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For two years, Belgium has been looking into the online operations that obtain, crack, and distribute software, games, and media - operations collectively referred to as The Scene. Ingblad targeted several ISPs, Umea University, and sites in Malmo and Eslov. The ISP raids were to gain information on particular IP addresses (Sweden has a recent law requiring ISPs to retain more information on their users for just such cases), but some of the other raids were actually made to scoop up individuals. Four people have been detained, along with servers and personal computers.
The new investigation goes beyond the "Whac-A-Mole" approach to online infringement, in which the authorities hammer one site only to see content migrate immediately elsewhere. In this case, the idea is more like rounding up all the top mole agitators at once.
Beyond Ingblad and his work in Sweden, 14 other countries were involved, including Norway, the UK, Germany, and Italy. Movies were a special focus of the investigation, which is attempting to cripple all the key "top sites" and the administrators that compete to obtain and distribute the newest cinematic fare, much of it appearing even before its official theatrical release. The targets, in other words, don't appear to be mere distributors and trackers, but those that supply the initial content - a relatively small number of people and sites.
While the current strategy targets movies and involved Belgian investigators infiltrating the release networks, the music industry has shifted to a similar model. Rather than suing individuals, going after the major distribution channels has become the preferred legal strategy. Last month, music's international trade group was boasting about a record-setting bust in Bulgaria, a country where the piracy rate is "almost 100 percent," and which shut down four sites and secured "servers containing more than 120 terabytes of unlicensed content, the equivalent of more than 200,000 CD-Rs."
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