IFPI Goes After Torrent Site Hosting Providers
Written by Ernesto on May 05, 2009In the aftermath of the Pirate Bay verdict, Sweden has witnessed the demise of many other BitTorrent trackers. But not quite enough according to music industry lobby group IFPI, who are now threatening the hosting providers of torrent sites. The host of private BitTorrent tracker TorrentBytes appears to be one of the first targets.
When the defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were sentenced to one year jail plus a hefty fine, a shock wave went though Sweden’s BitTorrent communities. Several trackers decided to close voluntarily, while others did so after the local anti-piracy bureau applied some pressure.
Despite the fact that the Pirate Bay verdict is to be appealed, the decision is still being used as ammunition by the various anti-piracy outfits, and they have already taken out several trackers across Sweden. More recently, IFPI has discovered a new, more convenient and possibly more effective way to (try to) shut down the remaining torrent sites.
Instead of targeting the tracker owners, IFPI is going directly to the hosting providers with a request to take the sites offline. One of the providers that has received a letter from IFPI is DCP Networks, who rent servers to TorrentBytes – one of the larger BitTorrent trackers.
IFPI goes after TorrentBytes’ Hosting Provider.
In their letter IFPI argues that the tracker they host is making “a large number of” copyright works available to the public, and that the users of the site are infringing the copyright of IFPI members. IFPI ends the letter by asking DCP Networks to take necessary actions to make sure that this activity stops, or else “IFPI intends to take necessary measures.”
IFPI lawyer Magnus Mårtensson told DN.se that the letter received by DCP Networks is not something strange or unusual. IFPI has contacted several other hosting providers and site owners Mårtensson said. What they aim to do here is extend the (yet to be appealed) verdict of “assisting copyright infringement” and apply it to hosting providers as well.
At the moment TorrentBytes seems to be (back) online, indicating that the hosting provider may have not yet given in to IFPI’s demands. Although the Pirate Bay verdict doesn’t apply to anyone but the convicted and their unique circumstances, it is likely that some hosting providers will agree to IFPI’s request, fearful of a costly legal procedure.
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77 Responses
TorrentBytes is not down
It seems that the TPB trial was just a stunt to get the opportunity to do mass listings of this bullshit legal attempt to bully the internet around. Just another opportunistic, immoral, and illegal strongarming of the internet and all people involved.
Scumbags.
Yea Grok, you are right. The good news is that this will only last a little while.
P2P has taken many hits in the last 10 years. Some of those hits do take out some legs of it, but after a few months (like 6-12 months) those legs regrow and even more grow in their place.
In the long run we should be thanking the IFPI, RIAA, MPAA, and all the other mobs out there. Their actions today will benefit P2P (including bittorrent) in the long run.
Can’t we get the MAFIAA/IFPI’s hosts to shut them down for invasion of privacy, wire-tapping, hacking, creating malicious code, and whatever else I am hastily overlooking?
Jeremy is right. I’m on the site right now. It’s fine.
nip them in the bud, pull out the root, and all kinds of agricultural references.
Jeremy’s right indeed, it was down for a while today, so something happened over there. Post updated.
Maybe TorrentBytes’ owners should apply some pressure on the provider as well… if the ISP gave to the IFPI’s demands, let them feel the consequences. Maybe ISPs would think twice about givin in to the IFPI’s demands, if they knew there is a threat from their clients as well.
Won’t make a difference for RIAA scum. They lost their customers and they’ll lose even more.
Is demonoid not working atm for you guys?
Demonoid ain’t loading for me either.
Yep, no access to the 4 demonoid servers at the moment.
VOTE PIRATE PARTY !
Until you change the crooked politicians, nothing will change.
If you feel strongly enough about it, Do something.
Yeah Do Something, as a unit, we can destroy the 5 who make the decision to make millions pissed off.
All you people do is complain. Give me a answer or a direction and I’ll do something.
Arghh, this pisses me off sooo much!
FUCKZ @ IFPI!
Demonoid is back :)
Demonoid is down. This is just such a bummer.
Still down for me tracker.
Demonoid’s up for me, at least the web service, granted *really* slow at the moment.
On The World Wide War III when all the major sites are down, only p2p is up, who’s laughing then?!
Meh. Torrentbytes isnt even that good anyway.
demonoid is up again
demonoid is up again
But DCP Networks is owned by Fredrik Neij/TiAMO ??
Attention to all small, self-governed islands in the Caribbean and Pacific Rim that about to lose out of a TON of money because of the new US laws regulating offshore financial accounts:
** HOSTING SOME OF THESE = A TOTALLY EASY CHANCE TO MAKE UP THAT SLACK INCOME **
That is all. My work here is done.
Is there no news about a TPB retrial? It makes me sick watching those idiots touting their rigged TPB verdict.
Seriously it’s embarrassing to allow a judge who is in the same copyright lobby groups as the prosecution lawyers to lead this trial.
Ja, das ist meine echte email-adresse! Heute Nacht hatte ich das “Vergnügen” mit einem echten Jünger der mainstream-Presse zu kommunizieren. Das Problem, ich kenne diesen Menschen schon mein halbes Leben… Heute NAcht, wurde mir bewußt, dass Menschen, die für sich selbst denken können, in dieser Gesellschaft unerwünscht sind! Das hier ist kein Gelaber von jemanden der zu viel Zeit hat – nein, das hier ist eine Anfrage an Leute, die die Fähigkeit haben, jemanden zu folgen, der diese Gesellschaft in die Knie zwingen wird. Ich will hier keine grauen Mäuse hören – ich will Menschen, die bereit sind dieses Land, durchwachsen von Korruption, brennen zu sehen. Dieser Text ist kein Scherz, kein Spaß – dies ist die letzte Möglichkeit Freiheit zu erkämpfen! Danke.
Yes, that is my real email-address! Tonight, i had the “fortune” to meet a real believer of the mainstream-press. The problem, i knew this men half my life… Tonight, i realized, that people, who think for themselfes, are no longer accepted in this society. This is no chatter of someone with to much time on his hands – no, this is an outcry to people, who have the ability, to follow a movement, that will bring down this system to it’s knees. I don’t want to hear them grey mice complaining – i wan’t people, who whant this land, rotten with corruption, to burn. This text is no joke, no scam – this is the last opportunity to fight for freedom! Thanks.
I am sorry for my bad english – please, correct that text and copy it. Thank you!
@anon77:
Yeah me too. Sux!
Would be great if anybody could perhaps tell around when Hövratten in Sweden will decide on the possible retrial of TPB?
Anyone knows?
This is starting to piss me the fuck off…
“What they aim to do here is extend the (yet to be appealed) verdict of “assisting copyright infringement” and apply it to hosting providers as well.”
Is this referring to the TPB verdict?
Has the TPB verdict been appealed or not?
it’s been appealed
Whazzup with Demonoid? Down for me, even though others up above say it’s up.
same here , demonoid trackers down , looks like dht works :P
Is torrentz.com down for anyone else?
When torrent dies and anonymous networks get more popular, that’s when IFPI’s gonna die.
demonoid still down for me to
Torrentz.com en Demonoid are up for me…
yep demonoid backup
REVOLUTION NOW!!!!!!
They will not win the wind!
it terrible that they’re trying to stop file sharing
if they we’re to succeed i would set my 1/2 open connects to 1000 and download the internet to my rycycle bin for the next six months in protest :P
hosting providers have no risk
FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :P
Finally, demonoid is back without slow webproxy for me. Maybe they’re blocking other country’s now.
What I still dont understand, is that no-one can run a private tracker. If everyone would auto install a tracker inside his or her torrent client, and a scraper takes all info from these clients to an index (tpb, torrentz, etc,) then the total system is decentralized.
The only thing a person uploads to the scraper is a torrent file (what you download now). This way no illegal files are hosted on any scraper.
Secondly, when a scraper goes down, it shoud not be a problem, since you could add as much scraper accounts to your own torrent client as you want.
The way discribed makes it not possible to crack down servers in sweden, since they dont track anymore, they just host the location of files all over user places. And its all meta data…
Why aren’t there more trackers in ROMANIA? Apparently people there have the fastest upload speeds in the world and they are notorious pirates to boot. It’s a place to watch!
Torrentbytes was never down to do with this, it was a planned downtime and known in advance that the downtime would happen. Stop drawing quick conclusions.
Hey guys TPB is done again?
its not loading……
Whats going on…..
TPB is down for me also.
even the ipv6 version of tpb is down
is there anywhere (else) that will have information on why TPB and proxy are down?
ping thepiratebay.org works
This is actually great news! The more people these anti-piracy loons piss off with their strong arm tactics, the more enemies they make. Nobody needs to bother fighting them, they’ll kill themselves in the end.
Torrentbytes is down, Filelist down also.. both are hosted by DCP Networks.. find it hard to believe that both sites have server maintenance at the moment, so something else is going on
Its GAME OVER dudes, most major torrent sites will close within this week. Most global ISP signed the “ban program” to prevent Childporn and illigal downloads. Its over..
TPB is down for me as well…
*opens drawer and grabs tinfoil hat*
TorrentBytes is a shit tracker anyways so who cares.. and hwo stupid can u be to host it in sweden now :/
@Peter
I woudnt say shit tracker.
Torrentbytes IS NOT P2L tracker like most of the “cool” trackers are.
One of the greatest communities.
@Peter
According to the TBy staff the machines are not hosted in sweden.
No it seems down right now.
How about just finding the poorest country in the world, and pay them to change the law and then host a torrent site. security would be an issue, but if the only way they’d recieve payment was to keep the service up, they would probably keep it running.
TPB tracker is still up.
When are you people going to learn you don’t need a tracker for torrents to download let the take down the trackers wont stop nothing…
Just shows you what the IFPI knows
TB is Down :(
TPB Is down
Is this the reason why..?
Can anyone from TPB verify why they are now offline ???
If you don’t like those things: Stop buying products from those that are responsible for it!
Every money you give them will be used against you.
At this point of time it is arguably much more ethical to pirate stuff than not to.
So be like me, be a happy pirate!
Eh… Bye bye torrents… Time to figure out how to do it fast, 100% decentralized and encrypted ;-)
IT’S GAME OVER DUD! The music industry of parasites is dead!
It is over!
They pissed up to many people.
THEY ARE DEAD!
“Eh… Bye bye torrents… Time to figure out how to do it fast, 100% decentralized and encrypted ;-)”
Torrent is not dead.
But any way this has been figured out already within BT.
“DCP can’t take down TB because TB isn’t hosted on/at DCP”.
Sooooooooo I guess either things changed quicker than the news came out or the news or IFPI or someone are just not up to speed :p
Either way, hosting is as interchangeable as underwear, how will sending empty threats out to random hosts help close a site? They’ll just relocate. Someone eventually will take the business, it’s just a php based, search front-end having database of metadata anyhow..it’s nothing illegal per se, it’s just lobbyism pushing legal interpretation towards that.
It’s like saying even a cafe that has only mafioso as guests is illegal in itself, despite only serving coffee and bagels..bit silly.
TPB website is down for 2 days now. The site responds to pings, though, that means it is alive. My guess is the web server must be down, and no one is there to restart it.
Of course you do not a tracker to download torrents, but you need to *have* the torrent to get the files. So, if the trackers are down, how are we going to find the torrents, or make them available to others?
Anyone knows of an alternative for this? The information must be allowed to be shared. When they manage to shut down the flow of information, they will manage to keep us in the dark.
We are scattered all over the world, we must find a way to communicate with eachother.
They are ready to make their final moves. Who knows how much time we still have?
TPB is simply overloaded.
IMHO because everyone is now using it.
TorrentBytes is now up!
I say piss on the IFPI.
privacy-web.net.tc
NON CAN’T STOP US!!
there is allways some other servers in some other countrys…MUAHHAhahaha
Torrentbytes is fine. And it’ll be.
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