These private groups train law enforcement officers around the world and are used to gather evidence, as if they were law enforcement branches.

A good example of the above is cable from October 2009, written by Kathleen Stephens, U.S. ambassador in South Korea. In the cable Stephens writes about a meeting between South Korean law enforcement officials, lobby groups IFPI and the MPAA, and a representative from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit.

The meeting was organized to discuss enforcement actions against topsites, Scene servers that are at top of the so-called piracy pyramid. These servers are the source for much of the pirated content that eventually ends up at file-sharing websites.

After a failed attempt to bust several Korean topsites in 2008, the parties have come together to make new arrangements. What is immediately clear from reading the cables is that the law enforcement groups and the entertainment industry representatives find it extremely hard to take down these scene servers.

“Locating and penetrating topsites are extremely challenging because people can only gain access by proving that they can make a valuable contribution and gaining trust over an extended period of time. Access to topsite servers is encrypted and shielded and the operators respond to indications of investigation by legal authorities by destroying critical evidence and rapidly moving the servers,” the cable, signed by the ambassador, reads.

The meeting was further used to discuss the problems these topsites pose to the entertainment industry, and what options there are to go after them. One of the options is to infiltrate these servers and bust them from the inside out. This is a strategy that ICE seems to be familiar with, and they are happy to teach their skills to the Koreans.

“In response to questions about the role of his agency, ICE Attache explained that DHS ICE is currently investigating topsite-related issues in the U.S., and that there are numerous types of investigative methods that can be
incorporated to infiltrate topsites,” the cable reads.

“ICE Attache offered to provide training and a tour of the DHS ICE IPR Center in Washington, DC. The tour would allow Korean investigative entities to observe current methods used by law enforcement to combat topsites.”

One of the main problems with infiltration is that the topsite operators have to trust the ‘poser.’ To accomplish this, the ICE representative suggested that copyright holders could give them access to pre-release music that they can use to gain credibility as a source.

“[The ICE representative] also suggested encouraging a rightsholder to purposefully pre-release a song to law enforcement, in order to gain access to a topsite. Law enforcement could use the pre-released song to gain trust and consequent access from the topsite administrator. This idea was met with interest and may be pursued further,” the ambassador writes in the cable.

One of the plans that was brought up in the meeting was to let IFPI do the dirty infiltration work, after which they share their findings with law enforcement.

“As the meeting progressed, a basic investigative plan emerged in which IFPI performs the more arduous task of infiltrating topsites and gathering the IP addresses necessary to locate them. IFPI will then present an evidence
packet, which will include the IP address and the amount of files stored, to the Prosecutors’ Office. The Prosecutors’ Office will track down the physical location of the topsite, exercising maximum operational discretion.”

To avoid making the same mistake as in 2008, at no point during the investigations the ISPs can be notified, as they may be involved in the topsite themselves.

“The Prosecutors’ Office appears to understand that notifying an Internet Service Provider that one of its clients is under investigation, which it intended to do in the failed investigations of 2008, presents an enormous risk of
revealing the investigation to the topsite operator. It is even possible, as Mr. Ng noted, that someone working for the Internet Service Provider itself is operating the topsite.”

The cable further goes on to describe the need for action, and options that can be taken, but no concrete plans are worked out.

Although many have expected that infiltration of topsites was a common investigative tactic, this is the first time that we have it in writing.

In recent years dozens of topsites have been raided, including BAR, LOST, DLR and SC during a massive police action in Europe last year. Whether the above meeting resulted in any action from the South Koreans is unknown, but for as far as we are aware no Korea based topsites have been raided recently.

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

From our analysis we discovered that the impact of the operation was significant as it hit some of the most important sites in the European piracy Scene.

One would never expect a case as complex as this to be over in such a short time so now, more than a month on, it’s no surprise that the investigation is continuing. However, while it hardly comes as a shock to hear that server administrators and datacenter operatives have been questioned in connection with the case, an eyebrow or two will certainly be raised at the questioning of someone being described as a “top politician”.

After tracing an IP address to a physical location, on September 7th (the day of the raids) police went to a property in Eskilstuna in Sweden. At that address lived a still unnamed 32 year-old politician. After seizing seven computers, four hard drives, various USB drives and memory cards, the man was taken for interrogation.

“I told them that I am not a part of these file-sharing networks and they believed me,” the man told news portal Ekuriren.

Frederick Ingblad from the Prosecution Office in Stockholm later confirmed that after around a week the man, who is said to be a leading representative of his party, was no longer a suspect. The politician confirmed this but added that he did not know if the claims against him could return at a later date.

So how did this politician come under suspicion?

“I will not go into details of the investigation,” said Inglblad. “But to be a suspect, intent is required. The fact that people know what they’re doing,” he added.

But despite the prosecutor making it clear that the man is no longer a suspect, it does seem that the authorities are continuing with the investigation in connection with the politician’s equipment.

Following a request from the Stockholm Prosecution Office, yesterday a district court ruled that two of the politician’s computers could be sent over to the hub of the investigation in Belgium for further analysis.

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

The men were snared as part of ‘Operation Higher Education’ – a component of ‘Operation Fastlink‘ – and charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Dominic Tymorek, a 53 year-old from Woodstock, Georgia, and 57 year-old Robert Hardick, of Getzville, N.Y., faced three counts. Steven Fiatarone, a 55 year-old from Spring Hill, Florida and 43-year-old Michael Uszakow, of Oakdale, Minn., faced two counts and William Parrott, of Roanoke Rapids, N.C., faced one count.

Previously, 57 year-old Robert Hardick, known as ‘tcut’, was found guilty of helping to run the ‘TEN’ and ‘TBR’ servers and was facing a five year prison sentence and huge fine. However, Hardick agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy, and as a result picked up three years probation instead, which included 6 months of home confinement.

Steven Fiatarone of Spring Hill, Florida, also faced a harsh sentence of 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine. However, he pleaded guilty on July 8th this year to one count of conspiracy, making a similar deal to Hardwick in return for a more lenient sentence.

On Thursday, Fiatarone appeared in the U.S. District Court for Connecticut, for his offenses linked to his operation of the warez server known as NRH (Nite Ranger Hideout), which was actually located in a school in Emporia, Virginia. Fiatarone, also known as ‘kidzap’, setup the server in 2001 and was alleged to have uploaded over 23,000 files and downloaded more than 40,000 in his role as administrator of NRH during 2002 and 2003.

Senior United States District Judge Ellen Bree Burns sentenced Fiataroine to three years of probation for conspiring to commit criminal copyright infringement, with the addition of a $2,000 fine.

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

An .NFO file (information file) is a small text file included with warez releases on the internet. They can be viewed with applications such as Windows Wordpad or a dedicated viewer such as DAMN NFO Viewer. These files usually include a lot of information about the particular release and on occasion, directions on how to remove copy protections, sometimes with included registration serial numbers. These text files are the semi-public face of available Scene release information, presented in a friendly format.

Although .NFO files are widely available to the public via sites such as NfoDB, VCDQuality and Nforce (who all have sizeable databases) it’s almost unheard of that an almost complete database of Scene release information should become available for enthusiasts to download, which is what has happened, says the Czech iNFO.w4Club.

According to the .NFO included with the release, the MySQL database covers the period 01/01/1980 to 07/07/2007 and comprises information on some 2.6million Scene releases.

Included with the release is a script for anyone wishing to maintain and update the database by adding new entries. Nearly 1.4 million releases have files and size information included but there are claims that some of the release times may be inaccurate.

It’s being suggested that the database was ‘stolen’ round 12 months ago but there is conflict over the method by which this happened. The person who copied the database suggests that he managed it because the administrator used a really weak password but the admin is insisting that the guy is a hacker and employed some sort of exploit to access it.

Although the copy of the database was taken 12 months ago, it seems the last 12 months have been added using the included script.

For those enthusiasts willing to undertake a 50mb+ transfer, the database can be downloaded here.

Thanks to MaE for the translation

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