Forced Exodus of BitTorrent Sites Is Imminent
Written by Ernesto on November 23, 2007The Dutch ISP LeaseWeb can’t take the pressure from BREIN anymore. As a preliminary measure they have now ordered dozens of BitTorrent sites - including some big-shots - to pack their stuff before December 1st, leave LeaseWeb and find a new home.
Last week we reported that LeaseWeb forced SumoTorrent to move to another ISP due to pressure from BREIN. In that article we published a list of other potential BRIEN targets hosted by LeaseWeb (we left out dozens of other sites) including mybittorrent.com, btmon.com, btjunkie.org, seedpeer.com, what.cd and waffles.fm.
Over the past few days several admins of the sites in this list confirmed to TorrentFreak that they indeed got a letter from LeaseWeb in which they were asked to move their websites before the end of the month. At this point it is not sure whether the dozens of other, mostly smaller private BitTorrent communities, received a similar letter. A questionable request since BitTorrent sites are not considered to be illegal according to Dutch law.
However, it seems that LeaseWeb has succumbed to BREIN’s pressure as it orders its clients to take all BitTorrent related material from their servers before December 1st. LeaseWeb takes this proactive measure to protect their clients they say, but it’s not needed since the court order that BREIN has applies ONLY to everlasting.nl and not to all other BitTorrent sites
One of the biggest mistakes they made in the process is to hand over the personal details of the SumoTorrent administrator. Somehow LeaseWeb was under the impression that they had to give this information to BREIN, thereby violating the privacy of one of their clients. This mistake also contradicts a statement LeaseWeb gave earlier this week to ISPam.nl, where they said that they are not allowed to give customer information to a third party without a funded request.
One of the big questions right now is where on earth all the BitTorrent sites will go now that LeaseWeb is a no-go. There are still some other options in The Netherlands and countries like Canada and Sweden, but they are slowly running out of alternatives.
LeaseWeb announced that it will appeal the decision in the everlasting.nl case, “LeaseWeb has filed an appeal and will keep fighting for its client’s privacy and right of freedom of expression up to the highest court.” We wish them well.
Previously: Marvel and DC Comics Join Forces to Target BitTorrent
Next: Poor Anti-Pirates: E-mail About Leaked IFPI Email Gets Leaked
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I wonder how long before TPB actually goes down again too..
not btmon!!!!!
Any good alternatives for a superindexer?
All these trackers should go to nforce or host with respectful thepiratebay!
this is a good choice!
and a BIG FUCK YOU goes to BREIN!
LeaseWeb are gonna lose soo much money from people moving there trackers and boxes.
not that they shouldn’t after folding under the pressure like this
Offshore Malaysian hosting http://shinjiru.com/
btjunkie is amazing. Damn.
Shinjiru give into MPAA takedown requests. Nforce is hosted at leaseweb.
The only good places left are with isohunt in canada (neutraldata) or prq in sweden. It makes you wonder if there will be any places left soon. :(
This European ISP has crumbled before the threats of the global (ie American) record industry, even though the target of mere torrents is completely legal, and it is the act of targeting it and forcefully oppressing it which is illegal.
Is this all so surprising? While there is any _possible_ moral precedent for the global content control industry to legally suppress all torrent sites on the planet they will - and there IS a moral precedent: that the content is being taken by people who do not pay for it. Theft is occurring.
It does not matter that binary choices are literally to screw or be screwed, to steal vast amounts of money from the content controllers or to let them steal vast amounts from you; nor does it matter that a middle ground should be found.
Either way, EMI steals from you ($1 for the CD, $1 for the artist, $1 for the behind-the-scenes guys, and $16 because we can, and you can’t stop us); or else you steal from EMI (”huh, I wonder if I like these 70 albums; I guess I’ll check them all out, and buy the ones I like).
everyhting goes through its rough patches, torrents are having theres atm. we shall previal.
I’d just like to say, moral and legal precedents in favor of fair-market-commerce are slowly but surely occurring in the background, thanks only to the EFF and one or two others, and this may be ever so gradually slowing the juggernaut that is the cartels.
In the meantime, while the cartels continue their unstoppable process of finding and controlling the few first world countries on the planet which are willing to give legitimate freedoms a chance, there is only one choice: evolve. Decentralize. Become un-sueable. It has been said that they can’t sue all the people who use p2p; so be it.
But effectively all the people who use bittorrent are dependent on torrent-sites. How many of those are there: 50? 100? 1000?
And here is where the instant death comes in: how many countries are they hosted in: 5? 10? 15?
Because let me tell you, not too many countries are allowing grey torrent sites to exist, and the organized music cartel is going after those few, one at a time. Denmark will fall. Canada will fall. Sweden will fall.
The industry will take over the world of bittorrent if we remain so centralized; we MUST evolve!!!
Iran?
Use the same unstoppable tactics that malware uses to beat DPI, network security, and professional analysists every day;
check it out!
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071120-making-malware-unprofitable-economics-key-to-slowing-hackers-down.html
(in case it didn’t all paste, the link ends in “.html”)
BREIN needs taking down a peg or two. BREIN-Defenders anywhere?
Mexico
hmmm
no one can stop sharing movies.
lots of DC++ networks, more powerful then bittorrent.
it’s impossible to shut down share world. there will be a way to share with each other.
why MPAA/RIAA and other groups are so dumb ? they never knew about DC++ ?
they should check them first before jumping on bittorrent sites.
DC++ is the first place where files born.
All trackers should be hosted in Russia - Moscow.
[quote comment="221325"]
All trackers should be hosted in Russia - Moscow.[/quote]
russian hosting is crap IMO
canadian hosting is decent, but i think sweden would make a better place
I hear that the Mexican government is close enough to the US gov that if the cartel really leaned on it, it would cave in too.
Good point though; Russia is still a wild card, in that its still “prickly” enough not to bend over to the states (especially over something as ultimately trivial as filesharing), plus the Russians still have the global power and influence to back up that opinion.
China too; sure they are communist and have clamped down on every freedom they can, BUT the people are so used to dealing with it, and the system is so corrupt, that I cannot foresee their underworld NOT existing; always a possibility of hosting etc there.
I guess it could go in either of these guys, as long as there is a profit involved.
But should we seriously bend have all of Western Europe and North America bend over and kiss its kneecaps like that? Doesn’t really seem like a solution….
I’m really in favor of evolving the current generation of p2p.
I love http://www.myBittorrent.com, it’s one of the best Bittorrent sites.
It’s a shame to see http://www.myBittorrent.com move, but thankfully nobody will even notice that they moved.
As long as ThePirateBay and MiniNova lives on, I’m not worried. The day they die, the p2p community is in serious trouble.
And that’s what people get for not standing up for themselves while they aren’t breaking any laws.
Real pirates don’t hide in the shadows.
Maybe all these sites can go to where demonoid is running next, well that is until some lawyer sends another letter…
[quote comment="221330"]I hear that the Mexican government is close enough to the US gov that if the cartel really leaned on it, it would cave in too.
I don’t think so, Mexico is a country with much piracy and corruption.
I live in Mexico. Fuk the MPAA/RIAA!!
Huck Finn, could you give an example for one spamming technique and how it would be useful in this context? I’ve read the article and didn’t notice anything interesting. Actually, one worm uses the ed2k protocol which means spammers are learning from P2P developers and not vice-versa. I mean, ed2k and Gnutella are already decentral, distributed and well-established. In fact, you could think of BitTorrent as a stripped and somewhat optimized version of those protocols. Obviously centralization comes at a price. The real and common problem is lack of anonymity. Completely anonymous file-sharing is possible but due to bandwidth concerns, I doubt it will become popular anytime soon. Something more realistic would be hosting torrent sites via I2P because .torrent files are tiny compared to the actual shared files. Sites hosted at the I2P-internal .i2p domains are really anonymous and not available outside of the I2P network. TOR would not help here because it anonymizes the client-side but not server-side. However, as long as it requires significant work (more than one click) on the user-side to access I2P, this is not going to reach a critical mass.
[quote comment="221336"]As long as ThePirateBay and MiniNova lives on, I’m not worried. The day they die, the p2p community is in serious trouble.[/quote]
mininova doesnt have a tracker
[quote]China too; sure they are communist and have clamped down on every freedom they can, [/quote]
They’re not communist…
To Anonymous;
I stand by my statements, but good point.
I say what I say, because evidently media-defender was able to infiltrate the torrent network, and it seems that Comcast is running some sort of packet inspection - be it DPI or not - which is successfully blocking out torrent use.
From personal experience, somewhere in my packets journey, they all get blocked, whether on gnutella, torrent, or Areas.
I quoted that article because it indicated that there is a set of “protocols” out there which are successful in bypassing all of the tools used against them, _unlike_ gnutella and torrents.
Incidently, I’m interested in that torrents via i2p concept you mentioned; could you mention a source for (DIY) data on that, or is this public bulletin board in inappropriate place…
waffles and what have found alternative servers already. This is not going to affect the community that much.
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