AfterDawn: News

German police confiscated five warez servers and arrested one 26 year old man in the German town of Coburg yesterday. The servers contained over 6TB of pirated movies, software and games. Over 1,200 are thought to have been using the servers which reportedly had a fee of €30 to €150 per month. Last September, German police also arrested a 46 year old Lawyer and two brothers, who were offering a paid download service at the address Ftpwelt.com for over a year. The site offered pirated games, movies and software through a high speed connection to customers.

In yesterday's bust, anti-piracy organisation GVU worked closely with police forces from Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Arnsberg and Meschede. In the year that the servers have been running for, over 130TB of pirated products were uploaded. According to GVU, the servers are part of a Internet piracy network in Europe thought to have more than 50 groups that release massive amounts of pirated material through closely knitted warez networks.



GVU believes that as many as 300 Germans are involved in these crimes. Those who were simply using the servers to download the warez may still face legal action. After the Ftpwelt bust, he state prosecutor's office of Mühlhausen in Germany started criminal proceedings against up to 15,000 of its users for "knowingly purchasing illegal content."

Source:
The Register

Written by: James Delahunty @ 2 Dec 2005 12:56