Authorities Bust Largest Hungarian Movie Piracy Group

The Hungarian authorities have recently raided several premises and shut down the server center belonging to the largest movie piracy group in Hungary, named CiNEDUB.

According to the blog TorrentFreak, reporting on the latest news on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, the authorities seized 10 servers with hundreds of terabytes of pirated material including 6,000 games, 5,000 movies, 4,000 songs and 500 pieces of software. The police also found equipment that permitted large-scale production of pirated material, stashes of money, evidence of cocaine use and a shotgun. Two out of nine group members have been arrested.

CiNEDUB is allegedly responsible for illegal camcording and sale of new releases. The Hungarian authorities say the pirated material was sold via Short Message Service (SMS) payment systems and bank transfers.

Earlier this year, major Hollywood studios discovered that certain pirated movies could be traced back to movie theaters in Hungary and pushed the local authorities to take action. When the movie The Hangover Part II appeared online only a few days after its US premiere, Warner Bros. warned that their movies would not be released in Hungary on or near their US release dates.

The video footage of the raid is available here.

For more information, please contact Masa Lopicic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: Torrent Freak