Suspected file swappers arrested in global raid
Authorities in more than a dozen countries seize computers, make arrests in crackdown on illegal file sharing.
Authorities raided several locations in The Netherlands on Wednesday as part of an operation initiated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and arrested three people on suspicion of computer file sharing, the Finance Ministry said.
U.S. law enforcement officials said the action, which they dubbed "Operation Site Down," included more than 70 raids in the United States, as well as four arrests.
"By dismantling these networks, the Department (of Justice) is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain--a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of the illegal digital content now available online," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in a statement. "By penetrating this illegal world of high-technology and intellectual property theft, we have shown that law enforcement can and will find--and we will prosecute--those who try to use the Internet to create piracy networks beyond the reach of law enforcement."
More computers were seized Wednesday in Australia, Israel, Germany, South Korea, Norway, France, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Poland, Canada and Hungary, said a spokeswoman for the ministry, which is responsible for preventing economic crime.
The people arrested in The Netherlands are suspected of infringing the copyright of films, software and video games. Some of the titles had yet to be published, she said.
It is the second internationally orchestrated raid on computer file swappers, after the April 2004 arrest of members of the "Fairlight" group in another FBI investigation.
Authorities in the United States made arrests as well, and were expected to announce the results of their raid at 11 a.m. PDT. An FBI official declined to comment.
Illegal swapping of copyright-protected music, films, games and software over the Internet, using programs such as BitTorrent and Kazaa, is responsible for about half of all Internet traffic in many developed nations, according to market research groups.
In many countries, it is not illegal to download certain digital files such as music, but it is illegal to upload them and make them available to other computer users on the Internet.
The suspected group also used other, more direct ways of swapping files, by using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) computer servers. Group members tell each other the Internet Protocol addresses of these computers, to find them on the Internet.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that Internet file-trading networks, which also include Grokster and Morpheus, can be held liable when their computer users copy music, movies and other protected works without permission.
CNET News.com contributed to this report.