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5/29/2006

Police bust major European web pirates

05/29/2006 | Filed under: Updated eBiz News, Internet News, eBusiness/Computerworld — site admin @ 9:37 pm

Bulgarian police charged two men on Saturday for illegally distributing music and films in what officials called one of Europes largest Internet pirate groups.

They arrested an administrator and systems operator for putting download links to 20 million songs — or roughly 3 million albums — and hundreds of films on the web site www.arenabg.com, one of Bulgarias most popular pages.

Users could download as many of the songs and films as they liked after paying a four lev ($2.50) monthly fee. Authorities estimate the damage to the entertainment industry at around $30 million.

These people are among the biggest Internet pirates in Europe said Liliana Yosifova, spokeswoman for the Sofia Investigators Office. We are talking about big losses here.

Police also found three satellite receivers and 200 CDs with pirated movies at the suspects homes, part of what the Interior Ministry said was a high-speed network used to download new movies and songs from foreign pirate sites.



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