Posted on 08/25/2004 4:17:24 PM PDT by yonif
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. agents have raided the homes of five people who allegedly traded hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and other copyrighted material over the Internet, Attorney General John Ashcroft says.
Agents raided residences in Texas, New York and Wisconsin early on Wednesday and seized computers that they suspect were involved in a nationwide file-trading network.
The raids marked a sharp escalation of the years-long legal battle surrounding unauthorised copying over peer-to-peer, or P2P, networks.
Until now, the Justice Department has only pursued elite groups of hackers who steal and distribute movies, music and software before their official release dates.
Authorities made no arrests. But Ashcroft warned that those who copy music, movies and software over P2P networks without permission could face jail time.
"We do not believe it is appropriate for the Department of Justice to stand by while such theft is taking place," Ashcroft said at a press conference.
"P2P does not stand for 'permission to pilfer,'" Ashcroft said.
Targeted in the raids were people operating "hubs" in a file-sharing network based on Direct Connect software.
An official at Direct Connect parent NeoModus was not immediately available for comment.
In order to join the network, members had to promise to provide between one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, Ashcroft said.
"They are clearly directing and operating an enterprise which countenances illegal activity and makes as a condition of membership the willingness to make available material to be stolen," he said.
Each of the five hubs contained 40 petabytes of data, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs, Ashcroft said.
Among the files offered on the network were the movies "Kill Bill," "Lord of the Rings -- The Two Towers," and "The Last Samurai," according to an affidavit filed in connection with one of the search warrants.
Agents also searched an Internet service provider, but officials declined to specify which one and said it was not a target of the investigation.
Recording studios have waged an aggressive legal campaign against the networks and their users, but have also appealed to the Justice Department for help.
An appeals court in California affirmed last week that such networks can't be held responsible for illegal copying.
Record labels have brought more than 3,000 copyright lawsuits against individuals since last year, typically winning settlements of around $5,000 (2,780 pounds).
The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday announced it had sued another 744 individuals and refiled suits against 152 others who had ignored or declined offers to settle.
Hmmmmm, I thought the legality of this was still being argued.
Chilling. Wrong battle, wrong time.
10.5 million songs! I didn't even know that many songs were recorded.
FBI statistics...
What a freaking waste of time.
I thought we had more important things for the feds to raid.
Irony: Half of those songs called for Ashcroft's head.
APf
I am glad to see my tax dollars being wasted in support of music publishers. Perhaps the FBI is starting to run out of terrorist and serial killers to chase. This is proof that the department is over bloated and should be scaled back.
Ok. I was so annoyed at the lack of reality I screwed up the numbers...
40 petabytes each is 40,000 terabytes, which is 40,000,000 gigabytes, or 200,000 drives at 200 gigs each.
Now we're way out of the realm of even a for-profit enterprise.
At $300 per drive that's $60 Million dollars.
But then again they probably qualify for a volume discount.
I think they mean the hub was linked to that much data, like an index to thousands of computer directories. Obviously they don't mean one location had that much storage.
I might buy that, with the addition of them being off by a factor of 1000. 40 terabytes distributed among the clients is possible. 40 petabytes is not.
I need to hire you to do my taxes.
found this on the front page of a reputable online store.
Caviar SE 200GB HD
# 7200RPM, ATA-EIDE
$89.99*
I have a pretty good internet connection. Right now I measure it at about a megabyte per second.
I think I will download their file store.
I'll see you in about 1268 years.
It's probably broke
Trading copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder is pretty obviously a crime, at least under US copyright law, though I consider it pretty harmless in the scheme things - and that the punishments are out whack here - I think the punishment for trading an copyrighted material online should be equal or less than what you would get for shoplifting the CD/DVD in a store.
I would think the Feds have more dangerous criminals to look out for though; I doubt AL Queda is is busy using Kazaa or Bittorrent.
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