FBI Cracks Down on Software Piracy

Authorities seized computers in 27 cities on Tuesday, including those on the campus of MIT, in an attempt to crush a long-running international software piracy ring.

A number of individuals in the Boston area—including those at MIT, Northeastern University and corporate offices downtown—have come under investigation.

The raids were not focused on individuals who simply downloaded copyrighted music and video. Rather, authorities raided a group of elite computer hackers whom U.S. officials alleged stole and distributed all types of media, including Microsoft Windows operating systems, computer games and high-quality copies of new movies like Harry Potter and Monsters, Inc.

“Our targets are not your stereotypical teenage hacker,” Customs Service Assistant Commissioner John Varrone told the Associated Press.

Among those questioned about the ring was an unidentified 23-year-old systems administrator at MIT, who allegedly ranks in the ring’s upper echelon, law enforcement officials told The Boston Globe. The administrator, who handles computers in MIT’s economic department, has not been charged in the case.

Individuals affiliated with Northeastern, Duke and Purdue Universities and the University of California at Los Angeles were also investigated.

MIT spokesperson Robert Sales said it is “premature” to say whether MIT will change its network policies.

While no Harvard-affiliated individuals were implicated in the recent raids, Director of Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) Franklin Steen said Internet piracy is always a possibility over the Harvard networks.

However, Steen said HASCS does not investigate students on its own initiative—it merely reacts when a complaint is made about a specific student from an outside source.

“We’re not a police force or a detective agency,” he said.

Steen said the raids would not change how HASCS deals with the issue of copyright infringement by students.

“When we get a complaint from the Music Publishers Association (MPA), that someone on our network is doing something illegal, we immediately take action.”

Typically that action is contacting a student’s senior tutor, who will tell the student to desist from the activity.

Steen said that most of the complaints from organizations like the MPA have not been against students who downloaded copyrighted material, but against those who had distributed it.

The recent federal investigation against software piracy, dubbed “Operation Buccaneer,” has gone on since December 2000, officials said. It has targeted 62 people in Australia, Finland, England, Norway and the United States. The agents said they have leads in 20 other countries.

In Operation Buccaneer, officials targeted one of the oldest pirate rings called “DrinkOrDie.” Founded in Moscow in 1993, DrinkOrDie became famous among software hackers for claiming it released a copy of Microsoft Windows 95 two weeks before Microsoft began selling it.

—Wire reports from the Associated Press were used in the compilation of this story.