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.