Piracy has been around as long as people can record things. Copies of vinyl plates or songs on the radio were made to play back later without having to buy an actual copy for yourself. However, with the introduction of the World Wide Web, it became a much larger problem that artists must deal with. Recently, an operation took place to take on one of the biggest piracy networks in the world. Keep on reading to discover more about this big operation!
The Piracy Network Raid Took Place In Over Ten Countries!
To make a decent impact on the reach of this piracy network, police forces from different countries had to work together to pull it off. The operation, called Operation Takendown, was a project that took more than 2 years! During this final raid, police busted doors from people’s houses in the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Germany, the UK, and other countries. During the raid, they seized over 1.65 million in cryptocurrencies, multiple computer servers, and much more.
During this operation, more than 100 sites were taken offline as they were suspected of illegally streaming content for free. In total, 11 arrests were made, and more than 102 are still on a watchlist and being monitored. The operation was done in collaboration with Interpol and was backed by the AAPA, the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance.
The raid was the final event of a 2-year investigation
It took over 2 years to monitor these people’s social media pages, piracy websites, and much more. The Piracy network allegedly would provide pirated content to more than 20 million users. In Europe alone, they would generate over 250 million dollars in monthly revenue! According to Interpol, the people who were arrested were not only responsible for selling pirated content but also for taking part in different crimes such as laundering money and cybercrime.
