the scene being a anonymous and decentralized network. The scene is the source of almost every leak/release and if you use warez, you should be thankful (if not, it’s ignorance). The scene uses top quality security, but it’s still a human network, and people make mistakes.
[!] Either way, this won’t change anything, another will take their place and it’s just wasted time and tax/corp money. The companies need to fix at the root of the problem, they aren’t going to win this way anyway. The new generations of people want to use the internet, and they are going to use it no matter the companies like it or not. It’s time to accept this. All this does is greatly damage a couple of people’s lives…
Awaiting the next groups to bravely take this one’s place, however they don’t release for the average torrent leecher, but for their own fellow scene releasers and friends, leaks just bring it to the rest.
C’mon companies, sometimes you need to accept your past losses and move on to prevent more from happening. You’re not going to win. Really.
@ 60 by Dellum
For good reason. No good comes of it shouting it around, if you make a wrong accusation (see the names flying around here) it could only damage the reputation of some. It’s for good reason your average news papers refers to for example “a bank in ” instead of just shouting around the name. Sometimes a name is just a detail.
@Wanted to say: No, I may not know what you’re talking about, but, from my own experience, I Do know what I’m talking about. We’ll just agree to disagree and move on.
I’m not talking about flac format, btw, just the normally improperly ripped mp3 files that seem so prevalent with scene releases. Human error is one thing. Constant ticks, distortion (not talking about The Loudness Wars), stucks, and skips. That’s what I’m talking about. When quality control does truly improve, these will no longer be issues.
I notice errors in at LEAST every other scene mp3 rip I’ve gotten so far
<3 my private trackers with a ripping community
The admin was selling releases on eBay? Seriously? Jesus Christ.
I don’t want to say they deserved this, but what the hell did they expect?
It seems like these guys are truly reckless. They’re just not taking the hint. Oh well. It’s done deal.
@68 : So the legitimacy of your own actions is governed by your ability to conceal said actions…??
omg n00bz, because you’re not hooked up into the goings on within the scene does that not mean you deserve the oppertunity to be given an insight and find out whats happening?
but no, the scene does what the scene does… OMG NOOBZ LOLLERSKATEZ LOLZ ROFL!!! because thats really constructive and helps everyone. You dont have to give away all the details, i’ve been out of it for a few years now and i still dont tell people about any of it.
But treating people like idiots because they’re not in your ’scene’? Grow up.
in addition to that ramble… People seem too quick to let groups and sites go to the wall because they’re not as good as their favorite… They’re all doing the same shit, some better than others but that generally comes down to the users.. We’re all in the same boat, don’t laugh at the people sinking next to you, you could be next…. No sites or groups going down is good or worth laughing at if you actually care about file sharing.
TF really needs to make it so that people can’t impersonate other people. Making insulting posts in other people’s name is really juvenile, and just comes off as saying “I can’t disagree with anyone with out insulting them, so I’ll resort to anything.”
lol @82
neosyles – when we see such a post, we delete them, or change the name (same for obvious sock-puppets)
We had a comment system earlier this year that encouraged registration, except it was heavy on peoples systems, and hard to manage.
There is a way to register a comment profile on here, I don’t remmeber how myself, but its possible, eeze has such a profile.
You cant’t take the heat ?
Don’t go into the sun, go to Disney Land !
@Ben:
http://torrentfreak.com/wp-login.php?registration=disabled
Enable registration of user accounts to comment, problem solved.
Is the scene really relevant when it comes to music? “Scene release” used to mean badly tagged 192 kbps CBR MP3s encoded with 5+ years old versions of LAME. Nowadays it’s “-V2″, which is much better, but they still seem stuck on ancient versions even though never versions give better quality and they are still often badly tagged. Also, I’ve seen several MP3 scene releases with pops and clicks so the “quality control” argument is bogus also. It’s obvious that they don’t actually LISTEN to the rip before they release it.
well as much as I hate to see the music industry score a win if they were indeed selling they deserve to take the hit
cool story bro :)
is major scene group rH or FNT? if not i care a shit.
the problem is that the scene releasers arent into the music,they are ino being bad boys and being king of he crap heap.
if they bothered releasing quality rips, in a high bitrate or even lossless, and checked their rip, and then tagged it properly and added some art, they would be worth downloading.
lets face it, most of the new music being released by the industry is shit anyway.
people who are into their music, make decent rips because they truly want to share wih like minded people.
most scene shit is done for the kudos. fuck the scene, never got nothing from them, never will.
fnt are the lowest of the low. No other group has any respect for them, reencoding, fake busting wankers.
Bpi who the hell do they think they are
Law makers
Police
God ?
The very fact the police involve them selves with a origination like show what the police are all about remember when they went for the welsh? What about the balck’s or more recently the homosexuals ? its seem there’s no end to evilness of the met police one would of thought they should of learned there lesson what with there enjoyment in murdering and harassing innocent bystanders in the g20 march. Not forgetting there murdering of and committing perjury in court as well and yet no charges for murder or for there lie’s you tell me what’s wrong with that.
This action is classic of totalitarian state were the country has more in common with hitters ss. Exactly 75 years ago we went to war against these exact ideals which have now become of our homeland. Yet when you have done nothing wrong your expected to be great full that your not goanna be lock up.
The very fact the people who join the police to play with guns and hurt people lock people up its no wonder the police has no ideals, what do you expect when they give ex check out workers power like this.
The United Kingdom is a joke were your made to pay for a force who’s own ideal is to do what the govment say’s and with no public vote on laws how the hell is that a democracy.
THIS IS A FUCKING JOKE, BPI WE OWE YOU NOTHING, BURN IN HELL WITH YOUR COUNTER PART ADOLF HITTLER.
Gonna have to agree on the quality control complaints. Half the scene files I run across have skips or glitches, or are crystal clear 320kbps but mono. Mono! But then again, I don’t beg teenagers to let me into their private trackers & forums, so maybe I’m only seeing the worst of it.
as far i understand, the arrests were made in leicester. i was told about this a few weeks back.
@74: The Leicester arrest was not group related, it was another person who just ran a site – they were linked with a group member, however the member was not raided themselves. The arrest the other day took place in Portsmouth.
So an investigator from the corporations was allow to be there at a police investigation? It’s really sad when corporation rights have more say than an individual’s rights. It’s time to break the fantasy…governments don’t rule the world, multinational corporations do.
mp3 sucks, flac is here to replace the pollution called CDs
flac comes from cd’s you numpty.
Orly, FLAC comes from CDs? The idea that someone could produce a FLAC from a different source, like the digital master recording, never occurred to you? Ignorant.
and they couldnt have gotten busted before they released brokencyde?
Oh yeah, cause people get wavs all the time don’t they! I’m always getting digital master recordings me, yeah what was I thinking, flac barely ever comes from a cd! Wow, i’m silly. Silly silly me.
@Zarew, right because artists encode their stuff into flac & upload it all over the internet..
BPI investigators… what a joke
Hmmm…that reminds me of the game “numpty crayon”
http://numptyphysics.garage.maemo.org/
flacs dont come from anywhere except the software that creates them. the source file can indeed be cd, and often is, but flac is also the chosen codec for vinyl ripping, and live bootlegs. flacs can have a higher bitrate and sampling rate than is currently used on cds.
the upside of using flacs or apes is that if the original source is cd, when you burn your backup copy, it will be exactly the same as the cd. no loss at all.
much better than mp3, and wma and aac. no lame or windows or apple licensing, flac -FREE LOSSLESS AUDIO CODEC.
the only downside is that it isnt supported very well. very few personal audio players play them, neither do the xbox or ps3. although they can be streamed.
when mp3 and mp3 players came out, the music industry had a cow. now they use and promote this technology. flac will become more mainstream when people and industry realise how useful it is.
What a depressing end to a scene tracker. Not the arrests, but what their final release was.
Lol, Brokencyde.
Gutted, I feel genuinely sorry for DV8.
Hope they come back bigger and stronger.
What a depressing end to a scene tracker. Not the arrests, but what their final release was.
Lol, Brokencyde.
SCENE TRACKER!!!
PLEASE DONT COMMENT IF YOU DONT HAVE A CLUE WHAT YOUR ON ABOUT….nOOb
@89 I take that back after reading all the other comments.
If the admin did indeed re-sell promos and shit then he fucking deserves it. Rule 1 of the scene rules.
Still, i’m sure other members of DV8/RAGEMP3 had good intentions.
How Kuma Got Pwned Selling PrHomo-On Ebay-(Retail)-2009-RAGEMP3
Pre’d, so there’s ya proof ;)
I would not worry about it.
As usual, the decoys get busted.
The actual key people remain in the shadows…
Art should be free – like it is on my blog.
http://www.mytextsecret.com
these scene guys are likely heavy music buyers to have the ripped songs to upload in the first place. Strange
meh, i have hundreds of scene albums and none of them are from DV8 but prob cause most my albums are hip hop
How_Kuma_Got_Pwned_Selling_PrHomo-On_Ebay-(Retail)-2009-RAGEMP3
sum1 post the nfo on paste2
SUCK THIS
I guarantee you that 90% of us have downloaded at least ONE song illegally. So does that make us criminals? No, it just means we like to share.
You failed to indicate the city or even the country where this arrest occurred? You mentioned “Metropolitan Police” but I have no idea which metropolis you’re referring to.
DV8 advanced some amazing stuff this year: new albums Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse, Sonic Youth, Magnolia Electric Co, Bonnie Prince Billy, etc. I wouldn’t have even known about some of those if it wasn’t for DV8.
#92 you are now an idiot…
kuma was the admin…
99.
UK.
@88
Scene tracker?!?!?!
What the hell are you on about. They were a scene group you dumb noob.
Get off the internet moron.
portsmouth .uk
i would like for everyone to understand something… he was not selling to make a profit, that was never the case… he was selling so that he could get the cd, rip it, pre it, then sell it, to get more cd’s…
he got busted selling promo’s which is a no no… he sold them before retail date… he sold them on ebay a few days before retail date so that the cd would be in persons hands on the day of release…
he was warned from recording companies to stop, and this is where he deserves punishment.. he didn’t listen and went greedy to be #1 in the scene…
funny thing is all you buttholes bash him and the scene for what ya’ll get on torrents. those torrents are just renamed. the quality torrents you talk about are being better than scene stuff is just an ex-scener still getting a kick from ripping uploading, after retireing from the scene…
the scene is not the same anymore, just more colo’s run by teenagers…
I must be a criminal because I download illegal music all the time on Youtube.
You know Youtube cache video on your computer so I’m downloading everything I see LoL
I’m waiting for the time the industry will say to google to start collecting IPs and people will be arrested in raids because they saw a video from youtube.
Quite frankly calling anyone who can press 2 buttons on a ripping program a scener, be it for DVD or CDDA, is just ridiculous.
Scene to me is and always will be SKILLED(!!!!!!!!!!) people knowing how to crack games and application protection, not some attention whoring dimwits who take pride in smoking weed and having oh-so-cool-sounding names.
Anyone, and I do literally mean anyone, can create a DVD-Rip and CD-Rip at ultra-high end quality simply by following a picture-by-picture guide, freely available on the net.
The same does not go for Fravia’s tutorials and modern day equivalents.
There is no scene in this regard to lose, as buttonmashing never was scene to begin with. Sorry. This is why user driven communities that have been established now are mightier and more efficient than any music oriented topsite could ever be.
Nobody can top the supply of 30-50k music enthusiast users, ever.
It’s just a different game.
WTF dude? whats with all the police busts on pirate sites, this shiz is getting old already!
RIff
http://www.anonymity.tk
@105: This is completely true. He had some fantastic sources, and he loved what he did, providing people with new, unheard music. He was only selling the cds so he could buy more to rip. Sure, some promos sold for large amounts of money, but that just meant he could buy more cds for the end user. He made little, if any profit at all, especially considering the stupid ebay charges, along with PayPal. But, what he did was illegal, so he got what was coming, unfortunately.
Hopefully someone else will get his sources – I would start using them myself, but now i’m groupless with noone to contact. (gri@hush.ai ;P )
God I hope it’s not NOFS T_T
Gotta be INSANELY stupid to sell promos on ebay after ripping them.
Can’t really feel sorry for him.
NOFS is not a scene group it’s a guy who re-encodes scene releases or any other rip he can get his hands on. He re-encodes them at 256 kbps and says he has the original source.
@108 total respect to you
@14 (bored):
What the fuck are you talking about?
The Scene’s release are the best, alot better that some 13 year old boy, trying to rip a cd.
2009-06-18 11:33:00
NUKED: bad.pack_pred.as.rar
File Count: 1 files | File size: 2.5 MB NONFO MP3
Lastsong-lastmusic-2009-DV8
That pre just contained an image (view at own descression)..
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg297/dgandrews/00-lastsong-lastmusic-2009-DV8.jpg
Probably from some FNT faggot.
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lol at #117 that is awesome!
the scene and torrents are two different worlds… so can you please stfu?
112 Jun 19, 2009 at 08:38 by id(V8)iot
Gotta be INSANELY stupid to sell promos on ebay after ripping them.
Can’t really feel sorry for him.
sooooo right!!!
By FNT, you mean MP3 yeah…
And by MP3 i mean tLoc and EdN yeah…
FUCK DV8, FUCK KUMA (YES I SAID IT), and fuck everyone who doesn’t know what their talking about. Kuma is who was dumb and greedy enough to sell promos that DV8 ripped on ebay. This has nothing to do with rage other than Kuma slithered his way into leading rage a few years back. He had no bizness leading rage as he is a limey piece of shit, who doesn’t even live near Houston, TX.
and i could really care less what anyone says to this, so dont look for another reponose from me.
i said my piece.
Kuma had no bizness being in an american group, let alone running one. he thought he was untouchable, but he is now an example.
@122
FNT has been around far longer than all those groups you mentioned
@124… FNT took on members from MP3 when they stopped after their leader got busted for being a pedofile. The margority of current FNT members are old MP3 members.
@125
interesting, i always thought FNT consisted of former REV members
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