Posted by : Anonymous on Jul 04, 2005 - 06:17 AM General

A Fremont man has been arrested in a nationwide FBI sting that penetrated the secretive world of "warez" that the agency describes as a national conspiracy to pirate movies, video games and expensive computer software. The larger investigation -- including possible additional arrests -- is scheduled to be announced today by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and until then FBI officials said they could not discuss the case. But Wednesday, a search warrant affidavit that outlines the investigation was unsealed in San Francisco.
The warrant was for the arrest of Chirayu Patel, 24, of Fremont on charges of violating federal copyright protection laws. Patel, arrested Wednesday, could not be reached for comment.

The affidavit describes how FBI agents posing as warez hardware geeks unmasked a number of large-scale movie and software piracy groups by making massive amounts of computer storage available to the groups.

Ultimately, 27 terabytes of pirated material landed on two FBI servers, and two servers provided by warez members, including first-run movies such as "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," hours after their first showing. A terabyte is a trillion bytes, and a movie typically requires about 6 billion bytes of storage.

Warez groups are described as being run like a kind of co-op, with every member having some responsibility for keeping the enterprise going. Warez is pronounced "wares" and comes from the word "software," according to the Internet dictionary Wikipedia. It is used to describe groups trading copyrighted material. Once a term confined to the computer underground, it has become more commonplace in recent years.

The hierarchy includes "founders" or "leaders" who form the group and scout for new members; "scriptors" who build the site; and site operators who take over the day-to-day running of it. "Equipment suppliers" provide the hardware for the site -- the role apparently played by undercover agents in the sting. "Suppliers" provide the pirated material. "Encoders" devise methods for circumventing copyright protection, and "couriers" gather it and put it on the site. Users obtained free unauthorized access to software or bartered for it on the sites, according to the affidavit.

Patel is alleged to have become a site operator who used one of the undercover servers, uploading video games, architectural software and movies to it. But the investigation has cast a broader net in several U.S. cities and overseas. More arrests are expected to be announced today.

FBI case agent Julie B. Jolie's 11-page affidavit described the investigation, which took place largely over the Internet but ultimately included face-to-face meetings between Patel and the undercover agent, who was not identified.

According to the affidavit, in 2003 an undercover agent began inviting warez operators from all over the country to store pirated material on his site.

As the word spread, more storage space was added and numerous groups began storing their stolen games and films that could be uploaded and downloaded by hundreds of warez members. A member who uploaded three movies to the server was entitled to download one movie, many of them pre-released movies that were placed on the site long before a DVD was released to the public.
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"Batman Begins" was uploaded to the server on June 15 -- the same day it was released in theaters, the affidavit says. "Bewitched" was uploaded two days after its release by a secretive warez member known only as "c2."

The logs of uploaded software include 188 copyrighted applications valued at $379,101 from companies such as Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, Sony, Autodesk and Symantec.

While many movies now have copy prevention systems, warez members known as "rippers" developed ways around that.

Patel allegedly set up hardware and ran a site for a group called Boozers that pirated DVDs, uploading and downloading more than 1.4 terabytes of computer software, games and movies. The material included a copy of "Star Wars II," a $4,350 copy of a server operating system and a $799 Sony DVD production suite.

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