14 DAY TRIAL // Law enforcement officials from Germany, Switzerland and Hungary raided a few locations that they believed to belong to a couple of piracy groups that were known to leak as many as 2,600 motion pictures, some of which even before they were officially released.
CRUCiAL and iNSPiRED are the gangs targeted by the international police operation after the German Federation against Copyright Infringement (GVU) filed a complaint against them in Germany, reports TorrentFreak.
After they obtained some clues on the whereabouts of the collectives’ leaders, authorities raided homes in Hungary, Switzerland and Germany, discovering an 180 TB Swiss server, a 30TB Hungarian server and a number of computers and hard drives from different areas in Germany.
Even though they were sought after since 2009, when the complaint was filed, members of CRUCiAL and iNSPiRED managed to avoid the investigators by renting devices under false names and by supplying their operations through resellers.
CRUCiAL is suspected of having connections in the US and other countries, many of the materials they leaked being physically stolen from different companies. Such is the case of the DVD version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which was stolen from an Austrian pressing plant.
An indication that the pirates were well connected is the fact that the same DVD version of the Harry Potter movie, initially intended for Scandinavia, turned up on Kino.to, the file-sharing website that was recently taken down by authorities.
The gangs stopped their activities more than a year ago, but it’s believed that they handed over some of their contacts to other piracy release groups which, according to TorrentFreak, are still releasing fresh materials as we speak.
While the police operation may be considered a success, it’s going to take far more similar actions to stop the for-profit piracy phenomenon and unfortunately, whenever one of these copyright infringers retires, another one steps up to take his place.