Digital Piracy Raids Net Arrests

Law enforcement officials in 11 countries swooped in on more than 20 groups accused of being key suppliers of pirated goods online, arresting four people and seizing computers stuffed with bootlegged movies, games and software.

The Wednesday raids, dubbed “Operation Site Down” by the U.S. Department of Justice, targeted high-level “warez” groups, the secretive online communities that obtain and distribute pirated computer programs and other digital goods.

“This is the very top of the online piracy pyramid,” said John Malcolm, a former Justice Department official who leads the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s anti-piracy efforts. Evidence seized should lead investigators to more groups, he said, and many others should be deterred by the prospect of serving “serious jail time.”

A new federal law sets penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught distributing a movie or song before its commercial release.

But the Justice Department’s crackdown is unlikely to make a deep dent in rampant global piracy, where new sources of bootlegged goods quickly emerge to replace those that dry up. “It’ll shut people down for a couple of weeks, then they’ll come back,” said Bruce Forest of MediaHounds, an anti-piracy firm specializing in high-level warez sites.

The raids were the latest in a series of moves this week that raised the stakes for individuals who swap copyrighted goods online and the businesses that support them.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that two well-known file-sharing networks could be sued for inducing piracy, and on Wednesday a federal jury for the first time convicted someone of criminal copyright infringement for recording movies with a video camera in a theater. Meantime, the major record labels continued their campaign of suing individual users of file-sharing networks, filing lawsuits against 784 people suspected of infringing copyrights.

Pressed hard by entertainment and software companies, the Justice Department has launched three major international assaults on warez groups since 2000. This week’s operation -- which included raids in Europe, Australia and Israel -- was the product of three separate undercover investigations by FBI agents in San Jose, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C.

According to the Justice Department, agents raided more than 70 sites in the United States and more than 20 others abroad. The raids shut down at least eight online distribution points for pirated goods, some of which had been created during the course of the investigation.

In addition to the four people arrested so far on charges of criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy, more than 120 others have been identified as targets, the Justice Department said.

Among those arrested Wednesday was William Veyna, 34, of Chatsworth, who was accused of operating a server for pirated goods and supplying it with video games and movies. He made his first court appearance Wednesday in Los Angeles and was released on a $50,000 bond.

Veyna could not be reached for comment.

According to piracy experts, bootlegged goods typically are put on the Internet first by “release groups,” which race to obtain movies, games, CDs and software before they hit the market. They trickle down to the masses through a pyramid of piracy: They spread first to a small number of “topsites,” then to a larger number of private servers, chat rooms, newsgroups and, finally, file-sharing networks.

The investigators’ goal was to penetrate release groups that were affiliated with topsites. The Justice Department identified 22 groups that were hit in this week’s raids, including three well-known movie groups: Centropy, TUN and Wasted Time.

Despite the raids, a group claiming to be Centropy released a copy of “Herbie: Fully Loaded” on Thursday, along with a note: “Hey you stupid [expletive] FBI you FORGOT ME!!! And don’t think I’ll make it easy on you to catch me.”

The MPAA has been trying for years to disrupt groups such as Centropy, with little success.

“These are the most tech-savvy, secretive, paranoid online pirates out there,” Malcolm said. “They don’t meet. They don’t have annual conventions in New York City.... These are very, very difficult groups to crack, and these investigations take quite a lot of time.”