German police have arrested a 46 year old Lawyer and two brothers, whom are accused of offering a paid download service at the address Ftpwelt.com for over a year. The site offered pirated games, movies and software through a high speed connection to paying customers. According to the German society for the pursuit of copyright infringements e.V., police dealt a serious blow to the "warez" community. Police have also managed to make a list of 45,000 subscribed customers who paid for the service, and may face legal consequences for knowingly paying for pirated goods.
According to German newspapers, the main suspect, Bernhard S, was in charge of bookkeeping and finances. The three of them offered fileservers in the Netherlands, Russia and the U.S.A. Customers could pay with credit cards or directly through their banks. For $15, customers could download three movies or for $135 they could download all they wanted in a month. Among the movies were Telesync and CAM copies, which are basically movies recorded with digital cameras in theatres; telesyncs would have either direct audio or audio from a DTS theatre disc. The men made over $1 million, most of which went through an offshore company on the Virgin Islands.
The operation was discovered by a curious hacker after gaining access to the fileservers. A list of customer accounts was found and is now in Police possession, more arrests may follow.
Source:
The Register
The operation was discovered by a curious hacker after gaining access to the fileservers. A list of customer accounts was found and is now in Police possession, more arrests may follow.
Source:
The Register
