Takedowns

While sites are protected with technologically advanced schemes, law enforcement operations such as Operation Buccaneer and Operation Fastlink have been able to gain access and shut down sites by infiltrating the pirate groups that operate on them. Other significant law-enforcement attack on the warez scene were Operation Site Down and there were also busts in June 2006, with one US.biz site being busted.

Not all takedowns are successful. Operation Bahnhof failed miserably when the officials entered an area that their warrant didn't include. Although they found several servers and terabytes of illegal material, they ended up being sued for illegal tresspassing, harassment and accused of planting evidence, as one of the Swedish anti-piracy group employees was trying to infiltrate the scene to gather evidence, and in doing so violated Swedish laws against entrapment.

Operation Buccaneer
On December 11, 2001, in an international operation known as "Operation Buccaneer", law enforcement agents in six countries targeted 62 people suspected of software piracy, with leads in twenty other countries. Raids were conducted in the US, Britain, Australia, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Five people were arrested in England; in the United States, no arrests were made on the day of the raids, pending review of materials seized. Busted were the site DoD and a lot of it's members and people from the releasegroup Razor1911 and RogueWarriorz.

Operation Fastlink
In april, 2004, raids occurred in similar fashion to those from Operation Buccaneer. The operation led to the successful busts of nearly 100 individuals involved in piracy worldwide. There were around 120 total searches executed in 27 states and in 10 foreign countries. Foreign searches were conducted in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden as well as Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was the biggest operation against piracy ever. Among the prolific warez release groups targeted by Fastlink were Fairlight, Kalisto, Echelon, Class, DEViANCE (All games) and Apocalypse Production Crew and Chromance.

Operation Site Down
Operation Site Down was the umbrella name for a law enforcement initiative conducted by the FBI and law enforcement agents from ten other countries which resulted in a raid on targets on June 29, 2005. The raid consisted of approximately 70 searches in the United States and approximately 20 others in Canada, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, UK, Germany and a few more. The bust was an effort to disrupt and dismantle many of the leading warez groups. Affected groups were RiSCiSO, Myth, TDA, LND, GFZ, HOODLUM, VENGEANCE, Centropy, WastedTime, AGCS, ThP, Corrupt, Gamerz, ADMiTONE, Hellbound, KGS, BBX, KHG, NOX, NFR, CDZ, TUN and BHP. Affected topsites were LAD, CHUD, SC, VS, TNA, and BB from the US, RSN and TWH from The Netherlands and LW from Lithuania.

European Raids Early 2007
On 25 january 2006, local police in a wide spread coordinated effort raided over 300 homes and offices associated with top warez providers. The raids took place in Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic. A total number of 30 individuals were arrested in the raids. Probably the GVU got in one of the sites by paying for at least for one of the servers hardware. It looks like the site IOH (Island Of Hope) was more or less a GUV honeypot, attracting the spread members of the release groups. The raids also yielded over 20 servers, all serving as FTP sites. The following top providers, mostly German groups, were eliminated; RELOADED, KNiGHTS, TFCiSO, Cinemaniacs, German-Friend, ParadieseBeach, Klapsmuehle, Unreality, DRAGON, Laboratory, Heaven, Code Talk, GTR, ECP, TRCD, AOS, MRM, SITH, GWL, Cine VCD, and AHE. kHz quit the scene after the news. In addition, the leader of RELOADED was reported as arrested during the raids. Click here for more info about the bust.

Apart from the topsites and releasegroups, other groups in the scene also get bused. FXP boards seem to be rather safe, though hackers get busted from time to time. Peer-to-peer users, who relatively do much less harm than releasegroups and topsites, are a lot easier to bust and therefore often p2p-users get sued.

You can find A LOT more info on the defacto2 website.