Following investigations carried out by ASVA.hu (movie industry group) and PROART.HU (Association of Authors Rights) since early 2010, on Wednesday co-ordinated police raids across the country targeted many torrent sites, an ISP and even a technical university.

Ncore, the largest site targeted in the raids with around 900,000 peers, was the most prominent to be taken offline. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the main site may still be intact as the police only found the site’s proxy.

While quite a few sites went down once news of the raids started to spread, it remains difficult to be 100% certain which were actually visited by the police and which went down as a precaution.

1stTorrent appears to be trouble as they are calling out for a lawyer with IT/copyright expertise but have offered users assurances that their details are safe. Bithorló definitely had their servers seized as did GigaTorrent, Evolution, Blue Dragon, Dreamland and Deja Vu.

Insane and Pirate Bay reportedly received warnings of a raid and shut down voluntarily.

It is clear, however, that the raids were significant. According to the police, more than 50 servers were seized containing more than 500tb of data. Sources have confirmed that in addition to searches on an ISP and university, many seedboxes were seized.

Labeling the operations as “a huge milestone in the fight against Internet piracy”, the Association of Authors Rights (PROART) thanked the police for carrying out the raids and praised them for “establishing protection for the rights of creators”.

Under pressure from the United States, Hungarian authorities have carried out at least two sweeps against torrent sites in recent years, notably in 2007 and 2009.

Interestingly, a report on the PROART website from last month celebrates the news that the U.S. government recently removed Hungary from a blacklist due to its previously poor record in dealing with piracy.

In the meantime, the large Bithumen tracker, which was named in official documents as a target for closure, continues to operate from Germany.

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

In 2008 it was recommended in an International Intellectual Property Alliance report that Hungary should remain on a piracy ‘watch list’ for that year. The reasons were wide and varied, but included were problems related to widespread ‘pay to leech’ torrent sites, and pay for access warez sites. “It is difficult to energize police and customs officials to investigate Internet cases because Hungarian court decisions are not a deterrent,” said the report.

The authorities, undeterred by the lack of a court deterrent, have been involved in various raids and site closures ever since, and this year is no different. In mid April, Hungarian police carried out raids on four BitTorrent trackers including Bitlove, BitMusic and Indep – and shut them down. In the same operation they closed down warez sites and a significant source of spam. The police arrested up to ten individuals, eventually detaining six for further questioning.

The reason that police were able to move so forcefully against these sites is because they were operated on a purely commercial basis. Unlike most regular torrent sites or warez blogs, users paid for access via premium SMS. The operators were pretty unpopular in the ‘regular’ BitTorrent community too, having had conflict with other sites.

Over 40 servers were confiscated in the end, filled with 250TB of data. Here are the police photos from the raid, and remember folks; paying for warez is like paying for oxygen, it’s unnecessary and it gives decent pirates a bad name ;)

Hi-quality Pics here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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

Not only were the servers of torrent sites seized – such as those from Bithumen, BitLove, Moobs and GigaTorrents but also those of other warez sites, sms warez servers and 100% legal game servers. Other sites involved in the raids are Bitgate, Cinemastores, Darkside, Majomparade, Pretorians and Savaria which in true hydra-style have all returned. The private BitTorrent tracker Bithumen is also promising to return using a backup from one-week ago and some are reassuring its users that the server didn’t carry any IP addresses so they cannot be identified, although this is unconfirmed.

It seems that many completely innocent parties have had their servers taken. Although back now, the invite-only social networking site IWIW also went down temporarily during the raids. According to a source, the Hungarian police were extremely short of technical staff who might be able to identify the correct servers to take, so in the style of the Swedish police at last year’s Pirate Bay raid, they simply took them all.

The raids were co-ordinated by ASVA, a Hungarian industry association similar to the BSA and prompted many other torrent admins to take down their sites. Some were showing messages indicating the sites were down for maintenance or had some sort of technical difficulties.

Interestingly, last week, news.com reported on the introduction of a bill in the US – the so-called ‘Pirate Act’ which would allow the US Justice Department to file lawsuits against those it accuses of engaging in copyright infringement and, by way of compensation, send the financial spoils to the organization holding the copyright.

Tucked away at the bottom of the article is a possible indicator as to why this massive action was taken in Hungary. From the article:

The new version of the Pirate Act, in addition to civil enforcement, also:

* Creates an “operational unit” of at least 10 FBI agents to investigate intellectual property offenses. It requires the Justice Department to assign a federal prosecutor to Hong Kong and Budapest, Hungary, “to assist in the coordination of the enforcement of intellectual property laws” and allocates $12 million per year.

Although the Pirate Act isn’t in force yet, it’s not difficult to imagine the pressure which the Hungarian government must’ve been under from the United States. Cleaning up the ‘problem’ before the US arrives to really turn on the screws should relieve some of that pressure. Additionally, a lot of pressure data-wise was removed from the Hungarian internet infrastructure as disappearing sites caused a dramatic reduction in traffic.

As the dust settles it appears that torrent sites were not the main targets of the police but the pay to download warez sites, such as the ones which require payment by premium SMS message. It’s convenient for the authorities to portray torrent sites in the same light as pay warez sites and even though there is rarely a charge to use a torrent site, it’s easy to imply to the general public that they’re all criminals.

Further raids have been promised.

Thanks go to misnyo and _bc for translating

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