Police raid P2P operators across Finland

[007singh]

Police raid P2P operators across Finland in major action against hubs

Finnish police today launched a major crackdown on operators and users of DirectConnect hubs, raiding several premises in the cities including Turku, Oulu and Helsinki metropolitan area.

DirectConnect hubs are servers operated by one or more individuals using software to enable users of the DirectConnect peer-to-peer network to find and download files from other users connected to the same hub. Police are now investigating these cases as suspected copyright infringements, for which the maximum penalty is two years in prison. The criminal complaints were originally filed by the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC).

Antti Kotilainen, CIAPC Director said: “These actions shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. All of these hubs have had several thousand members and their operators were facilitating mass infringement of copyright, involving hundreds of thousands of music files and tens of thousands of movie files. The operators of DC hubs should be aware that we will be filing more complaints in the near future.”

Finland has one of the world’s most advanced online environments yet the country also has one of largest concentrations of copyright-infringing P2P hubs. This is a key factor in the relatively slow development of a legitimate digital music business in Finland compared to other countries.

Today’s actions have been applauded by associations representing international rights holders.

John Kennedy, Chairman and CEO of IFPI, representing the recording industry worldwide said: “We welcome the action taken today by the Finnish police against the operators of illegal P2P hubs. These operators were facilitating mass infringement of copyrighted music, draining investment in the Finnish creative industries and in particular hurting local Finnish acts who represent well over half the music market. The actions announced today, and those that will follow, are a message to illegal DC hub operators - they have no hiding place and their activities will not be tolerated.”

Halli Kristinsson, the Vice-President and Regional Director for anti-piracy operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa., said: “We warmly welcome the Finnish police actions against these hub operators. Nordic countries, especially Finland and Sweden, are among the worst, when it comes to illegal filesharing of movies using DirectConnect.”

Research findings, both in Finland and internationally, consistently support the case for strong action against illegal P2P filesharing in order to help stimulate the growth of the legitimate online business. Leading Finnish research firm Taloustutkimus Oy reported in May that nearly 80 % of Finnish people are aware that unauthorised filesharing of movies and music is illegal. CIAPC estimates that during 2006 there were more than 150,000 active filesharers in Finland, most of them using local Finnish DC hubs.

[mcjalebi]

Direct Connect..............................killed the bhangra industry...........y dont these label in the uk jus F*ck these hubs up ...as they r uk operated ...and u can c the ips of every one

[shalin]

You can't really DC is what killed the Bhangra industry.

This is just something I was thinking about. Why aren't the artists who make the music just being content with the fact that people are actually listening to their music, rather than having the record labels getting law enforcement to screw over everyone who downloads, most of whom probably don't even have the means of getting the music elsewhere, unless they were to spend money for it online, pay for shipping and if they lived in another country, deal with currency exchanges?

You're still going to have people who buy the albums, and you're still going to have people who go to gigs and elsewhere where their music will be played. If they're getting crappy sales, then they should make better albums and stop worrying about how much money they're going to make and focus more on the quality of the music that people are actually listening to...not just something that sounds like you spent five minutes mixing up on ACIDPRO and sold.

Honestly, they should be glad people are listening to and enjoying their music, and sharing it with others, rather than forcing people into buying crap albums based off of 20 second promos off websites, or one song that they hear on the radio or a video they see on TV. Sure it's less likely that if someone has an entire album downloaded that they'll be willing to go out and spend the money for the actual album itself, but to solve that problem, make the albums cheaper. That can help the industry. The more affordable it is to actually go and get the album, the less likely some people are to wait for the albums to finish downloading, especially if they have incredibly slow connections..