Nationwide Anti-Piracy Raids Hit Germany

German police have begun taking a more proactive approach to tackling online piracy with nationwide raids being carried out against suspected offenders.

Cologne's Public Prosecutor announced that more than 400 officers were involved in searching 121 apartments across 14 states.

The authorities were investigating members of Boerse, an online file-sharing forum, which is suspected of hosting copyrighted material ranging from movies, music, software and ebooks.

Files are thought to have been shared amongst the site's 2.7 million users, with uploaders reported to earn referral commissions in the range of several thousand euros a month via cyberlockers.

German police were alerted to the activity by the country's anti-piracy organisation GVU. It claims that Boerse is offering more than 100,000 files illegally, including 13,560 TV shows and 61,776 movies.

The site's terms and conditions stipulate that the sharing of copyrighted material is not permitted, but recent high-profile uploads include the Ben Affleck movie Gone Girl and Taylor Swift's new album 1989.

As reported by the BBC, suspects in the latest set of raids were willing to cooperate with officials.

"The investigating authorities are hoping to gain further insights into the piracy scene on the evaluation of the evidence," they said.

Last month, online movie streaming site Kinox was also raided by German police as part of an extensive anti-piracy operation.

However, at the time of writing both Boerse and Kinox remain online.