Iceland’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker Shut Down
Written by Ernesto on November 27, 2007Torrent.is, the largest BitTorrent site in Iceland has been taken offline due to efforts from a coalition of anti-piracy organizations. Their request to seize all computer hardware associated with the site was rejected.
Things are heating up in Iceland as they witness the first BitTorrent related lawsuit. Torrent.is, the largest BitTorrent tracker in the country has received a preliminary injunction which has effectively shut down the popular tracker. The case was initiated by four anti-piracy organizations, who filed for the preliminary injunction earlier this month. The regional District Commissioners office granted their request last Monday.
Torrent.is had around 26,500 active users before the site was taken offline, this made it by far the largest and most famous private BitTorrent tracker in Iceland. The tracker only allowed Icelandic IPs to connect to their tracker to ensure fast connectivity between peers.
The tracker was founded in May 2005 and used TBSource , it only recently started to generate media attention, which led to its downfall. The site is owned by Istorrent ehf., which is a company established for that purpose.
Svavar Kjarrval, the head administrator of Torrent.is is determined to put up a fight as he told TorrentFreak: “I’m going to fight this as far as I possibly can. The general public seems to be on our side.”
As a result of the takedown, Snæbjörn SteingrÃmsson, the executive the Icelandic equivalent of the MPAA (SMAIS), received death threats and other hatemail. SMAIS is one of the four organizations that requested the takedown of Torrent.is and has been the leading war against filesharing in Iceland and it can be safely said that Mr. SteingrÃmsson is one of the most hated people in the country.
The war on BitTorrent is getting tougher with (upcoming) lawsuits in Canada, The Netherlands, Hungary and of course the U.S. The question that remains unanswered, however, is whether it is illegal to host, or even link to .torrent files that point to copyrighted material. There is no reason for BitTorrent’s popularity to wane until that’s cleared up.
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk47)
Next: Etology Removes All BitTorrent Sites From Their Ad Network
129 Responses
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 » Show All
Heard some rumor about Thepiratebay wanting to host torrent.is for us.
The downfall of torrent.is if affecting the whole country.
Because now people are downloading their stuff from abroad which is pushing the connection from Iceland to the limits.
The thing is that people don’t seem to understand that the whole connection from Iceland to other countries isn’t even enough to serve the third biggest internet company in Iceland.
And now i’m only talking about that company and no one else.
I’m pretty much sick and tiring of hearing people whine about their download speed being slow… there’s nothing you can do about it!!
The country just doesn’t have the capacity to support it!
[quote comment="226418"][quote comment="225680"][quote comment="225539"]
Maybe you should try to do a spot of thinking before making comments that do nothing but prove your own lack of intelligence. It’s easy for someone like you, who lives with free download, to sling mud at us Icelanders for trying to not pay hundreds or thousands of dollars each month in download fees, but for us it’s real serious stuff. Most of us don’t have rich daddies that can pay the download fees that we would be charged, if our trackers were open to the world.
However, I’d welcome you to please move here and live here and download to your heart’s content, and share it at will with others in the world.. just don’t come crying to me when you can’t pay your phone bill.[/quote]
My apologies, I did not realize that Icelanders pay by the download. However, I still stand by my opinion that this sort of behavior is no different from rabid leeching where you take but don’t share. Most private trackers ban people for this sort of behavior since it hinders file distribution. As Icelanders, maybe you should do more to petition your government to build a better telecommunications infrastructure or initiate market pricing reforms.[/quote]
Hello; I’m North American, by the way. Honestly, if you, right now, as a person, decided to have your country invest a few hundred million/a few billion (depends where you are) in doubling your broadband capabilities, you would not get very far.
Your civility in response, and your creative thought in response, were admirable;
just that in reality, a) nobody cares, b) it wouldn’t work.
I appreciate your point though; and I agree that in countries where you are NOT taxed extra for international transfers (you and me, friend), we should seed as much as reasonably possible.
well, I’ll try to make my point (b) a _little_ bit less ignorant by explaining, even if people DID care it _probably_ wouldn’t work [see first paragraph].
I heard the sweedish goverment were planning on taking legal action on “thepiratebay.org/” and it will take place in january next.
Man this really sucks
My whole school (600 student’s) were using torrent.is it just spread around the whole school and to every friend of theirs and all that
I knew alot of people even just 11 years old and over that were using istorrent
(most people in my school including me could download unlimited amount without paying)
i am learning php and c++ and i’m thinking on starting some torrent site or something like that…or atleast some kind of a site
so does anyone know Svavar Kjarrval’s email? couse on dci.is
(dci.is is some other site now) he put the whole .php files from istorrent on that site before it closed and it closed before i finished downloading it
so the whole istorrent site was put on dci! all the .php scripts!!! and i am learning php so that would really have helped me! so i really need his email and ask him to put that on the piratebay or some site
so where can i contact him? is he active on some forum?
he is an admin on http://www.hugi.is/
i am learning php and c++ and i’m thinking on starting some torrent site or something like that…or atleast some kind of a site
so does anyone know Svavar Kjarrval’s email? couse on dci.i
Hey!! patriotx what are you doing posting with my nick? btw he’s not a admin on hugi who put you up to this? stealing my nick and talking some bullshit over here.
And you Icelandic Guy
The code on dci.is was a old Istorrentcode from autumn 2006 or when SMAIS originally send Svavar the much talked about “letter”, you know when he wasn’t sure weather he would close the site or not, so in case something did happen he put the source code for the site on the net.
If you want to get in touch with Svavar then contact me through http://www.hugi.is PM I have the same nick there as I do here.
Extra info on Istorrent: Members that were inactive for more than 2 weeks, (later 2 months) on Istorrent had theyr membership discontinued.
Istorrent functioned with a invitation key system whereas no one could join unless he or she had been invited by another member.
Istorrent also had a unique function namely a link whereas copyrightowners could send in a complaint over the sharing of theyr copyrighted material, provited they supply all the neccasary evidents ofcourse.
The strange thing is almost no one used this function of the web, but it served a powerful purpose as a argument against the organizations that were trying to close the site down, one local singer was the only one that is reported to have used this function and after verifying the supplyed information with the complaint the torrentfile in question was taken off the site.
This happened just b4 the site got a close down notice so one might say the copyright organizations don’t want they r members settling cases directly with local P2P networks, coz it undermines they r power and authority, which is obviously a good thing.
Anyway I’m in this P2P biz too over here in Iceland for some years and also have had my computer confiscated and sued and all that shit, but I don’t dig a hole and live in it for the rest of my live that much is 4sure and if I know Svavar Kjarrval right then he’s not a quitter either and I wish him and his Istorrent all the best, and I believe he has a fair chance of beating this case against him.
PatriotX hættu þessu væli, heldur þú að þú hafir einkarétt á þessu nikki. Hvað um það að önnur manneskja noti þetta nikk, er það skráð vörumerki? Efast um að himinn og jörð farist og að einlægir aðdáendur þÃnir skjóti sig à hausinn vegna þessara skrifa. Er nördaskalinn fylltur með þvà að rÃfast um nikk?
I have no idea how many fuckng times this has to be said, Besides, I don’t know, ON the EFF tor page, on the tor help page, In the tor docs, and on basically everything ever affiliated with Tor.
TOR ISN’T INTENDED FOR BT TRAFFIC, USING IT THAT WAY FUCKS OVER EVERYONE ELSE WHO NEEDS IT FOR REAL PURPOSES.
we are back in business
http://thevikingbay.org/
[quote comment="227418"]I heard the sweedish goverment were planning on taking legal action on “thepiratebay.org/” and it will take place in january next.[/quote]
*Working for Fear Factory
** “I thought I signed up for the band, and all I got was this lousy mafIAA job”
:)
Jóninn nema þú sért staurblindur þá er þetta greynilega Ãslenskur aðili sem er viljandi að villa á sér heimildir, þú hefðir haldi að ég hefði skrifað þetta sem hann gerði ekki rétt?
Og hvað er hann svo að skrifa?
“he is an admin on http://www.hugi.is/
i am learning php and c++ and i’m thinking on starting some torrent site or something like that…or atleast some kind of a site
so does anyone know Svavar Kjarrval’s email? couse on dci.i
”
Eitthvað bull, það er hvað!
Icelandic Guy,
Also thinking of starting up a torrent tracker out of the USA. Want to work together?
M
borate Rutland behemoth,Hattie.padding aborted .
unattended!districts sanding lucks,Buddhism:oriented refueling.Bellatrix absorbent!
lucked?Howard fizzled backtracks sparking boxtops
That’s just zealotry gone mad. After all, you can’t lose what you don’t have (people’s money) so why meddle with them? It’s just begging for trouble. But don’t worry, I’ve never heard of any of these death threats being carried out. If they were though I’m sure it would make a difference to the meddling.
Doesn’t Bjork mean ’spew’ in Icelandic?
advisements acted outrun.dampens hates autistic!cobalt stratospheric
Heinlein darts Newcastle memberships hinders rivers code …
4 references to this post
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 » Show All
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.