Spanish police shut down 23 illegal download sites
Tuesday, February 27, 2018 @ 12:06 AM
GUARDIA Civil officers in Spain have waged war on pirate download sites and have so far blocked 23 of them, with more likely to follow in the next few weeks or months as new domain names continue to be created.
Operation Cascada ('Waterfall') has targeted sites where music, films, serials and video games are distributed via peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing networks from computers without fixed servers or IP addresses.
These unauthorised free downloads are a breach of copyright and cause financial loss to writers, musicians, directors, actors and other persons involved who would normally be paid royalties.
In fact, prolific Spanish novelist Lucía Etxebarría – author of a long string of profound 'chick-lit' works well-known for their mixture of stream-of-consciousness and gritty realism through observing society's hang-ups and plumbing psychological depths – said over a year ago that she did not plan to write any more books as she was earning nothing from them thanks to illegal downloads.
And until they become world-famous, authors and artists in general make very little money from their work.
According to the Guardia Civil, the domain names blocked so far – some very recently created and a few not even launched in Spain yet – had very high traffic with hundreds or thousands of daily hits.
Three of them – Divxtotal.com, Estrenosdtl.com and Gamestorrents.com – were set up by an undisclosed Spaniard who sold them to a firm based in Argentina.
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