
US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos - Cantbekhan
https://torrentfreak.com/us-indictments-and-raids-of-piracy-group-members-in-the-scene-throw-top-tier-piracy-world-into-chaos-200826/
======
mrandish
I'm concerned our justice systems is expending enormous resources
investigating and prosecuting these cases as felony crimes on behalf of the
MPAA and RIAA lobbies (which have a revolving door of former fed prosecutors
as employees/lobbyists). The cases are more properly pursued in civil court
where the pirates should be sued for the damages they cause (not agreeing with
MPAA's damage assessment, that's for the judge/jury).

Mis-using international racketeering laws and cooperation agreements between
agencies to pursue online software pirates is not what these systems were
created for. Another example is Kim Dotcom. He may indeed be liable for
significant damages (I don't know) but the MPAA designed their attack knowing
that the prosecution itself would inflict massive punishment (ending the
company, incarcerating or confining the execs) before it ever got to court.
It's a clear abuse of the global justice system and a waste of its resources.

And all of that is before we even get to the moral and ethical debate about
the true damages from purely electronic, not-for-profit media piracy clubs.
Studies have shown that frequent pirated media downloaders are among the
relevant industry's best, highest-spending customers. And it's also been shown
that the majority of users will pay reasonable prices for convenient media
access via subscription or purchase (Netflix, Spotify, ITunes, etc). Despite
"crying poor", the music industry is now back to making more than it ever did
in the era of $18 CDs, with more (and happier) customers.

~~~
tzs
Dotcom's company's whole purpose was to make money facilitating movie piracy,
under the guise of being an innocent file storage and sharing company. Their
internal processes and procedures were designed to make it appear that they
took down pirated material when informed of its existence while actually
making sure it was still there and accessible via other links that the
copyright owner had not yet discovered. They actually reprimanded employees if
they actually took something down for real.

Go find the court papers for the indictment. They include a bunch of internal
emails from Dotcom and other top executives that show how the place actually
worked.

~~~
nimbius
>Go find the court papers for the indictment.

No i dont think i will. onus probandi, you'll need to cite your sources if you
want anyone to take this seriously im afraid.

Dotcom was raided in new zealand with a guns out swat style team of tactical
commandos and helicopters for what amounted to a civil court issue in his own
county. his servers were illegally seized, his assets frozen, and then he was
railroaded to the US and told to defend himself penniless despite overwhelming
domestic controversy which inevitably led to political fallout for leaders in
new zealand.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom)

~~~
mschuster91
> and then he was railroaded to the US

I agree that the treatment of Dotcom by the US is, essentially, legalized
international extortion and the NZ government should have put a stop on it a
long time ago... but he is still in NZ.

------
throwaway77384
"Bridi, 50, was arrested on Sunday in Cyprus on an INTERPOL Red Notice.
Correa, 36, was arrested yesterday in Olathe, Kansas, where he will appear in
federal court. Ahmad, 39, was not arrested and is still at large."

An INTERPOL Red Notice! You'd think these are terrorists, human traffickers or
drug lords. Nope, they share films before the films are supposed to come out.

I understand that one should not try to profit from piracy. I also understand
that the people who are orchestrating the operations that lead to films being
leaked ahead of time should indeed be stopped, but isn't this all a bit overly
dramatic, when there are real problems to be dealt with in the world?

~~~
antihero
It makes perfect sense when you realise that law enforcement's historical and
primary goal, over and above protection of us, is the protection of capital.

~~~
tanzann
Isn't that caused mainly by lobbying and so? Some context. Generally speaking
money in practice means power just because it allows lobbying and hiring good
lawyers. And power basically is ability to have someone else solving one's
problems.

~~~
nybble41
"Lobbying" just means presenting your position on an issue. Money can help
with making a persuasive presentation, to a point, but lobbying _per se_ is
never the _cause_ of the problem. You can blame that on the people with way
too much power who listen to the lobbyists and do as they ask—instead of
actually doing their jobs and representing the interests of _all_ their
constituents.

~~~
pessimizer
This is an extremely linear way of looking at public corruption.

It's all well and good to say that politicians should act morally, but if you
don't do what you're told, you won't get the money, and you won't keep the
job. You'll be replaced by somebody who does what they're told. We're
filtering for trash.

It's weird that you're even combining this with a _defense of cash payments to
politicians from special interests._ You characterize bad governance strictly
as a moral failure, but defend bribes as an mostly irrelevant rhetorical
addition to the persuasive presentation of one's position.

~~~
nybble41
> … if you don't do what you're told … you won't keep the job.

Whether you keep your job is determined by who your constituents vote for, not
by lobbyists. Perhaps voters are sometimes too easily swayed by campaign
spending, but that's a separate issue from lobbying.

> It's weird that you're even combining this with a _defense of cash payments
> to politicians from special interests_.

You misread. Spending more on your presentation can make it more persuasive
because (up to a point, as I said) the end result is better researched and
more polished in general compared to what can be produced on a shoestring
budget. I was not suggesting that lobbyists ought to bolster their arguments
with cash payments to politicians. Frankly I don't really care whether bribes
are exchanged so long as the end result serves the constituents as a whole and
not just the lobbyists. Accepting a bribe to advance lobbyists' interests at
the expense of one's constituents would be an obvious example of corruption.
As would doing the same out of personal preference without any exchange of
favors.

------
bleepblorp
19 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the then-
Attorney General appeared before the media to proudly announce the conclusion
of the largest operation in DoJ history.

It was the destruction of a warez group.

In the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks, the most important thing on the DoJ agenda
was not to follow up on any of the numerous intelligence leads warning that
Islamist terrorists were planning to ram multiple airliners into multiple
buildings, but rather to shut down an organization whose chosen line of
activity has never been demonstrated to harm anyone.

Putting the factually contraindicated _feeling_ of the software publishing
cartels that they're somehow losing money above the actual lives of actual
people is a very f'ed up choice of priorities.

~~~
chaorace
This feels like one of those "mind blowing" factoids. I mean, nobody had 9/11
on their calendars (aside from literally, I guess). I suppose you _could_
argue that the U.S. should have gotten obssessively involved with the middle
east before 9/11 ever happened, but I personally think that's a nutcase
position.

~~~
chaorace
And let's address this counterargument: "Regardless of 9/11, why wasn't the
DOJ doing literally anything else?"

I mean, the DOJ is a department. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure it's not
_just_ a single boardroom stocked with sneering capitalists plotting to get
back at software pirates.

Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty big department, I don't doubt that this evil
boardroom probably actually exists in some capacity. I just also happen to
think that is... kind of normal? Would you prefer if the DOJ didn't enforce
laws? It seems like putting the cart before the horse when one criticizes the
executive for executing instead of criticizing the law itself.

------
bserge
Wow, that's a whole lot of work put into this, and I don't understand why...
What do these scene members have to gain?

If anything, they're doing the media companies a service, free viral
campaigns. Without pirated content, a lot of people would never hear or care
about their movies, TV shows, music. If they can't afford it, they won't buy
it anyway.

Microsoft and Adobe seem to have realized this, and now they're making things
accessible to most people, so many ex-pirates used to their products are
buying them. Not so for the media companies. Why does Netflix USA/UK/etc have
different content? Why do games have region locks and ridiculous DRM?

All for the risk of being accused of fraud, causing "massive losses", and
prison time. I guess sticking it to the MAFIAA feels nice, but is it worth the
risk?

~~~
hogFeast
Yep, the loss to these companies is not the price of the movie. It is not the
tens of millions of dollars quoted. If you pirate a movie, the person buying
it is rarely someone who would pay full price. I would be surprised if the
actual loss was anywhere near the amount it cost to run the investigation.

Also, there really isn't a massive amount of sophistication when it comes to
distribution. Most of the media business still feels stuck in the 90s,
definitely changing but still "business as usual" (for example, the English
Premier League...probably the most valuable sports league in the world, same
distribution since inception in the early 90s) thinking whilst the sand is
shifting beneath their feet (if you look at the late teen-early twenties demo,
much of the media business is already irrelevant). But yeah: spend your time
chasing down people for a few hundred thousand bucks, that will work.

~~~
kristofferR
Yeah, you are basically forced to pirate movies if you want it in good
streaming quality.

Most of the 4K HDR movies on Netflix are just available as 1080p SDR even with
a 4K subscription, to get 4K HDR Atmos quality streaming you gotta pirate
them. It's so damn dumb.

~~~
wil421
Not against pirating in the least bit but you can’t say you _have_ to pirate
to get the best 4K it’s just easier and cheaper. Disregarding the not
available in my region argument. The Blu-Ray is still available for purchase
in most regions.

The people in the article were not ripping streaming services they were
ripping unreleased DVDs and Blu-Rays.

~~~
kristofferR
Blu-Ray is not an option, I'm talking about streaming here.

~~~
wil421
There are many 4K rental options available but at $6.99 or so a pop means
pirating is cheaper and easier once again. Cross platform sharing of rentals
or digital purchases is crap, pirating is again easier.

------
mensetmanusman
Would be interesting if our justice system spent as much effort on white
collar crime, insider trading, financial misengineering, price fixing, etc.

~~~
mc32
Isn’t this an example of “white collar” crime albeit perhaps a low level one?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Kind of - technically - but realistically no. The government is treating it
more akin to theft than copyright infringement.

If an artist steals another's work and makes some money off of it, the federal
government isn't going to step in and help. It'd be up to the artist (or
copyright holder) to sue for damages. Assuming the case is clear, the artist
would get money from the offender. The offender rarely goes to jail. If the
offender instead stole the art from the artist's home, then they might get
criminal charges.

~~~
unishark
I don't get what you mean when you say "technically no", since you pretty much
made the case for the point.

The govt is accusing them of fraud (a kind of theft) in how they acquired the
movies initially. This is indeed a white collar crime.

------
Nightshaxx
Thank you torrent freak for putting the legal documents directly linked at the
bottom. I'm not sure why some news outlets don't do this.

~~~
nayaketo
Ironic that a site called 'Torrentfreak' is more reliable than most news
sources.

~~~
Semaphor
This comment pops up now and again, but they are _the_ single biggest news
site for piracy and filesharing related things. I’ve been reading them since
they started (I even have a T-Shirt) and they turned from a small-ish blog to
a professional news site.

------
branon
SAPRKS is a huge loss. All of the groups that were named were quite prolific
and released exceptionally high-quality files, but SPARKS especially.

Just goes to show how utterly broken and cross-contaminated the copyright and
justice systems are. These groups should be lauded as heroes, not hunted down
like criminals.

~~~
loeg
> All of the groups that were named were quite prolific

Anecdotal, but: I've certainly heard of SPARKS, but literally never heard of
GECKOS, DRONES, ROVERS or SPLINTERS.

------
btilly
There is only one reason that I've ever had to use bittorrent. It turns out
that some musicals are not available through streaming because the copyright
assignment wasn't set up correctly and nobody has been able to come to an
agreement on how to split the revenue.

Movies from _My Fair Lady_ to _Bullets Over Broadway_ are affected. You can go
onto Netflix, Amazon, and so on, and none can let you watch. They can only
ship you a DVD.

After literally failing to find anyone who could take my money, I went to
bittorrent. (And had to VPN to pretend not to be in the USA.)

------
pessimizer
Leaking pre-release movies is just a dangerous thing to do, and even a
hypothetical producer/distributor's organization with the weakest stance on
piracy one could imagine would go after them. Obtaining copies of unreleased
media involves a direct attack to compromise people connected to a company.
Even from my anti-copyright position, it's exactly the same as infiltrating a
company to find out trade secrets or things that may influence future stock
movements.

And there's no doubt it is damaging. So many movies are overbudgeted garbage,
and are going to recoup as much as they are going to recoup during their first
weekend, before the word gets out that the movie is terrible. All the
marketing (which as a rule of thumb costs as much as the film) is focused on
that weekend, including getting friendly reviews published, or deciding on a
strategy of keeping the film from reviewers altogether. A credible rumor
getting around a week before the release that the movie is crap means $10s of
millions in losses, and layoffs.

I don't believe in copyright, but this is getting employees of a company (or
its contractors, or those who have signed agreements with it in order to get
screeners) to steal from the company. This is good when it is internal
whistleblowing on crime or corruption, even better when it is government and
the only reason for secrecy is to avoid embarrassment or accountability.
There's very little detectable public good in exposing an X-Men movie a week
before it hits the theaters.

~~~
bondarchuk
As per your 2nd paragraph, the public good is that a lot of people might be
saved from spending money to see a crap movie.

------
holidayacct
The justice system is complete crap, the US government doesn't have the
ability to deal with piracy because it is international.

This doesn't work the way people think it does, there is literally no justice
involved. The CIA is used to using movies and television as a pathway for
manipulating the American population. There is a very long history of this
happening and the people they use (yes use) to do this aren't making the
revenues they are used to making.

As a result they are resorting to ugly tactics like taking over companies to
play psychological games with people in online piracy and gaslighting people
who run piracy servers. Several people who run piracy sites have been gaslit
to the point of suggestibility and that usually ends in the person committing
suicide or dying in strange ways. Deimos (the founder of demonoid) and Aaron
Swartz were targets of this kind of treatment and almost none of the people
who know them are aware of this because it is all psychological.

The way this is handled in reality is brutal psychological operations
(triggering schizophrenia, learned dependency, triggering PTSD, gaslighting,
etc), never believe anything you hear about the American government
prosecuting crimes like online piracy, it is not handled in the courts. When
you see someone who was perfectly normal and has their life fall apart out of
nowhere until they are worn down physically or psychologically it is almost
always the US government in one form or another. Sometimes it is intentional
and sometimes it is unintentional (i.e. some part of the government gets
tricked into running a psychological operation on someone), this isn't
conspiracy it is being done in broad daylight everyday all over the country
because it only has meaning to the person being targeted.

~~~
dane-pgp
> it is being done in broad daylight everyday all over the country because it
> only has meaning to the person being targeted.

I'm guessing you also believe that "gang stalking" is a thing:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking#False_claims_of_stalk...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking#False_claims_of_stalking,_%22gang_stalking%22_and_delusions_of_persecution)

~~~
scollet
Didn't eBay execs gang stalk a journalist? I'm not saying your point is
invalid and I'm not validating gp, but I'm sure evidential gang stalking can
exist outside of delusion.

~~~
dane-pgp
That's a fair point about the eBay employees[1]. I think that the "gang
stalking" theory becomes delusional when the supposed target is someone who
isn't a threat to a multi-billion dollar company (or government), and when the
supposed target claims that their harassers are using mind control and other
pseudo-scientific means.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21291666/ebay-
employees-a...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21291666/ebay-employees-
arrested-journalist-harassment)

~~~
holidayacct
You're delusional if you think individual people aren't threats to governments
of multi-billion dollar corporations.

There are people with information that no one wants leaked because the
information is incriminating without proper context or someone may have made a
massive mistake and not known what the consequences were at the time. There
are people all over the place that have to make decisions where both choices
might be illegal.

There are powerful CEOs and politicians who are afraid of being outed for not
being what they say they are. Some of them are simply paranoid that they will
be outed as incompetent. You'd be shocked at how many CEOs are terrified of
people finding out they just got lucky and applied for the right jobs at the
right times. They walk around in complete and total fear that someone will
find out they don't know a single thing about how their company is run or that
they are banging half the people in their company.

There are startups that are essentially cults and the founders use cult
tactics in order to keep an entourage of employees who are loyal to the point
that they will sacrifice their dignity and personal safety for the company. If
you don't believe in the founder and the company they purge you because they
are afraid someone is going to figure out their business may border on
illegality. These guys do the same thing, their employees run around harassing
anyone who doesn't believe in their company and the founder.

This happens all the time.

------
hesdeadjim
Vast majority of comments here are hilarious. Piracy is a crime, deal with it.
You don't have a right to content made for a profit without paying for it. If
you don't agree with the price or the distribution method, don't consume the
content, problem solved.

The argument that resources should be spent on "real crime" is equally silly.
These organizations can and do put immense resources into all other forms of
crime. They shouldn't choose to ignore one class of it because it's personally
convenient to label it "harmless".

I'd suggest if you find yourself defending pirates that you actually go and
create something worth pirating and see how you feel.

~~~
biotinker
A huge number of the people on this site, myself included, already voluntarily
donate huge amounts of time and money to free and open source software and
hardware- they are already choosing to give away for free what others might
otherwise pirate.

No one is disputing that piracy is a crime. They are pointing out the
difference between the fact of what is, and their opinion of what ought be.

~~~
ChickeNES
> No one is disputing that piracy is a crime.

Then why can I scroll up the page and find multiple instances of people saying
it isn't?

------
jimnotgym
Is this anything other than neo-colonialism? How can the power of the US
copyright lobby extend quite so completely into Europe. Imagine Norway wanted
a bunch of US kids arrested due to their, or their lobbyists, pet peeve.

I used to be passive about it now I am anti-copyright, that has been the
effect of the overreach by the copyright lobby, they have hardened me against
them.

------
fuzxi
Absolutely ridiculous to spend so much time and effort prosecuting crimes that
have, at most, a marginal effect on the bottom lines of AAA film studios. [1]

[1]: [https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-
infringement-s...](https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-
study/) (check the linked pdf for the full study)

------
devwastaken
Are these scandinavian countries cooperating with the U.S. media mafia on
this? How did they get names and locations?

~~~
Semaphor
Most certainly. As would probably every other country in Europe. You should
know that media piracy is on the same level as terrorism.

~~~
ifmpx
Judging from the terms some pirates are sentenced to, I'd say the legal system
considers piracy to be much worse.

------
facet1ous
To be honest, I don't feel bad for these people at all. Film studios, the
MPAA, RIAA, etc. are pretty scummy, but the overwhelming majority of pirates
are there to get the latest Disney / Marvel movie without having to pay. And
these groups are serving that interest.

I'm sure there will be plenty of comments here calling out ethical gray areas
or valid cases for torrenting a movie - those no longer for sale, etc. But
you're kidding yourself if you think this is the motivation behind most
illegal downloads.

At the end of the day, these studios are spending enormous sums of money to
produce content and they deserve the copyright and distribution rights that
are being egregiously violated. Unless you have a good reason, you should be
paying it own/watch it and the government is in the right for enforcing it.

------
jMyles
Is there substantial "no IP whatsoever" constituency somewhere? Is there a
movement or party advocating this? Are there jurisdictions with essentially
this framework in place?

I'm curious to see what it looks like.

I have trouble imagining the internet tolerating any other configuration 100
years from now.

~~~
tandr
If we ever colonize Mars, it might become one for a little stretch of time.
Just like America was at the beginning, China not long ago, etc.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy[0] goes into minute detail of the politics
of colonising Mars.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy)

------
Cantbekhan
Here are the direct links to the 3 indictments:

[https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-George-
Br...](https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-George-Bridi-SPARKS-
indictment-unsealed-200108.pdf)
[https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-Umar-
Ahma...](https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-Umar-Ahmad-SPARKS-
superceding-indictment-unsealed-200825.pdf)
[https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-
Jonatan-C...](https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-Jonatan-
Correa-SPARKS-superceding-indictment-unsealed-200825.pdf)

~~~
kristofferR
TorrentFreak messed up, here's the indictment for Umar Ahmad:

[https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.542945...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.542945/gov.uscourts.nysd.542945.9.0.pdf)

------
forgotmypw17
>Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of
judging people by what >they say and think, not what they look like. My crime
is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. >I
am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you
can't stop us all ... >after all, we're all alike. -The Mentor

------
blooalien
Imagine if governments put even a fraction of this kinda effort and resources
into solving _real_ problems?

