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Posts Tagged ‘Antipiratbyran’

March 9th, 2011 Anti-Piracy, Legal, Net Stuff, Peer to Peer Comments Off

Anti-Piracy Group Say Police Have Arrested “Elite Pirate”

Anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån say police have arrested “an elite pirate” in Sweden. The man in his thirties is claimed to be an administrator of multiple ‘Scene’ servers carrying as many as 7,000 movies to which around 100 people had access. The man is said to have denied the charges but the prosecutor says his crimes could earn him a jail sentence.

Notorious anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, who have been a thorn in the side of everyone involved in file-sharing from The Pirate Bay to the recently closed Swebits, are claiming another significant victory.

Yesterday, APB’s Henrik Pontén announced that following an investigation by his organization, last Friday police swooped on a man they believe to be a significant player in the so-called warez Scene.

“He is one of the elite pirates,” Pontén said. “It is good that the police have a broad focus in their work and can act against the advanced and illegal sources of BitTorrent users.”

The man, who is said to be around 30 years old, was arrested in the small city of Gävle by local police and specialists from Sweden’s anti-piracy unit.

“It was a major crackdown,” said Paul Pintér, Coordinator at the Intellectual Property Crime Department at Stockholm police.

Initial reports claimed that the man was the administrator of servers known in the Scene as ATHF which are said to host as many as 8,300 movies, TV shows and games. While access to the servers was naturally exclusive (APB reports that around 100 people had access), it is from servers like these that the wider file-sharing community obtains much of its material.

Frederick Ingblad from the Prosecutors Office said that the early allegations against the man “had been strengthened” following the examination of seized computer hardware.

“There were nearly 7000 films stored,” Ingblad said, adding that many films had been distributed either before or shortly after their premiere.

“In this case the offense involves so many movies that conviction could result in a prison sentence,” Ingblad added.

Throughout his interview the man is believed to have denied the charges.

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March 1st, 2011 File Sharing, Hot Topic, Net Stuff, Peer to Peer, Pirate Talk, The Pircay Bureau Comments Off

Swebits BitTorrent Tracker Shuts Down Following Uploader’s Arrest

Swebits, one of Sweden’s largest BitTorrent communities, has ceased its activities with immediate effect. While the site’s founders cite a DDoS attack, hardware problems and a lack of donations as the reason for the closure, the Swedish authorities and local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyran link it to the arrest of a prominent uploader a few days ago.

Image is Loading....Founded in 2004, Swebits is one of the longest-standing BitTorrent communities in Sweden. The tracker, which limited access to Swedish users only, amassed more than 40,000 members during its active years.

But yesterday, instead of being welcomed by the usual list of freshly uploaded content, visitors to Swebits found an unexpected and ominous message posted on the site’s homepage.

“As we all know everything has a beginning and an end. This is the end of Swebits. During the last day there has been a lot of speculation, some with hope and some with less hope,” Swebits staff informed the site’s users.

The notice went on to explain that the site had suffered a major DDoS attack and hardware failure last weekend, problems that are too time consuming and costly to fix. In addition, the site had a lack of donations recently, which according to the staff is a signal that the users don’t want the site to survive.

“It’s been a pleasure to be a part of Swebits and being able to influence Sweden’s best tracker. We know that it will be hard to fill the void that Swebits will leave after closing, but it isn’t impossible to replace it. Take care, whatever happens in the future,” they add.

However, this official message doesn’t take away all the speculation among users. Indeed, there appears to be an additional motive ignored by the announcements.

Today, the Swedish authorities and local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyran revealed that someone close to the site was arrested last week. The 25-year old man, who allegedly was a major uploader to Swebits, had his house raided and was later arrested by the police.

The man reportedly uploaded more than 1000 films to the site during a two week period last fall, and the authorities say he confessed his involvement during interrogations. The man is portrayed by the authorities as a central figure in the community and they link the closure of the site to his arrest.

The number of films the man allegedly shared in just two weeks appears to be unrealistically high, but the prosecution seem confident in that claim. “This person is suspected of having made the original uploads and then sharing out the works via torrent files,” prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson commented.

“Previously, we have focused us on the ‘scene, but now we have directed our focus to individual BitTorrent users,” said Henrik Ponten of Antipiratbyran in a comment. Interestingly enough the arrested man was ‘outed’ by the scene in the past, which might have tipped off the anti-piracy outfit.

This is not the first time that Swebits has shut down. In 2008 the site’s users were also led to believe that the site had ceased operating, but at the time it was a stunt to promote the revamped design that launched hours later.

Swebits Message, as it appeared on the site.

Image is Loading....This time, however, all signs suggest that Swebits wont be returning anytime soon, not in its current form at least. What role the arrest played in the shutdown is impossible to say without an official confirmation, but we have to assume that it caused concerns among the site’s staff members.

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December 17th, 2010 Pirate Talk Comments Off

Police Raid ‘Devil’ Warez Piracy Topsite

Acting on information provided by an anti-piracy group, Swedish police have carried out raids and taken down at least one warez scene topsite. Items seized include at least a dozen computers and servers containing a conservative 200 terabytes of media, mainly Hollywood movies. As other sites get sucked into the fallout, the recriminations and finger-pointing have begun.Image is Loading....

This week, Swedish authorities again turned their attention to The Scene, the collection of servers and individuals which inhabit the top of the so-called piracy pyramid.

Following a lengthy investigation by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån, during the last 48 hours Swedish police acted on their evidence and moved in on at least one ‘topsite’.

The site, which supposedly carried between 200 and 250 terabytes of media, was known as ‘Devil’. During the raids police seized a dozen servers and other computers and detained one person.

The individual, who is believed to have been handed over to Antipiratbyrån for questioning, is accused of being the operator of ‘Devil’. He is blamed for the distribution of “tens of thousands” of mainly Hollywood movies.

In what appeared to be a security response to news of the bust, other topsites started going down in Sweden and at least one other major European country.

Elements of two other topsites with links to ‘Devil’ known as Secu and Tomte (250 terabytes combined) have also been affected but so as not to compromise our sources, we will refrain from going into further detail as to why at this stage.

Suffice to say that some fairly important movie release groups (particularly Swedish ones) were connected to the sites and their activities will have been disrupted, at least temporarily.

Within the Scene the recriminations have begun, with fingers pointed at individuals and groups who are suspected of having caused the security lapse which led to the busts. Not unexpectedly, the accusations appear to be focused on Scene members who are also connected with P2P sharing groups, a frowned upon activity but one that is nevertheless widespread.

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December 7th, 2010 Anti-Piracy, Copyright Issues, Gang Gang Play, Legal Issues Comments Off

ISPs Free To Continue Deleting Evidence Against File-Sharers

Sweden’s highest court has rejected an application by an anti-piracy group which would force an ISP to hand over the identity of a file-sharing site operator. Antipiratbyrån wants TeliaSonera to reveal who is behind the SweTorrents BitTorrent tracker but the ISP has refused and taken its case all the way to the Supreme Court. That Court has now decided that the final decision lies with the European Court.

Image is Loading....In 2009, four movie studios represented by anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån applied to the Södertörn District Court in a move designed to force ISP TeliaSonera to hand over the identity of a BitTorrent site operator.

Later that year the Court announced its decision in favor of the anti-piracy group and ordered TeliaSonera to hand over the personal details of the person alleged to be behind the SweTorrents tracker.

TeliaSonera launched an appeal against the decision but in May 2010 the Court of Appeal upheld the District Court’s ruling. Failure to comply with this decision would result in a 750,000 kronor ($109,000) fine. Nevertheless, TeliaSonera were not prepared to accept the decision and immediately appealed and took the case to the highest court in the land.

Sweden’s Supreme Court has now ruled that the final decision in the case lies with the European Court in Luxembourg, a decision that might take several years to arrive.

The root of the complexity in this case lies with Sweden’s IPRED legislation. Both Antipiratbyrån and the lower courts believe that ISPs have an obligation to hand over to rightsholders identities of customers implicated in copyright infringement cases.

On the other hand, TeliaSonera insists that all ISPs have a long-standing and fundamental obligation to protect customer privacy which precedes the introduction of IPRED, while noting conflicts between IPRED and the EU data retention directive which has not yet been implemented in Swedish law.

The introduction of IPRED was expected to make it easier to track down file-sharers, but thus far the opposite is true at some ISPs. Since there is nothing in the country’s Electronic Communications Law that instructs ISPs to store information about the IP addresses they allocate to their customers, some ISPs have stopped storing this data to protect the privacy of their customers.

The decision by the European Court in the SweTorrents case is likely to be some time coming, and in the meantime ISPs will be free to continue deleting data, at least until the data-retention directive ‘loophole’ is closed.

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November 1st, 2010 Anti-Piracy, Copyright Issues, Gang Gang Play Comments Off

The Paranoid Anti-Piracy Group With No Employees

Antipiratbyrån (Anti-Piracy Bureau, APB) regularly makes headlines for its work against file-sharers in Sweden. Now, APB lawyer Sara Lindbäck has given an interview where she speaks about piracy, the MPAA, The Pirate Bay, and the level of secrecy APB adopts to protect those working for it. This group manages to conduct its business with zero turnover and not a single employee (or snitch) on the books.

Image is Loading....

When it comes to anti-piracy investigations in Sweden, one could be forgiven for thinking that Antipiratbyrån (the Anti-Piracy Bureau) is involved in all of them. APB has played a part in actions against the Warez Scene, BitTorrent trackers, Direct Connect hubs, regular file-sharers and is often connected with issues surrounding The Pirate Bay.

Indeed, the now-disbanded Piratbyrån (Piracy Bureau) was founded to counter Antipiratbyrån’s anti-piracy message, something completed on an epic scale with their most famous creation – The Pirate Bay.

Like many anti-piracy groups, APB has lawyers at the helm and few are more famous than Henrik Pontén, a man loved so much in pirate circles that he became officially renamed by admirers.

But not even the seemingly ubiquitous Pirate Pontén can do all the work on his own. In an interview, APB lawyer Sara Lindbäck has been revealing a little more about the organization and its work against file-sharing in Sweden.

Naturally, one of the first subjects covered was the recently completed appeal of The Pirate Bay founders. The decision in the appeal will be handed down later this month, but how does Lindbäck feel it will go?

“What we see is that The Pirate Bay has been convicted in several other countries around Europe,” she explains. “I would be surprised if they are not convicted in Sweden.”

However, Lindbäck cautions that there is a problem with infringements on the web because even with verdicts in hand, they still carry on.

“It is a dilemma with Internet crime that I believe we must review,” she adds.

APB has very close ties with Hollywood and shares their desire for total Pirate Bay destruction, but while Lindbäck admits that the entities share information, she refuses to comment when asked if APB is funded by the studios.

But the secrecy doesn’t stop there. Lindbäck also refuses to reveal how many people work for APB or anything about their finances. Indeed, according to Nyteknik.se, APB is simply a business association, which for tax purposes has a turnover of zero and no employees.

Lindbäck says that it is necessary to maintain a level of secrecy over APB’s operations in order to protect those working for it.

“I have not been exposed to the same [amount of abuse] as my colleague Henrik Pontén,” she reveals. Other than hate-mail, she wouldn’t be drawn further on the kind of things people do to get under APB’s skin in case that encourages more attacks.

No one would dispute that in Sweden, APB are a deeply unpopular group, perhaps because they work against such a large proportion of a population which has come to believe that file-sharing is a fundamental right.

“In Sweden, 1.1 million people constantly file-share pirated movies,” Lindbäck explains.

In a country of just over 9.2 million, that’s one potential enemy in every crowd of ten people nationwide, but move into the city with a group of men with their teens a decade behind them, things get worse.

“The typical illegal file sharer is a 30-year-old urban man with a slightly higher salary than average,” says Lindbäck.

But it’s not just APB’s general anti-piracy stance that has opponents so angry, its techniques have generated quite a lot of controversy too. While it’s known that APB has informers on file-sharing sites, there have been allegations that not all of them are willing.

A source who previously worked in law enforcement claimed earlier this year that APB had been tracking down teenage file-sharers and threatening them with reprisals unless they snitch on their friends and hand over information on the sites they use. It’s also been claimed that APB coerced FTP passwords out of server users in order to conduct their investigations.

“There is no basis to these claims,” Lindbäck insists. “None of the complaints have led anywhere.”

With no end in site to either The Pirate Bay, the Scene, or file-sharing in general, the work of Antipiratbyrån will continue for the foreseeable future. Expect to hear lots more from them, but don’t expect much more transparency.

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