FBI Helps Shut Down Piracy Sites In Romania 58
An anonymous reader writes: The FBI has taken a major role in the shutting down of at least two popular piracy-torrent sites in Romania, according to a report from Romania's High Court of Cassation and Justice. The popular torrenting domains serialepenet.ro and fisierulmeu.ro are now offline after a series of raids on individuals and companies, including a hosting company in Bucharest thought to have some involvement with the pirate operation.
Thank you FBI! (Score:2, Funny)
Once again the world is safe!
Deinitely should read the first article (Score:5, Insightful)
FBI programs in Romania have spent more than $4.6mn [PDF] (£2.9mn) in interdepartmental programs and initiatives with Romania-based authorities since 2007, which costs include the placement of an agent within the country’s Organised Crime Directorate – an organization within the Romanian police force – and additional personnel at the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) centre, an investment amounting to $3.4mn (£2.1mn).
Looks like 8 million in tax dollars or additional debt spent on this program. I wonder if they have any numbers on the return on investment defending hollywood's interests overseas.
Re:Deinitely should read the first article (Score:5, Insightful)
I can say, with some certainty, that shutting these sites down has accomplished nothing. The files are still there and three clicks later you have now set a new torrent up at TPB or another torrent site. I do not mind paying taxes (I do avoid them, as is my obligation - I donate to causes I prefer instead) but I do mind when my taxes are misspent.
Taxes are not like a gift. If you gift something they can give it away or do anything they want with it - you gave it to them and it is now their property. Taxes are paying for services, services that will benefit the taxed and citizens at large. This has done absolutely nothing to assist, promote, or further the American taxpayer. There is no excuse, there is no acceptable level, this is just wrong.
I hate to play this card but, really, how many people would that money have fed, housed, treated medically, educated, or heated in the cold of night? How far could NASA have gone with this? CERN? DARPA? Securing our boarders? Gift and install free solar panels? I do not care... At least the money would have, ostensibly, been kept here, where it belongs, where it benefits the taxpayer.
Re: (Score:1)
Quite so. More like extortion, really - "Give us your money or bad things will happen to you"....
Re: (Score:2)
This has done absolutely nothing to assist, promote, or further the American taxpayer. [...] How far could NASA have gone with this? CERN? DARPA? Securing our boarders? Gift and install free solar panels? I do not care... At least the money would have, ostensibly, been kept here, where it belongs, where it benefits the taxpayer.
My vote goes for the CERN option!
Re: (Score:1)
That sounds reasonable to me. I am not picky. There is almost nowhere/no way they could have spent this money in a more meaningless way.
Re: (Score:2)
"Woosh", I believe is the term. /. text encodings seem broken)
Or does CERN stand for something else than Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire back there?
(pardon my french,
Re: (Score:1)
I had meant Fermilab but, alas, that is not what I typed and, strangely, I never noticed my mistake until you pointed it out. Ah well. ;) I will make more and better mistakes in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
Be careful with that, remember you're never more than TWO clicks away from black cocks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j4Y5Js-mcA
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Deinitely should read the first article (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, Hollywood is getting a great ROI.
Look, American law enforcement has become an enforcement arm for copyright and defending business interests.
DHS is now responsible for monitoring for copyright infringement, and the customs agents are responsible for doing search and seizure.
They're doing their job ... defending the oligarchy they now work for.
If you haven't been paying attention to the fact that the US government is literally doing IP enforcement on behalf of the copyright cartel, you've not been paying attention.
Hell, US foreign policy/trade policy is both written by, and in the service of, the copyright cartel.
Don't you know the US government works for multinational corporations now to ensure maximizing corporate profits?
I really wish I was joking, but I'm not.
This is hardly the first time US agencies have expended lots of resources to protect copyright ... Kim.com for instance. It sure as hell won't be the last.
Re: (Score:2)
So wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does the FBI have jurisdiction over citizens of Romania ?
Re: (Score:1)
I was thinking the same thing. If I was a Romanian I'd pretty much be thinking that my government just sold me out to foreigners, some government that is.
Re: (Score:1)
Would that be the government guaranteeing them safety from Russia via NATO?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Those Russkies are indeed sneaky.
Look at the way they keep moving their country around NATO bases.
Re: (Score:3)
"Since when does the FBI have jurisdiction over citizens of Romania ?"
Since when are pirates and parrots in Romania?
New Guantanamo Bay (Score:3, Informative)
In the early 90's all Romanians were really happy to hear that the USA opened a military base on the Black Sea.
They were happy because the Russians stopped yapping about Romania joining the "Commonwealth of Independent States", that is the former USSR.
Now that base is on the main secret prisons mean to replace Guantanamo Bay.
Really good job there.
No surprise the FBI is so active in the country.
Re: So wait... (Score:3)
You must be new here...
Re: (Score:1)
Some of us are professionals. We do not even read the summary. Or stay on topic... It's "how we do." (I kind of sort of think that is the jargon. I am not fluent in current vernacular and I'd appreciate it kindly if the kids would stop shitting on my lawn.)
Re: (Score:2)
We have jurisdiction over any country that threatens our profits. If you think otherwise, feel free to point out any country that does not respect our patents and copyrights.
Re: (Score:3)
China... big fat middle finger straight up in the air.........
Re: (Score:1)
Somalia, North Korea, China, Cuba, etc...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
They don't have jurisdiction and they don't need jurisdiction. They just play consultant to the Romanian authorities, who apply local law. Sure, the FBI prods the authorities to apply that law, but it's the authorities that do that, not the FBI. Also, this might be a "collect call consulting" type of affair, where the FBI pays the Romanian government a fee to be allowed to consult and "help out" in the investigations.
Re:So wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when does the FBI have jurisdiction over citizens of Romania ?
Where in the summary or the news piece does it say they have jurisdiction in Romania? The original article even quotes Romanian prosecutors statement that this was a cooperative investigation. There is nothing that prevents the FBI from helping out the Romanian authorities by providing the intel and expertise needed to shut down these sites except the refusal of the Romanian authorities to accept FBI assistance. The FBI, DEA, Scotland Yard, Germany's BKA, France's Police Nationale and many other law enforcement agencies all participate in operations abroad and provide assistance to law enforcement in other countries. If you are going to chew out the FBI for cracking down on software pirates at least RTFA please feel free to exercise your 1st amendment right to do so, just try to find a more potent argument than that the FBI is engaging in the mundane every day task of *SHOCK/AWE*-cross border law enforcement cooperation!!
Re: (Score:2)
FBI: We know of some groups hosting what we deem to be illegal content within your borders and we'd like to shut them down. If you agree to tag along we can call this a cooperative effort. As a bonus you'll get to keep the servers we confiscate.
RO: Well, OK.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the gifts and joint efforts establish a long term foothold in other nations. A nation of interest gets upgrades to secure networks, fast new software that always needs "free" updates and upgrades.
Local staff are then invited on fact finding trips to learn more about 'very' advance methods and return with new ideas and more news about emerging technology.
Over time the trips become routine to meet with their new colleagues.
Who uses the systems diligen
Not torrent sites (Score:5, Informative)
serialepenet.ro was a streaming site and fisierulmeu.ro was a file sharing site (similar to rapidshare, mega, etc). Neither of those of are torrent sites. The major torrent trackers in Romania are doing bussines as usual.
Context: (Score:5, Interesting)
The cynical view would be that this just an attempt to kill off competitors in preparation for launching a similar service. Something very similar happened a few years ago, when they took down the massively popular "vplay.ro" (essentially a free youtube clone that featured all the popular TV shows). Only a few days later, one of the local media moguls launched his own site "voyo.ro" providing the same things vplay had before, only now requiring a monthly subscription.
Meanwhile, private torrent tracker "filelist.ro" is still alive and kicking, and it's gotten so immensely popular everyone's grandma and their dog have an account for it. This action will affect the most PC-illiterate pirates, but won't likely make a dent in overall piracy.
Living in Romania, I would gladly pay for content (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in Romania and have used lots of pirating sites out of necessity, not out of unwillingness to pay for content. Romania has only a handful of internet content providers, HBO Go being one of the first (I'm a subscriber). We don't have Netflix, Amazon Prime is a pipedream, Google just recently opened up their ebooks and music store for the Romanian market (I'm already a subscriber for the music bit), but their movies store is still inaccessible here. There are some local online stores affiliated to loca
Re: (Score:1)
They went after 2 sites that no one has ever heard of. Way to go.
You may not have heard of them, but they are fairly well known in the country and ranked fairly high in Google searches for common terms (although I don't remember ever using them myself).
In a place where a Gigabit consumer internet connections are readily available for 14$/month, it's very easy to set up your own server to host pirated content to locals. This would generate an enormous amount of traffic and allow you to skim some money off of it by serving some well-placed ads. I'm guessing this is prob
And I almost thought GOOD (Score:2)
Before I read the summary, I was honestly thinking they finally shut down a few Trojan C&C servers in Romania and thought "about FUCKING time!".
Then I read the summary and realized that, nope, still not doing anything remotely beneficial for the public, our three letter friends.
Re: (Score:1)