Called Operation Site Down, the crackdown involved undercover FBI operations run out of Chicago, San Francisco and Charlotte, N.C., and involved help from authorities in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
Among those arrested was Chirayu Patel of Fremont, Calif., on charges of violating federal copyright protection laws. Patel is alleged to be a member of a “warez†group, a kind of underground Internet co-op that is set up to trade in copyrighted materials.