Authorities in Peru have shut down the country's leading 'pirate' websites. With a focus on Spanish language content, Pelis24 (Movies24) and Series24 were popular across all of South America. The sites are now offline following arrests and domain seizures, the first of their type to be carried out in Peru.

For a country with a soaring crime rate, where violent car-jackings and other violent crime are reportedly commonplace, Internet piracy isn’t something that’s been high on the agenda in Peru.

Nevertheless, under pressure from rightsholders, local authorities have now taken decisive action against the country’s most popular ‘pirate’ sites.

On the orders of prosecutor Miguel Ángel Puicón, a specialized police unit carried out searches earlier this month looking for the people behind Pelis24 (Movies24) and Series24, sites that are extremely popular across all of South America, not just Peru.

Local media reports that an initial search took place in the Los Olivos district of the Lima Province where two people were arrested in connection with the sites. On the same day, a second search was executed in the town of Rimac where a third person was detained.

The case was launched following a rightsholder complaint to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Customs Crimes and Intellectual Property in Lima. It stated that three domains – pelis24.com, pelis24.tv and series24.tv were offering unlicensed movies and TV shows to the public.

“In view of the abundant evidence, the office requested measures indicative of the right to the criminal judge. A search was carried out in search of the property and the preliminary 48-hour detention of the people investigated was requested,” authorities said in a statement.

The warrant not only covered seizure of physical items but also the domain names associated with the platforms. As shown in the image below, they now display the following seizure banner (translated from Spanish).

Pelis24/Series24 Seizure Banner

Authorities say that a detailed preliminary investigation took place in order to corroborate the information provided by the complainant. Once the measures were approved by a judge, the Prosecutor’s Office acted in coordination with the Investigations Division of the High Technology Crimes unit to carry out the operation.

According to Puicón, this is the first action against the operators of a pirate site in Peru.

“The purpose was to have the detainees close the sites voluntarily after providing us with the login codes,” he said. “We do not have a technology department, so the specialized high-tech police and complainants were present to preserve evidence.”

Local sources indicate that sentences for piracy can be as long as six years in serious cases. However, Peru has been exclusively tackling counterfeiting of physical discs, with online piracy being allowed to run rampant.

“The Office of the Prosecutor has the competency to deal with crimes against intellectual property but has been working exclusively in cases of physical piracy,” Puicón says.

“Online piracy has another connotation, we must use other procedures, another form of investigation and another strategy. Therefore, the authorities that are aware of these crimes must be trained on technological issues.”

It’s believed that at least a million Peruvians download infringing content from the Internet each week, a problem that will need to be tackled moving forward, when the authorities can gather the expertise to do so.