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Law-enforcement officials have staged at least 47 raids across 21 states in the United States and several other countries as part of a crackdown on a loose network of hackers who trade software online.

According to a statement released by the Justice Department, the raids, which took place on Tuesday, were a culmination of three separate operations lasting a year or more.

The exercises involved the Justice Department, Customs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and several other government agencies.

Raids also reportedly were conducted in other countries including Canada, Australia, Britain, Finland and Norway.

The targets were computer users who trade pirated software files - called 'warez' - over the Internet and DrinkOrDie (DOD), one warez trading group that up until recently ran a Web site and recruited new members online.

DrinkOrDie, which officials estimate to have 40 members, is often credited with having cracked and distributed copies of Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system before it was made available to the public.

Warez sites are common in most countries, including Greater China, but Australia appears to be the only country in Asia-Pacific to have been targeted in these raids.

In one of the US Government operations, the FBI and other agencies set up a warez site of its own, drawing 200 different users who eventually downloaded 12,000 software programs, movies and games, the Justice Department said.

'Those individuals were able to attain first-run movies, the latest computer games, and versions of notable software products even before they were publicly introduced,' the agency's press release said.

Those under investigation now include computer programmers, university students and industry executives, according to some news reports.

Early reports said raid sites included Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Oregon, University of California in Los Angeles and Purdue University.

Groups such as DrinkOrDie are often made up of computer experts who profess to be involved for the challenge rather than for profit. Many communicate via Internet relay chat (IRC) more than on public Internet pages.

One DrinkOrDie member named Bandido, who has kept a higher profile than some of the other members of his group, gave an interview to warez information site defacto2 where he identified himself as a Briton living in Australia.

He told the site of how carefully the group chose its potential members.

'I have personally rejected a great number of applicants who did not fit our personality type,' he said. 'DOD is actually a close-knit family.'

Bandido also warned of the dangers of warez trading activities.

'I hope more people start to realise that we play a dangerous game,' he said.

'We are not protected by obscurity, we are not invisible.

'Be careful, this is not a game we play and prison is not a nice thing, guys.'

Computer hackers trading warez have been the subject of raids before, though this week's raids are perhaps the biggest and most concerted effort US officials have ever made in moving against such groups.

Groups credited with assisting the stings include the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, Sega Corp and the Motion Picture Association.

Such groups estimate that they suffer US$12 billion a year in lost software sales, while the groups targeted now are said to be responsible for US$1 billion worth of illegal software.

No arrests were made in the US raids, though computers were seized and officials said they believed they had targeted some of the most crucial members of what was believed to be a worldwide 1,500-person network that trades files over the Internet.

Identifying some of the targets by their online names, Dezzy, Hackrat and ForceKill, officials told the press that their aim was to disrupt DrinkOrDie's usual operations.



Authorities swoop on DrinkOrDie 'warez' trading suspects in worldwide crackdown