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Piracy: Police raid 121 homes for sharing illegally online

Written by James Delahunty @ 05 Nov 2014 7:20 User comments (7)

Piracy: Police raid 121 homes for sharing illegally online Police have targeted members of a file sharing forum called Boerse, searching 121 apartments in 14 states in Germany.
The raids were announced by the office of the Cologne public prosecutor on Tuesday. They targeted people allegedly sharing music, movies and other products illegally through a portal "boerse.bz."

More than 400 officers were involved in raids of 121 apartments across 14 states. The press release indicates that uploaders profited up to several thousand users per month from their activities.

The raids also turned up plenty of evidence, with computers, hard drives and plenty of optical media seized for further analysis. Some suspects reportedly have already displayed a willingness to cooperate with the investigation.

Press Release (.DE): www.presseportal.de

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7 user comments

16.11.2014 01:53

121 apartments? How many innocent people did you have to inconvenience?! And I thought we had problems in America. Wow...
Oh. This was across multiple states. My bad. Still unbelievable though. I mean, 400 cops? Shouldn't they be more concerned with, I don't know... Rapists? Murderers? Pedophiles? REAL Crimes?

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 06 Nov 2014 @ 1:56

26.11.2014 04:57

http://education.randmcnally.com/images...any_US_Size.png

Germany is a bit smaller than the US.


36.11.2014 11:06

Sorta puts things in perspective! ;)

46.11.2014 13:03

Looks like the German police also have too much time on their hands - just like the UK City Of London police and USA law enforcement. Perhaps their efforts would be better served by hunting down REAL criminals perpetrating REAL crimes, like murder, rape and burglary, to name but three. This waste of taxpayers' money is just posturing and grandstanding at the behest of the entertainment industry, who seem to regard police public servants as being their own private security force. The police must be delighted to boost their figures by going after easy targets. Not much investigative work involved and lots of pats on the back, I would imagine. Cynical? .....Me? .......Don't know how you can say such a thing!

56.11.2014 13:23

Originally posted by Dave1949:
Looks like the German police also have too much time on their hands - just like the UK City Of London police and USA law enforcement. Perhaps their efforts would be better served by hunting down REAL criminals perpetrating REAL crimes, like murder, rape and burglary, to name but three. This waste of taxpayers' money is just posturing and grandstanding at the behest of the entertainment industry, who seem to regard police public servants as being their own private security force. The police must be delighted to boost their figures by going after easy targets. Not much investigative work involved and lots of pats on the back, I would imagine. Cynical? .....Me? .......Don't know how you can say such a thing!

Excellent point of view! :D

67.11.2014 04:15

You do realize when you state they should be off looking for "real" criminals such as murders, rapists, burglary ect. Germany is no where near the rates in those categories as in the U.S. not to mention they have more cops than us. See for yourself: http://www.nationmaster.com/country-inf...ed-States/Crime

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 07 Nov 2014 @ 4:17

712.11.2014 00:57

Don't be too sure this is a freedom issue.....
the article glazes over it but it does state they were earning money to the tune of thousands of dollars

anyone selling bootleg movies SHOULD BE SHOT as far as i am concerned... they are the reason we cannot use our favorite web sites of old...
the RIAA claims they lose US$750 for each download... this claim is so obviously false that they would be laughed out of court. ...but when they can show that just one download results in hundreds, or even thousands of dollars earned (via the wholesale burning and sales of hundreds of bootleg CDs & DVDs) then that gives credence to the absurdity that the movie you and i download is worth twenty to 120 times what you and i would pay for a physical copy of the same movie

the real facts are that without previewing a movie first, i wouldn't pay more than a buck for most movies and my extensive DVD collection probably averages out to under 50 cents a title despite paying $25 for one title after i previewed it via a cam downloaded 6 months earlier (i buy a lot of double and triple features at the dollar store)(BTW: that $25 purchase did qualify me for a "free" dvd so that alone cut the price in half)


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