In a coordinated crackdown on Internet movie piracy, police from five European countries arrested a total of 10 people following raids, according to an Associated Press report.
Five of the arrests were made in Belgium, which spearheaded the raids on Tuesday, according to the AP report. Police shut down 48 servers and charged the five suspects in Belgium with computer fraud, hacking, and being members of a criminal organization.
Interestingly, the police told the AP that the suspects, ranging in age from 25 to 30 years old, were not pirating films for their own financial gain, according to the AP.
Swedish police raided seven locations, including PRQ, a Swedish Internet service provider believed to be the Internet service provider for The Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent search engine, and WikiLeaks, a site dedicated to receiving information from whistle-blowers. The Pirate Bay went dark several times on Tuesday.
Authorities in Sweden said the raid on PRQ had nothing to do with The Pirate Bay or WikiLeaks.