More BitTorrent Trackers Shut Down, Owner’s Cover Blown
Hosting a BitTorrent tracker at Leaseweb in the Netherlands has been considered by some to be a great option, offering value for money and good service. However, if you asked the administrators of Araditracker, BitHQ and PeerPortal what they think of this host, don’t expect a positive answer – Leaseweb has just given their personal details to the anti-piracy police, BREIN.
Following a decision in the Amsterdam court which stated the Dutch torrent site Everlasting.nu facilitated copyright infringement, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has been using this momentum to make life difficult for other torrent sites. After getting Everlasting shut down and obtaining the administrator’s personal details, they moved to take down Demonoid . It didn’t do much good – the site re-located to Canada and remains online today.
Now, even though an appeal in respect of Everlasting.nu is still pending, an emboldened BREIN has moved to get 6 further Leaseweb-hosted torrent trackers shut down, including the popular Araditracker, BitHQ and Peerportal, who between them tracked 9,000 torrents.
In a move which is bound to concern many other administrators who have their sites at Leaseweb, the host has again given up the personal details of the tracker admins. All three named sites have now left Leaseweb (and the Netherlands entirely) and have secured hosting elsewhere in Europe and US but this exodus doesn’t seem to concern BREIN who seem intent on pursuing the owners outside the Netherlands.
Tim Kuik of BREIN said “we have the names and addresses of these administrators, so we can get to these people through our contacts abroad.”
Armed with these names, BREIN says it intends to go after the administrators to force them to compensate content owners for lost revenue and prevent the sites from starting back up again.
With two out of the three sites already fully operational, it looks as if BREIN’s main aim of closing these sites has failed – in the biggest possible way.
