The Entertainment Software Association, the video game industry's trade body, has issued congratulations to the Chicago federal grand jury that indicted nineteen men as alleged members of a video game software piracy ring called RISCISO. The indictments came as part of an ongoing anti-piracy operation codenamed Operation Jolly Roger, and the alleged pirates were said to have either removed the copy protection from, duplicated, or otherwise bootlegged over $6.5 million worth of software and movies.
"We applaud the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section for their extensive and continuing efforts to dismantle these online piracy rings that steal millions of dollars of intellectual property," said ESA senior VP of Intellectual Property Enforcement Ric Hirsch.
Operation Jolly Roger, in addition to apprehending the RISCISO members, confiscated Internet servers the group had been operating since 1998, through which enough data had passed to fill 23,000 CD-ROMs, including a large amount of video game-related content.
"Federal law enforcement’s continued focus on -- and success in -- taking down these international warez groups sends a clear message to pirates everywhere that they will be targeted aggressively and are not beyond the law, even if they live outside the United States. Given the harm that these groups cause the entertainment software industry, the ESA will continue to support and assist all law enforcement efforts to stop their pirate activities."
