According to TorrentFreak, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has gone after a number of torrent sites including the large Bulgarian tracker RARBG which had over 100,000 users.
ArenaBG and many other large sites have been taken down as well. It appears that the police and BREIN are aiming to take down Bulgarian trackers, and working to identify the administrators of the site.
Once their identities were found out, each was asked to a meeting where they were told that their sites needed to be shut down. If they were not shutdown, the police would physically take the servers.
ArenaBG, P2PBG, MastersTB and AvatarBG are all either shutdown or moving on to new hosts.
Torrent-BG, WordBG, and Zarta.org are all shutting down as well.
Result for: anti piracy
Expected to be the largest anti-piracy campaign ever, the MPA and other anti-piracy groups have vowed to make London a “a fake-free zone” by the beginning of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The clearly impossible goal to completely eradicate DVD piracy was initiated by Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy.
The groups involved are The Motion Picture Association, U.K. Film Council, UK Intellectual Property Office, Federation Against Copyright Theft, London Councils, Trading Standards and the Police.
Lammy added, “Legislation alone will not combat counterfeiting and piracy. Good law is great but enforced law is better.” He noted that the campaign should send a strong message to citizens that piracy is a huge problem and will be tackled.
Result for: anti piracy
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has praised anti-piracy raids targeted counterfeit games in Mexico. Mexico’s law enforcement carried out raids that led to the seizure of about 20 tons of pirate video games. About 40 officers from he region’s Procuraduría General de la República and Agencia Federal de Investigación organisations raided booths and uncovered 91,200 fake games products.
Mexican law enforcement officials operated in conjunction with local ESA representatives to conduct this raid. “Piracy in markets such as San Juan de Dios hurts businesses engaging in the legitimate distribution and retailing of computer and video games,” said Michael D Gallagher, CEO of the ESA.
He continued: “We commend Mexican law enforcement officials for their actions in this raid and are committed to fully supporting authorities around the world who conduct these kinds of enforcement actions.”
