The single charge relates to the pre-release of the Kanye West album, ‘Graduation’, which which according to the DoJ was uploaded to a private server in August 2007, one week before its official release. According to Scene records, it was in fact uploaded 11 days before.

Montejano had previously admitted that from 2002 to 2007 he was the leader of the warez release group OSC (oL-sKOOL-cLASSiCS), a group dedicated obtaining music and making it available to the Scene in advance of its commercial release.

According to court documents, Montejano maintained OSC’s server and also admitted to uploading music to servers operated by other warez groups.

Following the January 2007 break up of another famous release group known as RNS (Rabid Neurosis), Montejano is said to have utilized the group’s two former suppliers known as ‘adeg’ (Bennie Glover) and ‘StJames’ (James Anthony Dockery). Both were employed at a CD pressing plant that manufactured for Universal Music.

Rabid Neurosis had operated over a longer period – between 1999 and 2007 – and were responsible for dozens of major releases including Eminem’s ‘Encore’ and ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’ by U2.

Following their arrests, Glover and Dockery pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit willful copyright infringement. Both were sentenced on January 15th 2010 to three months in prison and two years of supervised release.

However, in March 2010 two other RNS members, Matthew Chow and alleged group leader Adil Cassim, were found not guilty on charges of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.

Montejano’s sentencing is scheduled for July 25th where, like those before him in both groups, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Source: Leader of Music Piracy Group Faces 5 Year Jail Sentence

Early March, the Sumerian Records label decided to utilize an increasingly popular method of getting some free publicity for a band on their label, i.e tell everyone that their music has leaked to file-sharing networks and all concerned are very angry about it.

“Hey all you jobbers who like to steal our albums – word out on the ocean (pirates don’t use streets) is that the BOO [Born of Osiris] album has leaked.. perhaps the pirate ship will leak too and sink in to the sea. In any case, enjoy pirating the record and hopefully you guys choke on a cannonball. Happy torrenting you cowards!” label founder Ash Avildsen declared.

As it turns out, the entire tirade was a hoax designed to get people to download a copy of the album – but with the band chatting, farting and generally messing around over the top. Apparently the whole thing was quite funny, especially the Charlie Sheen samples. Welcome to music marketing 2011-style. And why not?

However, just a few days later Avildsen’s attitude towards file-sharing networks changed somewhat. In a YouTube video which began with the industry line that music piracy ‘robs’ the United States of 71,000 jobs and $12.5 billion in economic output, Avildsen asked people for just 3 minutes of their time to ‘open their minds’.

This was quickly followed up by the cover of the upcoming Born of Osiris album merging into a view, accompanied by a note that file-sharing is only good for unsigned bands to get publicity and established bands and labels only suffer at their hands. At around the 2 minute mark, Avildsen sank his teeth into torrent sites and their “corporate” advertisers.

“Let’s call a spade a spade – there’s nothing more pathetic than making a living off being a thief,” said Avildsen. His anti-piracy message was widely reported in the music media and you can see the full thing at the bottom of this article, but for something rather more eye-opening, read on.

“I used to run in the same circles as Sumerian Records founder, Ash Asvilden,” Jason Fisher of heavy metal music site The Gauntlet told TorrentFreak this morning.

They’re both in the music business, so perhaps nothing too surprising there? But rewind a few years and things get very interesting indeed. Fisher now admits he was a member of multiple warez groups – Amnesia, the mighty Razor 1911 and ROR (Release on Rampage).

“As I listened to Ash’s statement, it really bothered me when he states ‘there is nothing more pathetic than making a living off of being a thief.’ So as Ash puts it, let’s ‘call a spade a spade,’” Fisher explained.

“What Ash doesn’t tell you is that when he was in high school, we ran in the same circles…the software piracy/hacking circles.”

Surprisingly, Fisher and Asvilden had crossed paths with their shared connections to ROR (Release on Rampage).

Having existed in other forms, 1995 saw ROR transform into a games release group and was taken over by a new leader known as The Krazy Little Punk (TKLP). He and the group became infamous in warez circles for claiming to have pre-released the most-anticipated game of the time – Quake – the follow up to ID Software’s massive hit, Doom2.

However, when the dust settled it was discovered that the release was actually a repackaged beta version of the game. ROR was banned from the scene for their sins and TKLP was forced to start a new group called Reflux (more background here).

So with that history out of the way, how does that relate to Sumerian Records? Well, according to Jason Fisher, the leader of ROR (The Krazy Little Punk) is none other than Sumerian Records founder, Ash Asvilden.

“When I first heard Ash was starting Sumerian Records, I thought he was probably the one guy out there smart enough to change this lagging industry around. I was interested to see what new ideas for running a record label he would have. I thought surely if anyone could do it, it would be Ash, the dude is brilliant,” Fisher explains.

“But it turns out he is going to go down the same road that so many others have gone down and never recovered from. Let’s hope it isn’t too late. He is right, piracy is a huge problem in the music industry, I’d just like a little more disclosure coming from a guy who has cost software companies millions of dollars.

“He ended up getting busted for releasing the alpha source for some major ID software release,” Fisher told us, adding that he too had received “visits” from the FBI.

Whether these brushes with the law led to a Road to Damascus-style recovery for Asvilden remains to be seen. But let’s not forget, this was many years ago and a lot has altered since then. Times change, attitudes change. People get mortgages.

TorrentFreak contacted Sumerian Records for comment but at the time of publication we have received no response.

Source: Record Label Boss Is a Former Notorious Warez Scene Pirate

Following a lengthy investigation by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, during the last 48 hours Swedish police acted on their evidence and moved in on at least one ‘topsite’.

The site, which supposedly carried between 200 and 250 terabytes of media, was known as ‘Devil’. During the raids police seized a dozen servers and other computers and detained one person.

The individual, who is believed to have been handed over to Antipiratbyrån for questioning, is accused of being the operator of ‘Devil’. He is blamed for the distribution of “tens of thousands” of mainly Hollywood movies.

In what appeared to be a security response to news of the bust, other topsites started going down in Sweden and at least one other major European country.

Elements of two other topsites with links to ‘Devil’ known as Secu and Tomte (250 terabytes combined) have also been affected but so as not to compromise our sources, we will refrain from going into further detail as to why at this stage.

Suffice to say that some fairly important movie release groups (particularly Swedish ones) were connected to the sites and their activities will have been disrupted, at least temporarily.

Within the Scene the recriminations have begun, with fingers pointed at individuals and groups who are suspected of having caused the security lapse which led to the busts. Not unexpectedly, the accusations appear to be focused on Scene members who are also connected with P2P sharing groups, a frowned upon activity but one that is nevertheless widespread.

Source: Police Raid ‘Devil’ Warez Piracy Topsite

Officers in 14 countries coordinated to carry out multiple searches in an attempt to inflict serious damage on the so-called Warez Scene, the shadowy network of Internet based servers and individuals who deal in large quantities of pirated music, movies and software.

Yesterday nearly all information had come from either the authorities, police or staff at datacenters, notably Sweden’s PRQ, but since then TorrentFreak sources with varying levels of inside information have been trying to put us in the picture.

So, keeping in mind that reporting on the Scene is a black art, that we’ve had to hold some information back to protect certain individuals and keep our sources happy, and redact here and there to protect others, here are our findings thus far.

“In pretty much all of the cases the police just walked into the datacenters, proceeded with warrants, more or less unplugged the boxes and left with them,” one source told us. “They knew very well exactly what they were looking for and this was a highly coordinated attack.”

While there were reports of individuals having been taken in for questioning yesterday, for an operation of this size those numbers seem unusually low. This is due to the operation targeting only ‘topsites’ – no specific release groups or their members appear to have been the focus of the action. It’s believed that some siteops weren’t so lucky.

We know that the raids were carried out at the behest of the Belgian authorities and two sources have told us that it is suspected that a Scene group in Belgium had been infiltrated a long time ago. Indeed, the authorities over there say that this operation had been two years in the making.

Another source is pointing the finger squarely at a siteop with poor security, but whatever the reasons, these sites are now in disarray.

As of last night, all the following Scene sites were down either because they were successfully targeted in the raids or as a precautionary measure. The first three are said to be very highly ranked and three of the top four were almost certainly busted.

1. BAR – Sweden.

2. LOST – Czech Republic

3. [name redacted] – major site in The Netherlands

4. SC – Sweden / Poland

5. Affiliated site in Eastern Europe believed safe, but down.

6. [porn section of a sitering, redacted] – Sweden

Based on the information we’re being provided with, certain sites probably survived due to the techniques they employed to thwart this kind of an attack. In other cases perhaps the police didn’t quite get it right. We can’t be more specific.

Sources inform TorrentFreak that Sweden’s BAR was one of the four most important 0day sites. Since it went down yesterday, another significant southern European site in that top four has announced it has closed its operations for good.

In respect of the Czech operation, Jan Podhajsky of the Czech Pirate Party told us that a raid was carried out on a dormitory at the Czech Technical University in Prague. This is not the first time police have carried out an operation in this location – Podhajsky told us that raids against hackers have been going on there since the late 90s.

It seems that the impact of this large, Europe-wide operation will be significant, at least for the near future.

“Many groups and especially server operators are once again scared shitless,” a source told us. “We can probably expect more ‘resignations’ in the following days.”

Update: We’ve received information which suggests that a topsite, possibly the main one in the UK, was busted yesterday. There are unconfirmed reports that another is also down, but that could be just as a precaution. Two Scene groups have been reported to us as badly affected by the topsite raids but until we can confirm, we won’t be naming them.

Anyone with further information can contact us in confidence via tips@torrentfreak.com

Source: Inside Yesterday’s European Warez Piracy Raids

According to evidence presented at his May 2008 trial, Barry E. Gitarts, aka ‘Dextro’, operated and financed a server based in Texas which was used by aPC to store thousands of music files, movies, software and games. The New York resident was convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Copyright Infringement.

On Friday, Gitarts, aged 25, was sentenced in Alexandria federal court to 18 months in jail for his role in aPC.

Another ex-member of aPC, Jacob Stahler, aka Lunatik, was on the witness list at the May trial, and there has been speculation that he testified against Gitarts. Stahler himself was also convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement, but was later sentenced to just 2 years probation.

So far there have been a total 15 criminal convictions of aPC members, including that of Mark Shumaker of Florida (aka ‘MarkAlso’), a previous leader of the group who already admitted criminal copyright infringement back in 2003.

Source: Warez Scene Member Sentenced to 18 Months Jail

Gitarts, aged 25, of Brooklyn, N.Y, previously operated under the alias ‘Dextro’ within the warez group aPOCALYPSE pRODUCTION cREW (aPC), thought to be first organized group to coordinate the pre-release uploading of mp3 files to the Internet. aPC were particularly successful in obtaining pre-release music CDs from music industry insiders and magazine workers.

According to evidence presented at the trial, between June 2003 and April 2004, Gitarts financed and ran a Texas-based server that the aPC group used to store thousands of music files, movies, software and video games.

“Music piracy is stealing and, unless you want to end up in a federal prison, don’t do it,” said U.S. Attorney Rosenberg.

For his part in the operation of the group, Gitarts is facing a possible five in years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release, however he is not the first aPC member to appear in court. So far, 15 criminal convictions have been handed down to aPC members including Mark Shumaker of Florida (aka ‘MarkAlso’), a previous leader of aPC who already admitted criminal copyright infringement back in 2003. Gitarts is accused of receiving payments from Shumaker.

District Court Judge Liam O’Grady will decide Gitarts’ fate when he sentences him on 8th August 2008.

Source: Pioneering Music Piracy Group Suffers Another Conviction

So imagine if you will, the amazing contrast between Mr Fish’s predicament and that of Tony Krvaric, chairman of the San Diego Republican Party. At first glance, they seem very different – but look closer.

To better appreciate the gap, here is some background on Tony Krvaric, courtesy of a Raw Story report and the Republican Party website:

Born and raised in Sweden, Tony Krvaric was inspired by President Ronald Reagan to come to America. Though only a youth, he vowed to one day become an American and pursue his American Dream. The first step was to start his own business, and in 1992 when the opportunity presented itself, he moved to San Diego.

After becoming a naturalized citizen in June of 2003, he decided to become politically involved. Having seen, first hand, the devastating effects of socialism in Sweden and the rest of Europe, he was determined to stand up for the traditional, conservative values that helped make America great.

So what does a politician have to do with warez? Well, the strange truth is that Tony Krvaric is none other than a co-founder of notorious warez group, Fairlight. Krvaric -who started his cracking career at the “West Coast Crackers”- was in fact one of the most well-known individuals in the Warez scene at the time. Fairlight remained active after Krvaric left in 1993, and several members of the group were eventually arrested by the FBI in 2004.

During Fairlight’s earlier days and their involvement in the Commodore 64 cracking and demo scene, although cautious, the members couldn’t have imagined the punishments that are given out today. Although Krvaric isn’t shy in letting the world know some of his history and present-day situation on the C-64 Scene Database;

Presently works as a full-service financial consultant for individuals and families who share his values – helping them grow, preserve and distribute their wealth. He lives in San Diego with his wife and four children. Is a member of the Republican Party.

The excellent article goes on to list other alleged infringements by Krvaric over the years, and although he appeared to leave Fairlight in 1992, there are suggestions that he was still in charge of the group as late as 2004. It’s not possible to say if this is true or not, but according to sources, the group appeared to be operational in late 2007.

Apparently, Krvaric has now sent an email out to fellow Republicans, trying to calm the waters:

Apparently there’s a hit piece floating around on me, “exposing” my wild high school, teenage years where I was in a computer club where we swapped Commodore 64 games (similar to how kids swap mp3 music files these days). This was in the 80′s, on a computer that’s long since defunct!

[In] 1990 I graduated high school, grew up and started my own business, and then in 1992 I came to this country, continuing the same business (selling computer and video game chips and accessories as well as some nonperishable foodstuffs, taking over my father’s business for a while after he died in 1994) until I left that field when the profit margins became too thin to make any money , around 1997 or so. That’s when I became a financial consultant, which I remain to this day.

I’m sure glad they didn’t look in to my elementary school years, as there’s some really embarrassing stuff that I did in 4th grade. BTW, I also heard a rumor that another fellow committee member (who shall remain unnamed) once made a tape copy of his friend’s favorite vinyl record.

I don’t know who is spreading this but just wanted to let you know what’s going on out there. Likely it’s someone who wants us to take our eye off the ball in 2008, be it the democrats, labor or someone else. Either way, we’re not going to let them get away with it. Thanks for your leadership.

I wonder which way the newly-convicted copyright infringer David Fish would vote – if he was allowed to? Speaking of voting, Krvaric – running for reelection in 2008 – registered his email address with the Registrar of Voters. No-one can accuse him of trying to hide anything, that’s for sure:

tkrvaric@fairlight.com

Source: Warez Leader Is Chairman Of San Diego Republican Party

The five, using names such as iced, kidzapped, niterangr and tcut, were caught as part of ‘Operation Higher Education’ – a component of ‘Operation Fastlink‘ – and are all charged with conspiracy.

According to a report, Dominic Tymorek, a 53 year-old from Woodstock, Georgia, and 57 year-old Robert Hardick, of Getzville, N.Y., face three counts. Steven Fiatarone, a 55 year-old from Spring Hill, Florida and 43-year-old Michael Uszakow, of Oakdale, Minn., face two counts and William Parrott, of Roanoke Rapids, N.C., faces one count.

If convicted, the men face up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000 on each count.

At the same time, 25 year-old Daniel Jaeger, aka ‘Microeguy’ of Wappinger, New York, waived his right to indictment and pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge Donna F. Martinez in Hartford. Jaeger admitted to being a ‘scene member’ for two years and building and running an FTP server known as ‘DataStream’ (DS), used for the distribution of pirated material.

Jaeger admitted that he knew that those accused along with him had uploaded pirate material to both ‘DataStream’ and another FTP site known as ‘Arakis’ (AKS)

Jaeger also faces five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Source: Warez Scene Members Facing 5 Years in Prison

Last week, District Judge Frank D. Whitney sentenced Justin Paul Emch for his involvement in the ‘warez scene‘ – specifically an offense claimed to have been carried out when he was leader of the release group ‘MaGE‘.

Emch was indicted in yet another action forming Operation Fastlink – a huge undercover investigation carried out by the FBI, the US Department of Justice and Interpol into the ‘warez scene’

It’s claimed that Emch was a leader of the group ‘MaGE’ and worked to supply the group with software. Other members of the group then cracked the software (removed the security/copy protection) and passed the titles back to Emch for testing. The group had a huge collection of copyright material to which Emch had full access.

For his actions, Emch (like a few before him) received 12 months in prison on a felony count of conspiracy to infringe copyright, two years of supervised release and a $5000 fine.

Presumably the authorities will be wanting to keep a tighter grip on Emch than they did with the leader of RISCISO who proved to be quite an annoyance.

Source: Warez Bust: MaGE Leader Sentenced to Prison

During his plea hearing he confessed to being involved in the sourcing and distribution of movies and software. He also admitted organizing and aiding others to ‘cam’ movies still in theaters. The list of movies includes titles such as ‘Cars’, ‘Monster House’, ‘Firewall’, ‘Click’, ‘The BreakUp’ and sundry (forgettable) others. It’s claimed that the movies were then uploaded to servers for other users to download, after they had paid Madhani cash to do so.

For the camming, he’s looking at 3 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and two years of supervised release. Unfortunately, this offense doesn’t carry the longest sentence Madhani faces – we’ll come to that in moment.

From the plea agreement, Madhani appears to be something of a jack-of-all-trades. He admits to being a ‘cammer’ – that is the willful using or directing others in the use of an audio/visual recording device to ‘cam’ or record a movie, currently protected under copyright law.

The most interesting part of the plea is where Madhani further confesses to being a ‘ripper’ by admitting to the circumvention of DVD Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Before making a new ‘master’ from which to take further copies or before uploading to the internet, Madhani removed information from the DVD such as the title, numbers and other markings which identified it as a copyright works – so-called copyright management information.

These actions put Madhani in breach of the DMCA but interestingly, he’s the very first person to be charged for simply removing so-called ‘copyright management information’ from a DVD. Previous cases were all brought for the bypassing of DVD copy-protection mechanisms.

Breaching the DMCA is a serious offense in the US. Just by changing the data held on a DVD, Madhani is facing 5 years in prison plus a $500,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

Madhani also admits to being a ‘racer’, i.e working hard to be the first group or individual to release new movies or software onto the internet for others to download. There doesn’t appear to be any specific punishment for this offense although in the future, the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007(.pdf) will surely have it covered.

Sentencing is set for Monday December 17, 2007 in San Jose, California.

Source: World’s First Conviction for Removing Information from DVD

What Torrenty.org did is simply change the the IP address of their tracker (tracker.torrenty.org) to the open tracker’s IP address. They’re reasons for doing so remain unknown.

Apparently, in all their torrents they were still using the hostname “tracker.torrenty.org” in the HTTP header. That means that all torrents originating from the site could easily be tracked, something a torrent site hosting illegal torrents might not necessarily want happening. The author of the ‘Stories from an Opentracker‘ blog and admin of the open tracker in question writes:

The fun part is, a quick look at the torrenty.org website shows us that they in fact serve warez-torrents and take money for that. Now they provided us with a complete list of IP-addresses of their customers and an easy way to distinguish their customers from all other requests by checking the HTTP-header. If we would be some kind of copyright-prosecutor, which we are totally not, now would be the time to send some letters to customers of torrenty.org.

Whether the site was aiding in the illegal sharing of copyright files is besides the point. What’s really shocking is that a site can be so careless about protecting its users privacy and anonymity.

The open tracker guys e-mailed Torrenty.org, but their e-mail bounced. A day later traffic from Torrenty.org fell sharply. It looks like they’ve stopped using the open tracker. I’m not sure if the fact that Torrenty.org (Google Cache) is unavailable has anything to do with it, but all of this seems exceptionally peculiar.

Source: Torrent Site Carelessly Exposes User Information

First the MPAA’s DVD sniffing dogs, now a trojan that’s targeting P2P content. Although the creators of the trojan are unknown until now, my guess is that the MPAA will be quite delighted.

Graham Cluley of Sophos, the company that discovered the virus, commented:

“The Erazer Trojan is a vigilante worthy of a Charles Bronson movie, taking the law into its own hands. However, it’s perfectly possible for the Trojan to aim poorly and wipe out innocent files too”.

As far as I know BitTorrent is safe, for now.

Source: Anti-Piracy Trojan