One of the oldest groups at the top of the so-called piracy pyramid has been taken down by the notorious Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. Unusually there have been no arrests and no legal action. Instead the group ‘Svenne/Redcross’ has been forced to apologize and spread FUD about the security of other groups.
Back in June, TorrentFreak reported that major online music release group DV8 had been severely disrupted after a police and music industry investigation led to arrests. Aside from an IFPI press release a few days later confirming our reports, little news has surfaced. Today we can report that there have been further arrests.
A 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.
Swedish police have busted a server belonging to one of the largest topsites in the country. It was part of a ring of servers totaling 65 terabytes of pirated material data. Several well known ‘scene’ groups used the site. The Swedish anti-piracy bureau assisted in the investigation and says that their war on piracy will continue.
Five so-called ‘warez scene’ members have been indicted on charges of conspiring to commit copyright infringement. For the unauthorized sharing of tens of thousands of files, the men face five years in prison and fines of $250,000 on each count.
A 27 year old man has been sentenced to prison on one felony count of conspiracy to infringe copyright in his capacity as leader of the warez release group ‘MaGE’. On top of this he was also fined $5000 and ordered to serve 2 years supervised release.
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