Massive busts of warez groups reported in Europe today

Xeni Jardin 8:41 pm Tue Jan 24, 2006

Releaselog reported this morning that law enforcement groups in Europe raided more than 300 homes and offices in Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic, confiscating servers and other evidence allegedly linked to several top warez groups. Link. Related items at Slyck (link) and P2Pnet (link).

Reader comment: Holger Lembke says,

you missed the real funny part of the message:
"In Germany offices of GVU, short for Gesellschaft zur Verletzung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen eV ("German Federation Against Copyright Theft", so they are the hunters) have been raided, too."

Why? Because prosecutor assume that they paid at least for one of the servers hardware and the admin. So it looks like IOH (island of hope, main server) was more or less a GUV honeypot… attracting the spread members of the release groups around one server and get them more easy. release groups are short of money and hardware, so giving them the needed hardware and some money lures them out of the hideouts.

This is what this report says.

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