Large BitTorrent file-sharing site Demonoid shut down

Ukrainian authoritieshave shut down Demonoid.com, one of the largest websites used to sharemovie, TV, musicand other files with BitTorrent peer-to-peer technology.

Investigators raided ColoCall, the data centre in Ukraine that hosts Demonoid's servers, last week, sealing the site's servers and copying information off them,reported TorrentFreak, a blog dedicated tocovering news and information about file sharing, copyright issues and the BitTorrent protocol.

TorrentFreak was started in 2005 by a Dutch blogger and has about 150,000 regular users who subscribe to its RSS feed, according to the site. Italso posts file-sharing-related updateson Twitter, where it has about30,000 followers.

The raidcame a few days after a large denial-of-service attack overloaded Demonoid servers and crippled thesite.

Demonoidis what is known as a torrent tracker, meaning itfacilitates communication between usersuploading and downloadingtorrent fileswith the help offree client software such as Vuze, Torrent or BitTorrent.

The torrent system of sharing files breaks files up into fragments, whichare shared simultaneously and in both directions among a number of peers, who then can continue to sharethefile once they have a complete copy of it.

Trackers haveservers that activelyco-ordinate thesefile transfers, which makes themdiffer from torrent index sites, or indexers, which simply compile links to trackers and act as a type of search engine for torrent files.

Some BitTorrent sites, including Demonoid,act as both trackers and indexers.

Demonoid among most popular torrent sites

Hundreds of torrent websites exsist, but Demonoid was one of the most frequented. The web metrics site Alexa.com ranked it among the top 600 websites in the world in terms of traffic and the top 300 in the U.S.

If past shutdowns of similar sites, including the popular Pirate Bay, are any indication, the Demonoid closureis unlikely to significantly curb torrent file sharingas users switch to other trackers or wait for Demonoid to emerge in a new incarnation or be replaced by new sites.

TorrentFreak reportedthat Demonoid had tried to get around violating Ukrainian copyright law byblockingdomestic IP addresses from accessing it. But that was apparently not enough to keep the authorities away.

One of Demonoid's administrators was arrested in Mexico last fall, and it was that arrest that led Interpol to contact Ukrainian authorities and request that theyshut downthe site's servers in Ukraine.

TorrentFreak citedreports in the newspaper Kommersant-Ukrainethat speculated that the raid might also have been an attempt to show U.S. authorities that Ukraine is getting tough on copyright infringement.

The paperalso reportedthat the ColoCall data centre had repeatedly warned Demonoid before the recent raid that it had been contacted by law enforcement agencies aboutDemonoid's alleged copyright infringementand that if the interest from authorities continued, ColoCall would break its contract with Demonoid.

The tracker did not respond to the warnings so ColoCall agreed to disconnect its servers when anti-cybercrime agents arrived at its offices to inspect the Demonoid servers, Kommersant-Ukraine reported.

'Notorious market' for copyrighted material

Demonoid is one of several torrent tracker and index sitesflagged by U.S. authoritiesas a "notorious market" in which pirated goods are reportedly available.

A U.S. governmentdocumentlisting notorious markets says thatwhile torrent trackers and indices can be used for lawful purposes, theyalso facilitate the dissemination of copyrighted content.

The Demonoid raid is only the latest of several crackdowns on file sharing.In January of this year, U.S. and New Zealand authoritiesshut down the popular website Megaupload,which allowed users tostore and share files on serversthat can beaccessed remotely. Italso appears on the U.S. notorious markets list.

Megauplaod owner Kim Dotcom (as he is officially known) and six of his partners were arrested in New Zealand at the request of U.S. authorities. Theyallege the site's operators were profiting from the theft of copyrighted content through user fees and advertising, and want them extradited to the U.S. to face charges of copyright infringement, racketeering, money laundering and other offences.

Law enforcement officers seized millions of dollars in assets from the operators of the site, including luxury cars, jewelry and jet skis,although a New Zealand judge later ruled that the seizure was unlawful, and police admitted they made procedural errors when carrying out the search warrant.

The U.S. government's case againstMegaupload has been fraught withcontroversy and missteps. A New Zealand judge hearing the extradition request against Dotcom was forced to step down after he referred to the U.S. Justice Department as the "enemy" in a talk on copyrightlaw.

The extradition hearing has since been postponed to March 2013.

Another judge overseeing thematter in the U.S. recentlyquestionedwhether the case will ever make it to trial in the U.S. since thecompany had not been officially served with papers in the U.S. formally charging it with the alleged offences.