FBI raids Elite Torrents

Posted May 25th 2005 6:16PM by Jordan Running

Elite Torrents raid The FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have executed 10 search warrants in the U.S. to take down "leading members" of the movie piracy group Elite Torrents. This is the first criminal raid the federal government has taken against a BitTorrent group. The FBI claims that Elite Torrents distributed more than 17 thousand different films which were downloaded 2.1 million times. CNN Money has the most assinine article on the raid which calls BitTorrent "Hollywood's version of the Napster scourge", and the Elite Torrents site has been hijacked by a hideous FBI notice.

You can read the ICE press release and, if you have more patience than me, enjoy some sort of 83MB promotional video (which they'd save a lot of bandwidth costs on if they'd put it on BitTorrent) they've put out about the raid (screenshot at left).

Via Boing Boing.

Reader Comments

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1. Well people, call me pessimistic, but I think this may be the VERY early begining of the end...

Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Toxic Bomber

2. Dubbed "Operation D-Elite".
It's an obvious "l33t" jibe: oP3R4T10N d3-l33t

Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Leet Haxxor

3. The court case will be interesting, seeing as how torrent files contain no copyrighted data whatsoever.

Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Dustin Rodriguez

4. i find this bullcrap, the torrents have no copyrighted data, i agree with that.. who says the lame fbi can take a site down just cuz they have a little file that says the name of the film, i mean that just inst right, they get our money cuz people download torrents. i just find it bull..

Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by average comusmier

5. does anyone know in which city was stationed the ET server? and where the trial will be held?

Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Boris

6. does anyone know in which city was stationed the ET server? and where the trial will be held?

Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Boris

7. i was an elite user at ET with a 2.1 ratio. ET was one of the best sites ive ever used. it's bullshit what they did the server and owner is supposedly in the netherlands the admins havent been arrested is what ive read they just took there pc's. it was a good run while it lasted but i think it's gonna be hard to share files in the future. RIP ET

Posted at 4:32AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Justin

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