In a collaborative effort with Europol, Bulgaria’s Ministry of Interior, through its General Directorate Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP), has announced the closure of twelve music piracy websites. This operation, conducted under the oversight of the District Prosecutor’s Office in Sofia, was part of EMPACT, the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats.
Despite significant pressure from the United States, including criticism in the USTR’s reports on notorious pirate sites and foreign trade barriers, actions against online piracy remain relatively rare in Bulgaria.
While it remains unclear if the Bulgarian government played a role in the closure of RARBG last year, it is hoped that amendments made to Bulgaria’s Criminal Code in August 2023 will make pirate site investigations more straightforward. The recent operation targeting music piracy may serve as an opportunity to showcase progress in this regard.
The General Directorate Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP), a specialized unit within Bulgaria’s Ministry of Interior, spearheaded this operation. GDBOP is primarily tasked with disrupting organized crime groups and transnational criminal networks and often collaborates with international partners on such endeavors.
In this latest action to combat music piracy, GDBOP worked in conjunction with the Sofia District Prosecutor’s Office and Europol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
According to a statement from GDBOP, the cybercrime police identified the owner of twelve websites that were built and maintained to offer users access to popular music across various countries, allowing them to download tracks in .mp3 format.
The domains of these twelve music piracy sites, cited for numerous violations of intellectual property rights, are as follows:
- downloadmp3bg.com
- baixarmp3gratis.com
- www.tekstove.org
- mp3pesme.com
- mp3piosenki.com
- descarca-muzica.com
- indirsarki.com
- mp3kostenlos.com
- mp3hitove.com
- mp3greek.gr
- xn--3-wtbj.net
- mp3aghani.com
These domains now display a seizure banner in Bulgarian, indicating their shutdown.
Given the linguistic cues embedded in the domain names, it’s apparent that many of these sites were likely tailored to cater to an international audience.
For instance, “Baixar” translates to “download” in Portuguese, indicating a likely focus on Portuguese-speaking users. Similarly, “descarca-muzica” suggests a target audience in Romania, as it translates to “download music” in Romanian. “Mp3kostenlos,” on the other hand, is German for “mp3 free,” indicating a probable audience in Germany. “Indirsarki.com” likely targeted Turkish users, while “mp3greek” speaks for itself.
The domain “xn--3-wtbj.net” employs Punycode, an encoding system for domains containing non-ASCII characters, representing the Cyrillic domain “мп3.net.”
Interestingly, nine of the targeted domains are registered with Dynadot in the United States.
This operation, conducted within the EMPACT framework (European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats), involved coordination with Europol. EMPACT aims to identify, prioritize, and address threats posed by organized and serious international crime through collaboration between law enforcement authorities, the judiciary, EU agencies, customs and tax offices, and private partners. Approximately 200 operational actions are carried out each year under EMPACT, according to Eurojust, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation.
While the specific reasons for targeting these particular sites under EMPACT have not been disclosed, authorities have reportedly identified the operator of the sites, although no arrests have been reported yet.
