US raids Net song swappers

U.S. agents have raided the homes of five people who allegedly traded hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and other copyrighted material over the Internet, Attorney General John Ashcroft says.

Until now, the Justice Department has only pursued elite groups of hackers who steal and distribute movies, music and software before their official release dates.

Targeted in the raids were people operating "hubs" in a file-sharing network based on Direct Connect software.

In order to join the network, members had to promise to provide between one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, Ashcroft said.

Each of the five hubs contained 40 petabytes of data, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs, Ashcroft said.