As a result of the international investigation, three men believed to be part of an underground software piracy organisation known as 'Fairlight' were arrested in the UK.
The global operation resulted in 120 searches in 10 other countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, The Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and the US. It is the largest multi-national law enforcement effort ever directed at on-line piracy.
The UK arrests took place on Wednesday afternoon, when NHTCU officers together with officers from local forces executed search warrants at three addresses in Belfast, Manchester and Sheffield. Three men, a 30 year-old from Belfast, a 34 year-old from Manchester, and a 22 year-old from Sheffield were arrested.
Recovered from these addresses were cracked software from all types of media, as well as seven computers, more than 100 CD copiers, offensive weapons and counterfeit driving licences and credit cards.
Detective Superintendent Mick Deats, Deputy Head of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit said:
"Intellectual property theft is a global problem that hurts economies around the world. To be effective, we must respond globally. We will always act in partnership with other law enforcement agencies to counteract all forms of hi-tech crime."
In addition to attacking piracy globally, this operation struck at all facets of the illegal software, game, movie, and music trade on-line, which is commonly referred to as the 'warez scene'.
Beth Scott, Vice President of BSA EMEA, commented: "Each time a piracy operation is closed down, the UK takes a step towards capturing the benefits of a reduced piracy rate; improved economies, new jobs and increased tax revenues".
The investigations focused on individuals and organisations that specialise in the internet distribution of pirated materials. Release groups are the first-providers – the original source for most of the pirated works traded or distributed on-line.
Once a release group prepares a pirated work for distribution, the material is distributed in minutes to secure, top-level warez servers and made available to a select clientele.
From there, within a matter of hours, the pirated works are further distributed throughout the world, ending up on public channels on IRC and peer-to-peer file sharing networks accessible to anyone with internet access.
The top release groups are hierarchical, highly structured organisations with leadership positions that control day-to-day operations, recruit new members and manage the group's various computer archive sites.
These groups exist solely to engage in piracy and compete with each other to be the first to place a newly pirated work onto the internet – often before the work is legitimately available to the public.
The release groups targeted by this operation specialise in the distribution of all types of pirated works including utility and application software, movies, music and games.
Among the groups targeted are organisations such as Fairlight, Kalisto, Echelon, Class and Project X, all of which specialised in pirating computer games, and music release groups such as APC.
More than 200 computers were seized worldwide, including 30 computer servers that functioned as storage and distribution hubs. These servers collectively contain hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated works. One of the storage and distribution servers seized in the US contains an estimated 65,000 separate pirated titles.
Other servers seized, so-called "elite" sites, contain the most highly coveted and valuable "new releases," many of which were distributed to the warez scene before they are commercially available to the general public.
Although access to these elite servers is limited, authorised users frequently provide the first copies of new releases that are traded and distributed on-line throughout the world within hours of their initial illegal release.
Globally, conservative estimates of the value of the pirated works seized easily exceed $50 million, and conservative projections of the losses to industry attributable to these distribution hubs are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
An IDC study in 2003 indicates that a 10 percent reduction by the UK's piracy rate from 25 per cent to 15 per cent by 2006 would contribute $17.2 billion to its GDP. It would also directly create more than 40,000 new jobs and generate $4.1 billion in tax revenues to help fund public services.