Acting on detailed information provided by the motion picture industry, federal agents descended on administrators and users of a popular pirate-friendly file-sharing site Wednesday in what the government is calling the first criminal law enforcement action against BitTorrent users.

FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents executed 10 search warrants in nine states in a strike on Elitetorrents.org, a free, members-only BitTorrent aggregator hosted in the Netherlands. On Wednesday, visitors to the site were redirected to a new government-hosted page with a stern warning about the penalties for internet piracy: "Individuals involved in the operation and use of the Elite Torrents network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement."