Demonoid Is Back Online
Yesterday, we reported that the popular BitTorrent tracker Demonoid was to be resurrected, under a new administrator. Now, less that a day later the site has made its comeback after exactly 6 months of downtime.
A message posted on the Demonoid frontpage confirms that Deimos, the former administrator, left the Demonoid staff. The site seems to be working properly, as does the tracker, but there could be some downtime in the next few days. All the people who had an account at the time the site shut down can still sign in with the same username and password.
The resurrection of the popular BitTorrent traffic marks the end of a tough year for the site. The trouble for Demonoid started back in June last year, when the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN started to put pressure on Demonoid and their ISP, Leaseweb. Deimos decided that the Netherlands wasn’t the safe haven it used to be and he to moved the site to Canada, which resulted in a few days of downtime.
Deimos never really told the administrators or members of the site exactly what was happening. Initially, most members assumed that there was some hardware failure, but after a few days it became clear that Demonoid was more or less forced to move. Maybe there could have been hardware failures too, who knows, but the outcome was the same – Canada here we come.
Relocating the servers to Canada initially solved the problems, but, by the end of September Deimos took Demonoid offline for the second time. Again, nobody knew what was going on until we found out that the CRIA was responsible for the downtime, which was later confirmed by Deimos. It turned out that Canada wasn’t the best choice after all.
After 5 days of downtime the site returned, now blocking all traffic from Canadian users in an attempt to calm down the CRIA. At first it looked like the storm was finally over, but on November 9th Demonoid’s users were welcomed by a disappointing message on the frontpage explaining that the CRIA was indeed responsible for the downtime.
The site never came back after November last year, up until now that is. Let’s hope it lasts this time.
