Founded in 1993, RISCISO was a warez release group, dedicated to the distribution of the latest software and media. RISCISO is an acronym representing ‘Rise in Superior Couriering’ and ISO, which refers to an ISO 9660 disk image.

According to the USDOJ, RISCISO was responsible for the pirating of $6.5m worth of computer games, software and movies and were operational up until the summer of 2005. The group was blamed for being the original pirate source of tens of thousands of pirated works with transfers of 19 terrabytes of data on just one of their servers.

Following an undercover investigation, the FBI executed approximately 90 search warrants in 11 countries resulting in 19 defendants being charged with one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 15 of them with one additional count each of copyright infringement.

Sean O’Toole, who used the nickname “chucky”, is a 27-year-old computer expert from Perth, Australia and was considered by US authorities to have been the group leader. He allegedly set the policy for the group, managed access to the servers and transferred copyrighted material from other sites he controlled. No charges had been laid against him in Australia but nevertheless, an FBI request resulted in a raid on O’Toole’s home.

He was ordered to appear in a Chicago court on February 22nd 2006 but disappeared from his parents home in Perth and despite a worldwide search, hasn’t been seen since. US District Court judge Amy St Eve issued a warrant for his arrest. “He’s still a fugitive” said assistant US district attorney, Pravin Rao.

Members of the group were completely unaware that there was a ‘CW’ in their group – also known as a ‘Co-operating Witness’. The main RISCISO server was maintained by this ‘CW’ who was also assisting the government with its investigation of the group. According to the indictment, it was O’Toole himself who gave the infiltrator “physical and root access” to their main server.

US district attorney Pravin Rao said that O’Toole was the only fugitive and that other RISCISO members had been detained and are awaiting their trial. “We have 12 defendants who have entered guilty pleas and five defendants who are headed toward a trial which will start in January 2008,” Rao said.

Previously, Hew Raymond Griffiths who is also Australian, was extradited to the United States and is facing five years in a US prison after admitting being the leader of notorious warez group, DrinkOrDie.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The police said the tracker was one year old, but for the last 6 months the administrators have been asking for donations and running ads on the site, which attracted the attention of the police officers.

A 2 month investigation lead the police to an apartment in Bucharest where they arrested the two 40-year old admins. In addition they seized 4 computers and 5,200 cds and DVDs, some of which contained copyrighted material. This indicates that the two were not only running Torrentbits, but that they were also selling pirates CDs and DVDs.

The two were released from custody Thursday afternoon, but are charged with copyright infringement, and both face 4 years in jail and a $10.000 fine. A video clip that shows the raid is posted in this Romanian news article.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Defendant number six in the ongoing EliteTorrents prosecution drama has pleaded guilty according to an announcement made by Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Gregory A. White for the Northern District of Ohio.

Scott D. Harvanek, aged 22 of Tucson, Arizona, has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and actual criminal copyright infringement. The charges relate to the seeding or to the conspiracy to seed ‘a pre-commercial release work’, likely to be Star Wars: Episode III, in violation of the Family Entertainment Copyright Act.

Harvanek’s guilty plea is the 6th arising from Operation D-Elite, which shut down the EliteTorrents network in May 2005. Previous convictions including those of Scott McCausland, Grant Stanley and Sam Kuonen.

Harvanek, who faces five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, is due to be sentenced July 23rd 2007.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In 1999 Griffiths openly admitted that he was leading DrinkOrDie’s daily operations and that he was in control of more than 20 of the top warez servers worldwide. Back then Griffiths claimed that he would never be caught, a statement he might regret now.

In 2001 DoD was busted during US Customs co-ordinated raids as part of Operation Buccaneer, Griffiths, also known under the nickname “Bandito”, was identified as one of DoD’s leaders.

Last February Griffiths was arraigned before a U.S. District Court to face charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of actual criminal copyright infringement. Yesterday U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg for the Eastern District of Virginia announced that Griffiths has agreed to plead guilty to both counts.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In another episode of the on-going action named Operation D-Elite which brought down the EliteTorrents network in 2005, Sam Kuonen, 24 was charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and actual criminal copyright infringement.

According to the DOJ Kuonen has pleaded guilty to both counts and is facing five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. The criminal charges suggest that Kuonen could’ve been the uploader of the pre-released Star Wars: Episode III, which under US law is a criminal action breaching the Family Entertainment Act 2005. So far in the US, only uploaders who distribute movies that are still in theaters have had criminal charges brought against them.

There have been four previous convictions relating to activity at EliteTorrents including those of Scott McCausland and Grant Stanley who both collected a punishment of several months in jail.

In May 2005, Federal Agents assisted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), first infiltrated and then shutdown EliteTorrents, a BitTorrent tracker with more than 130,000 members. They took down the server and left this message, which was viewed more than 500,000 times in the week following the raid;

Sam Kuonen will be sentenced July 16 in the U.S. District Court for Kansas.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Dear All,

Following receipt of a number of copyright infringement notices, Information Services is taking steps to protect the University.

The principle source of these copyright infringements is inappropriate use of peer-to-peer file sharing, for example Bit Torrent.

A number of web sites have been identified which primarily provide access to a high proportion of copyrighted, pornographic or offensive material. Access to these sites, listed below, will be prohibited.

This policy is not aimed at restricting legitimate academic investigation. Should access be required please contact insrvAssist.

Sites with prohibited access:

http://www.torrentsearch.com/

http://isohunt.com/

http://torrentscan.com/

http://www.torrentspy.com/

http://torrent-finder.com/

http://thepiratebay.org/

http://www.torrentreactor.to/

http://www.torrentportal.com/

http://www.mininova.org/

http://skflan.nl.tp

http://www.onlytorrents.com/

http://www.mybittorrent.com/

http://www.torrentz.com/

http://www.torrentradar.org/

http://www.demonoid.com/

http://www.smaragdtorrent.org/

http://www.fulldls.com/

http://www.torrents.to/

http://www.torrentvalley.com/

http://www.torrentshub.com/

http://fenopy.com/

http://extratorrent.com/

http://btjunkie.org/

http://www.bittorrent.am/

http://www.astatorrents.com/

http://www.meganova.org/

http://www.bitdig.com/

http://torrentattack.org/

Your insrvAssist contact for this message is XXX XXXXX.

Thank you,
Security Team

Previously, students using P2P applications Aimster, LimeWire, KaZaA, Mactella, Morpheus, Phex, iMesh, Qtella, Audiogalaxy, SwapNut, NeoModus, XoLoX , BitTorrent, WinMX, Gnutella, Gnotella, BearShare, Gnucleus and GTK-Gnutella had been told: “IMMEDIATELY ensure that your system is set to prevent the application from acting as a provider of unlicensed materials to other users.”

Its quite obvious that this message did not stop students from continuing to share files and the banning of the above sites is unlikely to stop them either. New sites appear all the time and although the blocklist takes out some major torrent sources, there are many hundreds more – e.g TorrentReactor.to is blocked but not TorrentReactor.net.

The excellent Yotoshi gets no mention and even President Bush’s torrent site is unbanned and fully available. Interested students will find the Linux stuff here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Yesterday, the judge ruled that KPN has to hand over the name and address of the admin. Additionally, KPN is obliged to take down dutchtorrent.org, in case the site returns in the near future. The judge decided that the Dutchtorrent admin can keep his Internet connection, because this is regarded as a ‘basic human need’.

Judge De Heij further said that the admin willingly facilitated copyright infringement, but that he cannot be held personally responsible for the infringing activities of the users of the site.

It is unclear if BREIN is planning to take legal action against the admin of dutchtorrent.org.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.