Feds shut down BitTorrent hub

Found on CNet News on Wednesday, 25 May 2005
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Homeland security agents from several divisions served search warrants on 10 people around the country suspected of being involved with the Elite Torrents site, and took over the group's main server. The agency said it was the first criminal enforcement action aimed at copyright infringers who use the now-popular BitTorrent file-swapping technology.

"Our goal is to shut down as much of this illegal operation as quickly as possible to stem the serious financial damage to the victims of this high-tech piracy--the people who labor to produce these copyrighted products," Acting Assistant Attorney General John Richter said in a statement. "Today's crackdown sends a clear and unmistakable message to anyone involved in the online theft of copyrighted works that they cannot hide behind new technology."

According to the investigators, the "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" movie was made available though the site before being shown in theaters, and was downloaded more than 10,000 times. The site had 133,000 members and distributed more than 17,000 individual movie, software and music titles, investigators said.

"Today's actions are bad news for Internet movie thieves and good news for preserving the magic of the movies," said Motion Picture Association of America Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman in a statement.

This truly sends out a clear message: the industry totally fails to adapt, and the feds (FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement) do the wrong job. Was the hub run by terrorists? (Oh, I bet the industry thinks so). It is really disturbing to see that the officials now work for the industry. Apart from that: 10,000 copies? With tickets around $10, this is a loss of $100,000 (assumed nobody of the downloaders go to the theatres, which is wrong). Episode III generated $50,013,859 in the first 24 hours; Episode I $922 million worldwide. That "piracy loss" is almost 0.2% (0.0001% respectively)...