Operation Buccaneer

Operation Buccaneer is an "ongoing international copyright piracy investigation and prosecution" undertaken by the United States federal government.

An undercover operation began in October 2000. On December 11, 2001, law enforcement agents in six countries targeted 62 people suspected of software piracy, with leads in twenty other countries. U.S. law enforcement agents, led by the United States Customs Service, raided computers in the economics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Los Angeles, an "off-campus location" of the University of Oregon, and dorm rooms at Duke University and Purdue University. Information obtained led to a subsequent raid at the Rochester Institute of Technology, described by "warez gadfly 'ttol'" as one of "the two major hubs for communications between pirate groups" (along with the University of Twente). However, the universities themselves were not considered targets of the criminal investigation. Several software companies were also raided.