Demonoid Returns, Forced to Block Canadian Traffic By the CRIA
The popular BitTorrent tracker Demonoid is back online after nearly a week of downtime. The website and the tracker are hosted on the same ISP, but Canadian traffic is blocked thanks to pressure from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).
On the Demonoid frontpage we now read:
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.
This confirms our earlier reports this week, and show that the CRIA was indeed responsible for the downtime. It’s been a controversial week and at times emotions were running really high. In the absence of any official announcement it was really hard to separate fact from fiction, with rumor and counter-rumor.
The bad news of course is that Demonoid is now unavailable to Canadians. Unfortunately it is not the fist time an anti-piracy organization effectively shuts down access to a part of the BitTorrent community. Earlier this week Isohunt had to ban US users from its trackers, and last month TorrentSpy blocked access to US users, both by pressure from the MPAA.
At the time we write this article, the forums are still offline, but it probably wont take long before these are back online too. The first sign of Demonoid’s return came yesterday when the trackers started responding again.
When an avalanche of upset Demonoid users came to TorrentFreak this week, the mood was grim when not only their site disappeared but also doubts were cast on our report. We aim to be a credible news source and understand the responsibility we have in the BitTorrent community. While understanding how Demonoid’s Canadian users must be feeling right now, it’s great that we now get the chance to share in the relief of the majority of Demonoid’s dedicated userbase.
The second most popular BitTorrent tracker on planet earth has returned, that’s the most important thing.
Update: Demonoid is having some problems again, this message now appears: “The latest changes to the site are giving us some problems – We’ll be back soon”
