Malaysian Government Orders Torrent Sites Shutdown
Written by enigmax on June 27, 2008Reports are coming in that the government in Malaysia has ordered the immediate suspension of many BitTorrent trackers hosted in the country. In a shock move, the government - citing the ‘Copyright Act 1987′ - has ordered hosts to suspend servers hosting BitTorrent sites, pending an investigation. Many sites are offline.
When BitTorrent sites get into legal trouble or other pressures force a move to a new location, the speculation begins on the safest place to go.
For instance, would a site bail out of the Netherlands and move to Canada? Is Canada too dangerous now, and would a move to Sweden be more appropriate? What about moving to Ukraine-based hosting like Demonoid or further afield - China or Russia maybe? Inevitably, discussions usually involve ideas of moving sites east, to countries like Malaysia. Fairly high-tech countries like this seem an attractive proposition, particularly given their government’s track-record in failing to do much about piracy.
Given this background, BitTorrent tracker admins with their sites hosted in Malaysia were confronted by a very unpleasant surprise today. An administrator from a well known tracker contacted TorrentFreak this morning with worrying news, he told us: “Malaysia’s government suddenly forced all torrent websites to shut down today until further notice, a complete surprise to torrent admins and the offshore hosting companies in Malaysia.”
The news was given to this and other site admins, via an email from their hosting provider, which indicates the action has been ordered down from a high level. The email informs the admins that their servers have been suspended by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, under the Copyright Act 1987. As the request came from the government, the host makes it clear they had no choice but to shut down the site. Among the affected sites are Extremebits, Rapthe, Superfundo and several others. According to sources, although torrent sites have been taken offline, other sites dealing in pirate material have also been suspended after the government decided to act on mounting copyright-related complaints.
Prominent Malaysian host Shinjiru confirmed the closures, telling TorrentFreak: “We can confirm that this is accurate. We had enforcement officers from MDTCA visiting the office to confirm the closure of BitTorrent sites hosted on our network. We will comply to all shut down instructions from the local authorities or agencies with warrants or documents.”
Update: Contrary to comments from a site admin, sources close to the situation are saying the shutdowns are limited to a small number of sites and aren’t necessarily part of a wider crackdown, despite government involvement.
Previously: IsoHunt Goes Secure, Adds SSL Encryption
Next: OiNK’s Bail Date Extended for the 4th Time
177 Responses
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Superfundo is a fake site anyway, so no harm done there.
well I wonder just how many “safe” havens are left…
Any way, Malaysian hosting & dedicated servers sucks Really.
I never liked them, i had 1 Malaysian dedicated server, waste of $ !
Can be good if all peers come from Malaysia else get 100kb/s LoL!
lol Malaysia.
If you don’t like it, move to a real country.
I am American, and I am better then you dirt 3rd world people with flies on your faces.
OMFG NOT SUPERFUNDO!!! how will I ever survive without SUPERFUNDO??
/sarcasm.
I hate to say ‘I told you so’ but.. hey.. we shoulda just droped a few nukes over there.. we wouldnt be havin this problem now would we..
lol
Wow there flag looks really stupid..
I was all surprised at this action and then I looked at the flag and then suddenly it all made sense..
There flag looks like pacman eating the little shit he eats..
PACMAN COUNTRY!
fuggin douch-nozzles.
well torrent sites will keep on moving, until p2p is gonna be legal,now the next presidency could get special permission to elite american trups to to take down private islands and private boats(because they will become nests to pirate activity) after all torrent site hosting will be banned all around the world(in the next few years)! or the sites could move withouth so much(cost) damge ussing high speed proxy tunnels,much cheaper…
superfundo used to be quite an interesting site. the places to host a server seems to be getting scarcer by the day.
Is that americas solution to everything? Bomb the place?
“I hate to say ‘I told you so’ but.. hey.. we shoulda just droped a few nukes over there.. we wouldnt be havin this problem now would we..”
I’m sad about this because it means my favourite torrentsite brokenstones is down.
to no 4..u know nothing about malaysia.i used to workd over there for 3 years.malaysia is modern and fast growth country.
i am a member of superfundo. hope it’s back soon…
Has anyone tried web hosting in Iran?
Sniff…. Sniff…
Anybody else smell MAFIAA interference and corrupt politicians?
places like Iran don’t even want you having the internet… It’s like afghanistan (sorry for the poor spelling, i should read more newspapers) it’s illegal to have a TV set there i believe? let alone computers that allow you to connect to the vast amount of information on the net.
What we really need is a used satillite for sale, wire it up with virtualised servers running off a Read-only linux intall and just do memory transfers from one site to another only taking an hour or 2 to just relocate an exact copy of the system.
or so i figure anyways…
@4 ur comment made no god damn sense at all towards the subject. You ignorant American pig.
“it’s illegal to have a TV set there i believe?”
Whoah, sounds pretty rough if true. Anyone got a source for that info?
At 9
Shut up, stupidface.
there are many private sites hosted on malaysian servers your ignorant noobs .
not just the lame superfundo
there are many private sites hosted on malaysian servers your ignorant noobs .
not just the lame superfundo
Wow that idiot above needs his comments deleted, or maybe they should stay there for his humilation. By the way dumbass you should be typing “their” not “there”. Since English is your first language maybe you should sort that out first before trying to appear superior to another country.
p.s. ur gay lol
@nWo, I think you just got trolled mate… and most probably by someone who does not like America and is not American…
Could be wrong though :)
Well yeah, going to a country like Malaysia is a double-edged sword. On one edge you have lax enforcement of copyright laws, and on the other you have trivially easy susceptibility to e.g. bribes and foreign pressure.
Most likely a friendly WTO or US representative went and had a friendly chat over some trade blacklisting threats and the Malaysian representative “agreed” to pull some fairly illegal moves.
Seems to me that FTN is also involved. Too bad. Hope nothing serious
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