A diplomatic cable recently published by Wikileaks reveals how the U.S. Government has spent $125,000 to educate Ukraine’s police officers on Internet piracy. Among other things, experts from the FBI and IFPI taught 30 of Ukraine’s top cyber-crime officers how to bust private torrent sites. Whether the investment will pay off is doubtful though, as some police officers said that they have no Internet connection at their workplace.
Another member of EliteTorrents has been sentenced. An Duc Do, an uploader on the site and former student of Drexel University, yesterday escaped jail but was sentenced to 3 years probation, a $15,000 fine and 400 hours of community service instead. As a result he loses his job at Lockheed Martin.
On June 25th 2005, the homepage of the EliteTorrents.org tracker displayed an ominous message. Thousands of members trying to log in to get a sneak peak at a leaked copy of Star Wars: Episode 3 were surprised and confused in equal numbers. Had the FBI really raided one of the largest BitTorrent communities and put up a badly made Word document, or were hackers to blame?
After 2005 FBI raid, sk0t, the admin of EliteTorrents, was arrested and subsequently jailed. After serving his time he was fitted with an ankle monitor which restricted his movement when released. This Christmas, sk0t got a great gift – he was allowed to remove his digital shackle. He talks to TorrentFreak.
Scott McCausland, one of the admins of the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents was sentenced to five months in prison. He was convicted of “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement” and “criminal copyright infringement”.
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