Polish Raid Targets Pre-Release Pirates
November 09, 2007
- Legal and Management
| Global
By Susan Butler, N.Y.
Polish police have shut down a computer server that was used to illegally post music onto the Internet before the official release dates.
During a raid at the Wroclaw Technical University in Wroclaw, Poland, the police yesterday (Nov. 8) shut down the HPN server. HPN was a “topsite” server with a high bandwidth that allowed for the rapid transfer of data. It was allegedly used by so-called “release groups” to post music on the Internet before it is legally available to the public. HPN hosted more than 11,000 complete MP3 albums and promotional CDs on its server for users to download.
The officers also visited the HPN administrator’s home and confiscated six servers with 37 hard drives containing 12 terabytes of disk space. Two people were arrested, and they are helping the police with their inquiries, according to the IFPI.
Investigators with the IFPI , Polish recording industry trade group ZPAV, and anti-piracy group FOTA, had gathered evidence and brought the HPN server to the attention of the Wroclaw Police Economic Crime Division.
“People that post pre-release material onto the Internet are without doubt harming the music industry; one posting on a topsite can see an album appear in thousands of different locations across the internet in a matter of hours,” said Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI Internet anti-piracy unit, in a satement. “The industry is highly focused on the problem of pre-release piracy, and these actions in Poland will not be the last of their kind.”
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