What the Gamato ...! EPOE complaint leads to takedown

From Greek IP practitioner Nikos Prentoulis comes the news that last week, following the filing of a criminal complaint by the EPOE (Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works - a collective rights management society), the Electronic Crime Unit of the Greek police took down the most famous Greek site for illegal music and movie downloads -- gamato.info. [Explanation by Nikos: "gamato" means very cool, but it stems from the greek word gamo, rendered in the English language by a four-letter expletive much favoured by TV chefs and footballers]. The police raided premises in four Greek cities, including Athens and Thessaloniki, and arrested six people, as moderators and/or "VIP" members of the site. Criminal procedure has been initiated against five more people, two of whom are said to be living abroad.

According to the news (here in English; here in Greek), Gamato essentially provided torrents for P2P file sharing and apparently had more than 850,000 to 900,000 member-users. There was also a good deal of protest against the takedown of the site, including creation of a relevant Facebook group.