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US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos
- Cantbekhan 6y agoHere are the direct links to the 3 indictments: https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-George-Bridi-SPARKS-indictment-unsealed-200108.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-George-Br... https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-Umar-Ahmad-SPARKS-superceding-indictment-unsealed-200825.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-Umar-Ahma... https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-Jonatan-Correa-SPARKS-superceding-indictment-unsealed-200825.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-Jonatan-C...
- kristofferR 6y agoTorrentFreak messed up, here's the indictment for Umar Ahmad: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.542945/gov.uscourts.nysd.542945.9.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.542945...
- Nightshaxx 6y agoThank you torrent freak for putting the legal documents directly linked at the bottom. I'm not sure why some news outlets don't do this.
- nayaketo 6y agoIronic that a site called 'Torrentfreak' is more reliable than most news sources.
- Semaphor 6y agoThis comment pops up now and again, but they are the single biggest news site for piracy and filesharing related things. I’ve been reading them since they started (I even have a T-Shirt) and they turned from a small-ish blog to a professional news site.
- londons_explore 6y agoI would really like all news sources to link their sources at the bottom of the article. For anonymous sources, make a document detailing the source and publish a hash at least, and promise to reveal the source in 1/5/10/50/100 years.
- jdhbbbhb 6y agoIt's not provided on purpose. Go search for Jeffery epstein flight logs. You will see tons of news articles talking about them and a few of the people flown. It's difficult to find the actual log or a list of all people.
- jessaustin 6y agoThey don't publish the full lists because they don't know which reptiles on those lists their bosses don't want to piss off.
- bserge 6y agoWow, that's a whole lot of work put into this, and I don't understand why... What do these scene members have to gain? If anything, they're doing the media companies a service, free viral campaigns. Without pirated content, a lot of people would never hear or care about their movies, TV shows, music. If they can't afford it, they won't buy it anyway. Microsoft and Adobe seem to have realized this, and now they're making things accessible to most people, so many ex-pirates used to their products are buying them. Not so for the media companies. Why does Netflix USA/UK/etc have different content? Why do games have region locks and ridiculous DRM? All for the risk of being accused of fraud, causing "massive losses", and prison time. I guess sticking it to the MAFIAA feels nice, but is it worth the risk?
- threesquared 6y agoA good deal of it is status, like being involved in the most prolific group etc. But also the way "The Scene" works is almost gamified. Groups battle each other to obtain pre-release material and then race each other to disseminate to the sites they affiliate with. If you are first you win the PRE and your releases is the only one accepted by the whole scene. It becomes addictive. Secondly money is involved, less scrupulous sites run pay to leech servers where people pay for slots and some groups are donated hardware etc for access. Also there are connections to various forms of cyber crime from contacts you can make from being involved.
- kristofferR 6y agoThere's likely also the sharing is caring aspect, millions of people really appreciate their efforts - and they're aware of that. On the flip side some people really doesn't appreciate it, which makes it even more fun I guess (unless you get caught).
- hogFeast 6y agoYep, the loss to these companies is not the price of the movie. It is not the tens of millions of dollars quoted. If you pirate a movie, the person buying it is rarely someone who would pay full price. I would be surprised if the actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation. Also, there really isn't a massive amount of sophistication when it comes to distribution. Most of the media business still feels stuck in the 90s, definitely changing but still "business as usual" (for example, the English Premier League...probably the most valuable sports league in the world, same distribution since inception in the early 90s) thinking whilst the sand is shifting beneath their feet (if you look at the late teen-early twenties demo, much of the media business is already irrelevant). But yeah: spend your time chasing down people for a few hundred thousand bucks, that will work.
- branon 6y agoSAPRKS is a huge loss. All of the groups that were named were quite prolific and released exceptionally high-quality files, but SPARKS especially. Just goes to show how utterly broken and cross-contaminated the copyright and justice systems are. These groups should be lauded as heroes, not hunted down like criminals.
- devwastaken 6y agoAre these scandinavian countries cooperating with the U.S. media mafia on this? How did they get names and locations?
- Semaphor 6y agoMost certainly. As would probably every other country in Europe. You should know that media piracy is on the same level as terrorism.
- ifmpx 6y agoJudging from the terms some pirates are sentenced to, I'd say the legal system considers piracy to be much worse.
- lima 6y agoIt probably violates the laws of these countries as well, and international cooperation on such cases is common.
- jjcon 6y agoThe us and eu are basically one entity when it comes to international crime (with some exceptions)
- mensetmanusman 6y agoWould be interesting if our justice system spent as much effort on white collar crime, insider trading, financial misengineering, price fixing, etc.
- mc32 6y agoIsn’t this an example of “white collar” crime albeit perhaps a low level one?
- Broken_Hippo 6y agoKind of - technically - but realistically no. The government is treating it more akin to theft than copyright infringement. If an artist steals another's work and makes some money off of it, the federal government isn't going to step in and help. It'd be up to the artist (or copyright holder) to sue for damages. Assuming the case is clear, the artist would get money from the offender. The offender rarely goes to jail. If the offender instead stole the art from the artist's home, then they might get criminal charges.
- unishark 6y agoI don't get what you mean when you say "technically no", since you pretty much made the case for the point. The govt is accusing them of fraud (a kind of theft) in how they acquired the movies initially. This is indeed a white collar crime.
- libertine 6y agoThis isn't done for financial gain (or at least it didn't use to be done for financial gain). It's basically a game. In my youth I was drawn to it and tried to be a racer to gain access to top sites. The rush was basically to be one of the first to have your hands on something, even if it was just to prove that you could. Like just get it to show off that you had it before any tracker had it - kids stuff. For these guys it used to be about releasing before any other group (that wouldn't be nuked, for example, if a crack didn't work). Nowadays if they are using bribery for access, or are being paid to dump it on sites, then yeah, I guess it would fit in financial gain, therefore white colar crime.
- mrandish 6y agoI'm concerned our justice systems is expending enormous resources investigating and prosecuting these cases as felony crimes on behalf of the MPAA and RIAA lobbies (which have a revolving door of former fed prosecutors as employees/lobbyists). The cases are more properly pursued in civil court where the pirates should be sued for the damages they cause (not agreeing with MPAA's damage assessment, that's for the judge/jury). Mis-using international racketeering laws and cooperation agreements between agencies to pursue online software pirates is not what these systems were created for. Another example is Kim Dotcom. He may indeed be liable for significant damages (I don't know) but the MPAA designed their attack knowing that the prosecution itself would inflict massive punishment (ending the company, incarcerating or confining the execs) before it ever got to court. It's a clear abuse of the global justice system and a waste of its resources. And all of that is before we even get to the moral and ethical debate about the true damages from purely electronic, not-for-profit media piracy clubs. Studies have shown that frequent pirated media downloaders are among the relevant industry's best, highest-spending customers. And it's also been shown that the majority of users will pay reasonable prices for convenient media access via subscription or purchase (Netflix, Spotify, ITunes, etc). Despite "crying poor", the music industry is now back to making more than it ever did in the era of $18 CDs, with more (and happier) customers.
- SllX 6y agoI’m not disagreeing in principle, but there are criminal statutes on the books put there by Congress for copyright infringement, and it is the Federal government’s job to enforce these laws.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoI don't think New Zealand has a "Congress"? You're not trying to say USA has the right to make laws in other countries are you? I mean I know USA does this, but it seems indefensible?
- jjcon 6y agoThe US (like every other country) negotiates agreements with other countries to handle crimes committed against persons or entities in their jurisdiction. This is nothing new or unique.
- throwaway77384 6y ago"Bridi, 50, was arrested on Sunday in Cyprus on an INTERPOL Red Notice. Correa, 36, was arrested yesterday in Olathe, Kansas, where he will appear in federal court. Ahmad, 39, was not arrested and is still at large." An INTERPOL Red Notice! You'd think these are terrorists, human traffickers or drug lords. Nope, they share films before the films are supposed to come out. I understand that one should not try to profit from piracy. I also understand that the people who are orchestrating the operations that lead to films being leaked ahead of time should indeed be stopped, but isn't this all a bit overly dramatic, when there are real problems to be dealt with in the world?
- 0x262d 6y agothat's all well and good, but some very rich people could be even richer, and that's what is really important to law enforcement. another substantiating example is here: https://www.gq.com/story/wage-theft https://www.gq.com/story/wage-theft
- 0x262d 6y agoHow this works seems, at first approximation, pretty simple to me. The monetary loss (possibly quite large here) is the financial incentive to punish a crime. And the amount of money the affected person or corporation still has, after that, is the power they have to pursue punishment. Therefore, by the market incentives our society knows, loves, and endlessly promotes, extremely rich profiteers tend to get first and best justice, regardless of the social value of pursuing it. Here, I think it's negative social value to punish these people, although reasonable people can probably disagree on that. An interesting corollary is that if a crime causes money to be transferred from someone with less power to someone with more power (power being generally approximated by wealth), then there will be an overall negative incentive to pursue justice, at least as far as those two parties are concerned. This certainly doesn't explain all criminal justice, there is some basic functioning of society to be upheld etc. But it arguably explains a lot of which injustices do and don't get punished that you can see daily just by reading the news.
- antihero 6y agoIt makes perfect sense when you realise that law enforcement's historical and primary goal, over and above protection of us, is the protection of capital.
- holidayacct 6y agoThe justice system is complete crap, the US government doesn't have the ability to deal with piracy because it is international. This doesn't work the way people think it does, there is literally no justice involved. The CIA is used to using movies and television as a pathway for manipulating the American population. There is a very long history of this happening and the people they use (yes use) to do this aren't making the revenues they are used to making. As a result they are resorting to ugly tactics like taking over companies to play psychological games with people in online piracy and gaslighting people who run piracy servers. Several people who run piracy sites have been gaslit to the point of suggestibility and that usually ends in the person committing suicide or dying in strange ways. Deimos (the founder of demonoid) and Aaron Swartz were targets of this kind of treatment and almost none of the people who know them are aware of this because it is all psychological. The way this is handled in reality is brutal psychological operations (triggering schizophrenia, learned dependency, triggering PTSD, gaslighting, etc), never believe anything you hear about the American government prosecuting crimes like online piracy, it is not handled in the courts. When you see someone who was perfectly normal and has their life fall apart out of nowhere until they are worn down physically or psychologically it is almost always the US government in one form or another. Sometimes it is intentional and sometimes it is unintentional (i.e. some part of the government gets tricked into running a psychological operation on someone), this isn't conspiracy it is being done in broad daylight everyday all over the country because it only has meaning to the person being targeted.
- jdhbbbhb 6y agoAre you suggesting the CIA uses movies as a revenue source to fund other operations?
- holidayacct 6y agoI'm not suggesting anything, that's exactly how it works.
- curryst 6y agoI wouldn't say it's out of the realm of possibility. Iran-Contra seems like a much bigger issue in terms of the CIA and finding. I haven't seen any evidence, though, and OP doesn't seem to be forthcoming with any.
- bleepblorp 6y ago19 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the then-Attorney General appeared before the media to proudly announce the conclusion of the largest operation in DoJ history. It was the destruction of a warez group. In the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks, the most important thing on the DoJ agenda was not to follow up on any of the numerous intelligence leads warning that Islamist terrorists were planning to ram multiple airliners into multiple buildings, but rather to shut down an organization whose chosen line of activity has never been demonstrated to harm anyone. Putting the factually contraindicated feeling of the software publishing cartels that they're somehow losing money above the actual lives of actual people is a very f'ed up choice of priorities.
- mschuster91 6y ago> 19 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the then-Attorney General appeared before the media to proudly announce the conclusion of the largest operation in DoJ history. >It was the destruction of a warez group. In Germany, we have something similar, although with two orders of magnitude less deaths. The conservative Berlin Interior Senator Frank Henkel and his top officers decided in 2016, right in front of the election, to move spies from observing Islamist terrorists to observing a couple of left-anarchist "occupied houses". The result? One of the Islamists was Anis Amri, who half a year later infamously murdered twelve people at Breitscheidplatz: https://taz.de/Anis-Amri-und-die-Rigaer-Strasse/!5510622/ https://taz.de/Anis-Amri-und-die-Rigaer-Strasse/!5510622/ The priority setting of interior politicians seems to be ... messed up across the globe.
- chaorace 6y agoThis feels like one of those "mind blowing" factoids. I mean, nobody had 9/11 on their calendars (aside from literally, I guess). I suppose you could argue that the U.S. should have gotten obssessively involved with the middle east before 9/11 ever happened, but I personally think that's a nutcase position.
- chaorace 6y agoAnd let's address this counterargument: "Regardless of 9/11, why wasn't the DOJ doing literally anything else?" I mean, the DOJ is a department. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure it's not just a single boardroom stocked with sneering capitalists plotting to get back at software pirates. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty big department, I don't doubt that this evil boardroom probably actually exists in some capacity. I just also happen to think that is... kind of normal? Would you prefer if the DOJ didn't enforce laws? It seems like putting the cart before the horse when one criticizes the executive for executing instead of criticizing the law itself.
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- jMyles 6y agoIs there substantial "no IP whatsoever" constituency somewhere? Is there a movement or party advocating this? Are there jurisdictions with essentially this framework in place? I'm curious to see what it looks like. I have trouble imagining the internet tolerating any other configuration 100 years from now.
- jessaustin 6y agoAnother article at TF: https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-mep-elected-vice-president-of-eu-parliament-190704/ https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-mep-elected-vice-presi...
- tandr 6y agoIf we ever colonize Mars, it might become one for a little stretch of time. Just like America was at the beginning, China not long ago, etc.
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoKim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy[0] goes into minute detail of the politics of colonising Mars. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
- uabstraction 6y agoThere was a wave of Pirate Parties about a decade ago, but they never gained even as much traction as the Greens. Onerous enforcement of intellectual property is just one of the many issues we face with the Internet today, next to the colossal monopolization of social media platforms, internet service providers, and browser vendors. Not to mention severe invasions of privacy driven primarily by global imperialism (alphabet soup intelligence agencies) and surveillance capitalism (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Reddit et. all). The Internet is undergoing the same process of enclosure and capital accumulation as the rest of the world we live in. This is the fate it is consigned to, as long as people are unwilling to question the economic assumptions we take for granted. All of these decisions which negatively impact the Internet are made for one of two reasons: Accumulating capital, or protecting capital that has already been accumulated. Therefore, a broad anti-capitalist front is the only way something in opposition to this will have any teeth. There is simply no way for a political movement focused on a specific niche issue like like net neutrality or free exchange of information to stand on its own, or make the state face any consequences for malfeasance. For the same reason we don't have a significant political party of librarians, even though it would really kick ass if we did.
- btilly 6y agoThere is only one reason that I've ever had to use bittorrent. It turns out that some musicals are not available through streaming because the copyright assignment wasn't set up correctly and nobody has been able to come to an agreement on how to split the revenue. Movies from My Fair Lady to Bullets Over Broadway are affected. You can go onto Netflix, Amazon, and so on, and none can let you watch. They can only ship you a DVD. After literally failing to find anyone who could take my money, I went to bittorrent. (And had to VPN to pretend not to be in the USA.)
- forgotmypw17 6y ago>Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what >they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. >I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all ... >after all, we're all alike. -The Mentor
- fuzxi 6y agoAbsolutely ridiculous to spend so much time and effort prosecuting crimes that have, at most, a marginal effect on the bottom lines of AAA film studios. [1] [1]: https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-study/ https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-s... (check the linked pdf for the full study)
- hesdeadjim 6y agoVast majority of comments here are hilarious. Piracy is a crime, deal with it. You don't have a right to content made for a profit without paying for it. If you don't agree with the price or the distribution method, don't consume the content, problem solved. The argument that resources should be spent on "real crime" is equally silly. These organizations can and do put immense resources into all other forms of crime. They shouldn't choose to ignore one class of it because it's personally convenient to label it "harmless". I'd suggest if you find yourself defending pirates that you actually go and create something worth pirating and see how you feel.
- ifmpx 6y ago> Piracy is a crime, deal with it. It shouldn't be. Deal with it.
- biotinker 6y agoA huge number of the people on this site, myself included, already voluntarily donate huge amounts of time and money to free and open source software and hardware- they are already choosing to give away for free what others might otherwise pirate. No one is disputing that piracy is a crime. They are pointing out the difference between the fact of what is, and their opinion of what ought be.
- ChickeNES 6y ago> No one is disputing that piracy is a crime. Then why can I scroll up the page and find multiple instances of people saying it isn't?
- anon9001 6y ago> Piracy is a crime, deal with it. If you don't agree with the price or the distribution method, don't consume the content, problem solved. Sure, or I can just pirate content. That's another way to deal with it. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to have a problem because you're trying to keep your bytes a secret. Pretty much everyone has accepted that you can't stop piracy, at least once the content is available on p2p. This article is about topsites that were probably involved in hacking into content sources directly. That's a much bigger deal than everyday civil copyright infringement. Some of us actually do want a future where you can download a car.
- facet1ous 6y agoTo be honest, I don't feel bad for these people at all. Film studios, the MPAA, RIAA, etc. are pretty scummy, but the overwhelming majority of pirates are there to get the latest Disney / Marvel movie without having to pay. And these groups are serving that interest. I'm sure there will be plenty of comments here calling out ethical gray areas or valid cases for torrenting a movie - those no longer for sale, etc. But you're kidding yourself if you think this is the motivation behind most illegal downloads. At the end of the day, these studios are spending enormous sums of money to produce content and they deserve the copyright and distribution rights that are being egregiously violated. Unless you have a good reason, you should be paying it own/watch it and the government is in the right for enforcing it.
- pessimizer 6y agoLeaking pre-release movies is just a dangerous thing to do, and even a hypothetical producer/distributor's organization with the weakest stance on piracy one could imagine would go after them. Obtaining copies of unreleased media involves a direct attack to compromise people connected to a company. Even from my anti-copyright position, it's exactly the same as infiltrating a company to find out trade secrets or things that may influence future stock movements. And there's no doubt it is damaging. So many movies are overbudgeted garbage, and are going to recoup as much as they are going to recoup during their first weekend, before the word gets out that the movie is terrible. All the marketing (which as a rule of thumb costs as much as the film) is focused on that weekend, including getting friendly reviews published, or deciding on a strategy of keeping the film from reviewers altogether. A credible rumor getting around a week before the release that the movie is crap means $10s of millions in losses, and layoffs. I don't believe in copyright, but this is getting employees of a company (or its contractors, or those who have signed agreements with it in order to get screeners) to steal from the company. This is good when it is internal whistleblowing on crime or corruption, even better when it is government and the only reason for secrecy is to avoid embarrassment or accountability. There's very little detectable public good in exposing an X-Men movie a week before it hits the theaters.
- bondarchuk 6y agoAs per your 2nd paragraph, the public good is that a lot of people might be saved from spending money to see a crap movie.
- blooalien 6y agoImagine if governments put even a fraction of this kinda effort and resources into solving real problems?
- jimnotgym 6y agoIs this anything other than neo-colonialism? How can the power of the US copyright lobby extend quite so completely into Europe. Imagine Norway wanted a bunch of US kids arrested due to their, or their lobbyists, pet peeve. I used to be passive about it now I am anti-copyright, that has been the effect of the overreach by the copyright lobby, they have hardened me against them.