Warez servers in Germany confiscated

6 terabytes

By Jan Libbenga • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 2nd December 2005 13:03 GMT

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German police have confiscated five warez servers with 6 terabytes of illegal copies of movies and games in the German town of Coburg on the fringes of northern Bavaria. The servers, with names as Temptation and Paradise Island, were accessible to over 1,200 people for € 30 to 120 per month. Police arrested at least one 26 year old.

It is by far the biggest strike against a warez site in Germany since authorities hit Ftpwelt.com, a site operated by a 46 year-old lawyer and two brothers from Thuringia, who offered bootleg software, games and movies through a high speed download service.

Anti piracy organisation GVU worked closely with police forces from Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Arnsberg and Meschede on yesterday's bust. Police also searched houses in Berlin, Bremen, Deggendorf and even in Switzerland. The servers ran for over a year, during which at least 130 terabytes of illegal movies and games were uploaded.

GVU says that the servers are part of a European network of 50 "release groups", who issue the latest movies and games through closely knitted warez networks. GVU believes that in Germany alone 300 people are involved with these crimes.

Users of the warez servers may face consequences. In the case of FtpWelt, the state prosecutor's office of Mühlhausen in Germany started criminal proceedings against up to 15,000 users who, according to the German society for the pursuit of copyright infringements, knowingly paid for illegal content on the internet.

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