Operation D-elite

The Department of Justice, the FBI and Customs & Immigration have taken down a series of BitTorrent sites in the US in "Operation D-Elite."

Blogbook has the story.

"The government strike, known as Operation D-Elite, was executed in California, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Unlike Operation Gridlock, "a similar takedown" of P2P users in August 2004, D-Elite targeted administrators and suppliers of protected content to the Elite Torrent network.

The DOJ press release makes special reference to the fact that Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith "was available for downloading on the network six hours before it was shown in theatres. In the next 24 hours, it was downloaded more than 10,000 times." It concludes by noting that "the Motion Picture Association of America provided valuable assistance to the investigation." Presumably, Operation D-Elite may have been triggered by the recent pilfering of Star Wars III, a film that has earned $108.4M in its first week, according to the Variety Box Office Top 10."