27/06/2011

After the blow dealt to the illegal download portal Kino.to at the beginning of June and the investigation carried out by the Public Prosecutor General of the Free State of Saxony, two more portals have been closed down: movie2k.to and neu.to, which were allegedly linked to the same network.

Shortly after the charges against the owners of Kino.to were announced, the portal drei.to, a well-known site for downloading video-games, films and music, was offline, only two months after being bought by its current owner. It looks like the police and legal action have sown fear among other illegal download providers.

According to the online edition of German weekly Der Spiegel, the main accused in the network was previously sentenced in 2004 by the Public Prosecutor of Leipzig to pay a fine of €3,900 for distributing up to 15 major Hollywood hits on their website saugstube.to.

Although the legal action resulted from a complaint made by the GVU (Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Uhreberrechtsverletzungen e.V), the Society for the Prosecution of Violations of Intellectual Property Rights in Germany, its president Matthias Leonardy was quick to assure people that the organisation has no intention of taking legal action against users of the portal.

(Translated from Spanish)