"Share-Online.biz", the supposedly largest German-language file-sharing portal, has been offline since Wednesday. Investigators, including from Cologne and Aachen, a hit against the alleged operators of the service has succeeded in searches in Germany, the Netherlands and France. For years, copyright-protected works have been illegally available for download through the portal, including feature films, series, porn and music. Investigations of several residential and business properties in the three countries secured extensive evidence on Wednesday, investigators said Thursday.
The investigators themselves do not name the portal. The fact that "Share-Online.biz" is involved, however, is shown by a press release issued by the German Society for the Prosecution of Copyright Infringements (GVU). It states that GVU employees in 2017 filed a criminal complaint against the alleged operator of the service.
According to GVU, "Share-Online.biz" recorded between six and ten million views per month. It is said that "well-known portals such as DDL-Warez.to, Serienjunkies.org or Canna.to" were among the sites that most frequently linked to the portal. The headquarters of "Share-Online.biz" are said to have been located officially in Belize.
Suspects in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt
According to the Cologne Central Office and the Cybercrime (ZAC) North Rhine-Westphalia and the Aachen police, the investigations were directed against three suspects aged 40, 48 and 54 with residences in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt. In addition, servers used by the trio had stood in the Netherlands and in France. The 54-year-old was the main suspect and live in the Aachen area, informs the prosecutor.
There were no arrests. SPIEGEL demand states that there were no grounds for detention. The men are alleged to have helped through the operation of a file-sharing platform in a variety of cases for the commercial unauthorized exploitation of copyright works.
"Incredible amounts of data"
"The operated by the accused online portal represents the current information, the largest operated in Germany Filehoster," the investigators said. There is talk of "unbelievable amounts of data": According to the latest investigation, the main culprit for the operation of the platform rented at least since 2010 at a Dutch provider steadily growing server capacity, most recently in the double-digit petabyte range.
Through the operation of the platform, the three suspects, according to prosecutors from April 2008 to October 2017, have made a turnover of more than 50 million euros.
WayBackMachine
Description of the scoring system of "Share-Online.biz"
The illegal copies were uploaded by registered users in the case of "Share-Online.biz". They were remunerated by the accused on the basis of a points system, in which the file size of uploaded content and the download numbers - so the interest of other users in the uploads - played a role.
According to the Cologne prosecutor Christoph Hebbecker, the procedure is so far only against the alleged operator of "Share-Online.biz". However, Hebbecker expects further investigations. "We'll see if we can identify uploaders and possibly downloaders as well," he told SPIEGEL. "The focus is on the top uploaders." In the case of "Share-Online.biz" are "as a rule" both the uploads, as well as downloads of users crimes.
Users were able to use "Share-Online.biz" on demand with paid premium accounts. The latter were not cheap at all: for 28 days of premium access, for example, 10 euros were due in October and 40 euros for six months. Last 30 months were last for the preferential price of 100 euros.