IFPI statement on Razorback

London, February 22, 2006

"This is a very significant breakthrough in the fight against internet piracy internationally, removing one of the biggest and most well-known sources of illegal music files on the internet.

This is an excellent example of good cooperation between law enforcement agencies across borders and among the copyright industries in addressing the problem worldwide."

Notes to Editors

In a joint operation police and prosecuting authorities in Belgium and Switzerland on February 21 shut down the infamous file-swapping network Razorback2. Razorback2 was the number one eDonkey peer-to-peer server facilitating the illegal file swapping of approximately 1.3 million users simultaneously. Razorback2 was operated as a commercial enterprise indexing over 170 million files including millions of copyrighted movies, software, games, TV programming and music with international and U.S. titles. The site was regularly used by people located all over the world, with the vast majority of users based in Europe.

See http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_02_21_razer.pdf
for full press release (PDF).

For further information please contact Adrian Strain, tel. +44 (0)20 7878 7939