infoTECH Feature

June 08, 2011

German Film Piracy Website and Offices Shut Down in Coordinated Raids

In the ongoing efforts to eradicate digital piracy in Europe, police in Germany reportedly carried out coordinated raids today in Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands. The raids, which were of offices, apartments and data centers, were in connection with a probe into an Internet film provider called Kino.to which is suspected of breaching copyright rules, German authorities said.

AFP news service reported that police investigating the German-language film website, which is used by four million Internet viewers each day, raided about 20 separate premises. The raids were announced by the office of the prosecutor office in the city of Dresden, which is located in southeastern Germany.

Thirteen people have been detained and one is still being sought, the statement said. It did not specify where the arrests had taken place.

Hollywood Reporter is saying that in Germany alone, according to local anti-piracy group GVU, some 250 police and tax officers as well as more than a dozen computer specialists were involved with the raids.

Shortly after the raid was announced, GVU's website crashed. The group blamed a hacker attack, said Hollywood Reporter.

Kino.to, which streams films over the Internet and has been called the “world's largest German-language piracy website,” is suspected of being involved with a criminal organization and of breaching copyright laws over one million times, the Dresden prosecutor's office said. The website was unavailable on Wednesday, as police reportedly seized the domain name Kino.to.

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Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jamie Epstein
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