Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 15, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
As a result, 13 further searches of homes and companies took place last week. The officers seized 14 internet servers, numerous computers and boxes of burned DVDs containing illegal copies of films, software and music. In one case, a van had to be requested to transport the evidence. One suspect was provisionally arrested.
The starting point for the operation was a complaint by the Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen (GVU) against a file-sharing portal. Subsequent intensive investigations by Essen criminal police, combined with background information from the GVU about scene structures and illegal distribution channels, put the officers on the trail of two separate, closed server rings, each with seven interconnected computers. Several terabytes of data containing copyright-protected current cinema films, TV series, music, and entertainment and application software were available for download on them. A restricted group of users obtained access in return for payment of a monthly fee.
The illegal copies also included material from several release groups. According to the GVU, their copyright-infringing files mostly serve as source material for illegal copies that are distributed further both by individuals and professional dealers. They therefore also regularly appear on so-called file-sharing networks, where users redistribute the illegal copies millions of times within a very short period. The pay FTP servers geared towards illegal acquisition of funds, with their illegal offering, are located at the interface with the mass market and are a focus of GVU activity because they are substantially responsible for annual losses to the film industry amounting to several hundred million euros.
Those searched by Essen criminal police also included the two alleged operators of the two server rings from Essen and a network technician from Bochum who set up the server rings
