"Three Arrested As Police Swoop on Rapidshare Link Forum"

[dice]

An Internet forum which provided links to movies and TV shows hosted on sites such as Rapidshare has been raided by police. Following an anti-piracy group investigation, three alleged operators of the 30,000 member site were arrested, two of which were teenagers. Searches were carried out on members in three other locations.

With 30,000 members Filmowisko was a prominent file-sharing forum. The site didn’t host any illicit material, but like many of its type, linked to movies, TV shows, music and other warez stored on hosting sites such as Rapidshare.

“Forum administrators are not responsible for content written by users. The files placed here by users are only for promotional purposes. After 24 hours you must delete all files downloaded from this forum,” said the disclaimer on the front page of the site before it disappeared.

Polish police and the Foundation for the Protection of Audiovisual Creativity (FOTA) anti-piracy group clearly didn’t think the disclaimer counted for much, and on February 12th conducted raids against the site’s operators.

During the raid last Friday, police say they arrested three individuals on suspicion of running the site – a 21 year-old computer science student and two teenagers aged 16 and 17 – and also conducted searches on site members in three other locations.

Equipment was seized including 6 computers and 150 DVDs and CDs which allegedly contained copyright infringing content.

After lengthy questioning the 21 and 17 year-olds were released and now face copyright infringement charges which carry a maximum 5 year prison sentence in Poland. The 16 year-old, who was reported yesterday as still being detained, will be dealt with by the family courts.

The police, who are still to officially confirm the name of the site, say that “streaming movies” were also available via the forum and that those arrested benefited financially from operating the site as they collected revenue from advertising.

They add that the collected evidence is being examined by experts in order to assess the level of damages suffered by the creators of the films and music whose work was linked to by the site.

Anti-piracy group FOTA, which awards the police with “Golden Plate” accolades for carrying out piracy crackdowns on their behalf, will undoubtedly be pleased with this result.

Source: TorrentFreak

 

[FluffyLunamoth]

Just goes to show that disclaimers mean jack shit...

 

[XWolf]

Maybe I am being blind and not seeing it but... What country was this in?

 

[Llama Riot]

Polish police and the Foundation for the Protection of Audiovisual Creativity (FOTA) anti-piracy group clearly didn’t think the disclaimer counted for much, and on February 12th conducted raids against the site’s operators.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

Doesn't come right out and say it, but it seems to be Poland.

 

[XWolf]

Doh!!!

I was being blind then!

 

[Hop2089]

5 years and I thought the fines in America and Australia were bad.

 

[Cermage]

Forum administrators are not responsible for content written by users.

they should have just left their disclaimer at that. the 24 hour things implies they promote downloading of whatever they're sharing.

 

[syko5150]

5 years and I thought the fines in America and Australia were bad.

“The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.”

this is the american FBI warning its the same 5 years

 

[CyrusBlue]

An Internet forum which provided links to movies and TV shows hosted on sites such as Rapidshare has been raided by police.

Serves them right.

 

[Raika]

Rapidshit sucks, serves them right.

 

[Panzer Tacticer]

The lesson here, you can say whatever you want on your site, but the law is the law and the brutal truth is the law doesn't give a flying fuck for your statements, your opinions, and 'interpretations' of right and wrong.

At the end of the day, it's better to know what the law thinks and not what your internet friends think.

And remember, it's important where your butt is, and where the site is. Because where your butt is located matters as much as where the site is located.

GBATemp does not offer files, so what. I bet plenty of countries could find a case for shutting the site down all on the basis that this place is a veritable training ground for piracy.
But that is just my own opinion eh. And just where GBATemp is located is what counts to whether they need to care.

I constantly get quite the laugh listening to overly self important individuals 'explain' the facts on a host of issues. Most of them usually only succeed in displaying a dreadful lack of real experience in dealing with the real world off the computer.

 

[Evilmaster1985]

Eh and Megaupload is not in trouble?
They are aprox doing the same thing. (As in hosting copyrighted material.)

Using a search engine allows you to find copyrighted stuff on it easy.

 

[Rydian]

Rapidshit sucks, serves them right.

That's amazingly self-centered, saying they deserve punishment because the named service from the news article is one you dislike.

That's like, record-breaking self-centered.

 

[FluffyLunamoth]

Rapidshit sucks, serves them right.

That's amazingly self-centered, saying they deserve punishment because the named service from the news article is one you dislike.

That's like, record-breaking self-centered.

No. Rapidshare really does just suck that much. And there are plenty of forums that have almost only rapidshare links. May be selfcentered, but the sooner it gets shut down, the sooner people stop using it and use something better like MEdiafire or Megaupload, making all of our lives easier.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Rapidshit sucks, serves them right.

That's amazingly self-centered, saying they deserve punishment because the named service from the news article is one you dislike.

That's like, record-breaking self-centered.

No. Rapidshare really does just suck that much. And there are plenty of forums that have almost only rapidshare links. May be selfcentered, but the sooner it gets shut down, the sooner people stop using it and use something better like MEdiafire or Megaupload, making all of our lives easier.

Rapidshare is fine if you pay for an account. People think "Oh RS sucks" because it's utter shit when using it for free. And it is. If you pay for it on the other hand, it's more than fine.

 

[Rydian]

No. Rapidshare really does just suck that much. And there are plenty of forums that have almost only rapidshare links. May be selfcentered, but the sooner it gets shut down, the sooner people stop using it and use something better like MEdiafire or Megaupload, making all of our lives easier.

So you're saying rapidshare sucks so much that people using it instead of other services deserve jail time. You dislike downloading from rapidshare instead of other services so much, that you'd like the people using it put in jail, because it seems to be that much of a hassle to you when people upload to rapidshare instead of other services.

I have met 3 year olds more mature than you two. You need to see a counselor or something, that's honestly not a healthy method of thought. That's actually an unhealthy way to think and it concerns me, I'm not kidding.

 

[Cermage]

Rapidshit sucks, serves them right.

That's amazingly self-centered, saying they deserve punishment because the named service from the news article is one you dislike.

That's like, record-breaking self-centered.

No. Rapidshare really does just suck that much. And there are plenty of forums that have almost only rapidshare links. May be selfcentered, but the sooner it gets shut down, the sooner people stop using it and use something better like MEdiafire or Megaupload, making all of our lives easier.

Rapidshare is fine if you pay for an account. People think "Oh RS sucks" because it's utter shit when using it for free. And it is. If you pay for it on the other hand, it's more than fine.

Frankly, RS isn't that great when it comes to its premium services as well. can't remember the exact figures. but you can only download so much a month. Go over the limit, You can't use the services everyone pays for. The main reason why people still use it is because everyone still has accounts from when its premium&free service was quite decent. Most forums are making their way to hotfile, megaupload, ifile.it or mediafire.

 

[FluffyLunamoth]

Rapidshit sucks, serves them right.

That's amazingly self-centered, saying they deserve punishment because the named service from the news article is one you dislike.

That's like, record-breaking self-centered.

No. Rapidshare really does just suck that much. And there are plenty of forums that have almost only rapidshare links. May be selfcentered, but the sooner it gets shut down, the sooner people stop using it and use something better like MEdiafire or Megaupload, making all of our lives easier.

Rapidshare is fine if you pay for an account. People think "Oh RS sucks" because it's utter shit when using it for free. And it is. If you pay for it on the other hand, it's more than fine.

Frankly, RS isn't that great when it comes to its premium services as well. can't remember the exact figures. but you can only download so much a month. Go over the limit, You can't use the services everyone pays for. The main reason why people still use it is because everyone still has accounts from when its premium&free service was quite decent. Most forums are making their way to hotfile, megaupload, ifile.it or mediafire.

Plus there's also the fact that you have a REALLY high chance of getting phished because of Rapidshare. All of the other ones don't really have the amount of limitations that'll piss the shit out of everyone.

But no, I didn't mean to imply that using Rapidshit means you should go to jail. Just that people need to stop using what sucks so horribly compared to everything else.

 

[Cermage]

you'll only get phished if you're being completely stupid about where you sign in. its the same for any other filehost, its just rs gets targeted because its the most popular. i've seen a few mu and filefactory phishers as well. its quite easy to avoid phishing, and its quite easy to know when you've been phished as well.