Major Torrent Tracker Back Online After Legal Threats
Major Torrent Tracker Back Online After Legal Threats
October 2, 2007: Popular BitTorrent tracker, Demonoid is back online after legal threats from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) had the site taken down. The only kicker is now the site doesn’t work for Canadian users.
In the latest round of warfare between the recording industry and Torrent tracking sites, Demonoid has come back online after a 5 day absence due to a ‘Cease and Desist’ letter from the CRIA. Music recording and motion picture associations around the world have been attempting similar forms of pressure on BitTorrent groups to try and stop the illegal distribution of copyrighted material.
“We received a letter from a lawyer representing the CRIA, they were threatening with legal action and we need to start blocking Canadian traffic because of this. Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience” said a notice on the Demonoid website when it came back up.
Torrent trackers and Torrent listings are the only two visible parts of a BitTorrent network, which is used for ‘peer 2 peer’ or person to person file transfers. Trackers are the files which assist users in communicating with each other by telling your computer who else has the file and where it can be downloaded from, in effect tracking the file for you.
Torrent listings are websites which display a list of trackers for certain files, and are an entirely separate entity. Demonoid is an extremely popular and widely used BitTorrent tracker, so when it was taken out of action for the past 5 days rumour and speculation about its demise was rife. What really caused the downtime was the CRIA’s letter, and has since seen the website ban all Canadian internet users from using its trackers. This hasn’t stop the majority of users from accessing the tracker, as it can be worked around by a simple proxy change, and is rather being viewed as a move to appease the CRIA without actually effecting the operation of Demonoid’s trackers.
The perpetual game of cat and mouse between the recording industry and BitTorrent sites has heated up lately with victories on both sides of the fence. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has contributed to the blocking of US internet users from several BitTorrent trackers such as Isohunt and Torrentspy in the last week, which is fast becoming the latest tactic in the war on pirates.
There have been several victories in the BitTorrent camps though, as the recent MediaDefender email leak resulting in embarrassing corporate details hitting the public domain has damaged the anti-piracy company. This email leak has lead to the world’s most notorious BitTorrent group, The Pirate Bay launching legal action against several of MediaDefenders Swedish clients such as Sony, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal alleging damage to its trackers was brought about by MediaDefender on behalf of those companies.
“Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we've been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers” said Pirate Bay administrator brokep in a blogpost.
The Pirate Bay has also resurrected the infamous torrent listing site ‘Suprnova’ which was at one point the biggest BitTorrent website on the internet but was taken down due to legal pressure in 2004.
An example of how widespread BitTorrent use has become is a TorrentFreak report which claims the newest episodes of television shows ‘Heroes’ and ‘Prison Break’ have been downloaded via trackers one million times each already, and that’s just two television shows.