Saturday, June 10, 2006

FBI Goes After Multiple TopSite Warez Servers

Via WiredFire.org -

Earlier today, at 9:00 am CST, the summer hunting season for the MPAA officially began. With their first shot, or more accurately, the FBI's first shot, the MPAA reported information that has led to 4 topsites being shut down, and forcing several others offline. Several FBI officers took down 7-8 boxes hosted by Layered Tech, and later on busted servers hosted by Server Matrix.

At the moment, the impact on the Scene seems to be a big one, affecting groups including DiAMOND, SAGA, FLAMES, TBE, and NBP. There are additional rumors of other groups being affected and shut down.

In total, 18-20 boxes were raided, with hundreds of terabytes of data stored in total, 4 topsites were shut down directly because of the actions of the FBI, and the number of other sites that were slowed down, or shut down on their own, is not known. In response to the busts, several people in the scene are urging people to abandon using Layered Tech and Server Matrix to use as seedboxes, fearing it is only a matter of time until they are noticed taken down.

The same people are now urging the Scene to get more secure, citing busts from last year and the year before as examples of why additional security is needed to prevent releases from being leaked to P2P.







Ok, the last part might seem a little confusing for the people that aren't full into the scene. Let me try to explain.

"Topsites" are the top of the top in the illegal warez business. They are the beginning and are VERY well protected...virtually and physically. They can be compared to the global drug mafias in term of security and resources.

P2P is open to everything in the world and therefore it is the bottom of the bottom. Just think of it like drugs that were dropped on the street and you picked them up. Almost anything on P2P is old news for people in upper levels of the system.

If you want to learn more about the topsite and how the system functions, check out this Wired article.

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