Australian piracy sting over 'œ14.3 million' movies

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 05 December 2008 07:48

IT Industry - Strategy

Two unemployed Australians have been charged with allegedly operating a BitTorrent tracker site facilitating the download of terabytes of movies and TV shows, charging up to 400,000 members $10 per month to be VIP members, raking in tens of thousands of dollars and ripping off the global media industry.

Anyone involved in illegal piracy, especially where money is being made at the expense of the original content creators, is increasingly coming under the microscope of law enforcement authorities.

In Australia, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has recently been busy investigating Australian ISP iiNet over the alleged facilitation of piracy, and has now issue a press release heralding its latest success.

Here we learn (Word .doc link) that, on the 3rd of December, Australia’s Federal Police (the AFP), have “arrested and charged two unemployed men in their twenties with multiple copyright and money laundering offences connected to organising a BitTorrent tracker site that is alleged to have facilitated the illegal distribution of millions of movies.”

One of the defends had a bank account with AUD $54,000 frozen by a court magistrate, with AFACT noting that “investigations into other bank accounts continue.”

The AFP, assisted by AFACT investigators, “conducted a search warrant at the Brisbane home of the two defendants, seizing computers and related hardware which contained over 2 terabytes of data.”

AFACT notes that: “The arrests were made after a lengthy investigation by the AFP and AFACT into the site operator’s activities.

“It will be alleged that the BitTorrent tracker site, hosted outside of Australia, facilitated the sharing of copyright movies among its 400,000 international members, including thousands of “VIP Members” who paid up to $10 a month for access to direct downloadable media resulting in the site operators raking in excess of $10,000 dollars per month.

“It will also be alleged that the accused organisers had facilitated the transfer of over 10,000 terabytes of data, the equivalent of 14.3 millions of copies of movies and TV shows.”

AFACT’s comments and those of an Australian movie director are on page 2, please read on.