Police Threats Close Many BitTorrent Sites
Written by enigmax on December 09, 2008Yesterday we reported on the plight of RARBG, a large tracker forced to close by anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. Now it appears that this is just the tip of the iceberg. A whole raft of trackers are being forced to close or relocate following police action, including ArenaBG and several other large sites.
Yesterday we reported the story of RARBG, a 100,000 user tracker currently feeling pressure from anti-piracy group, BREIN. Although popular with Bulgarians, RARBG had an english version of the site and also indexed regular material that could be found on most trackers.
Rather than limited action against one site, the picture emerging today shows a concerted attempt by the police to take down many other Bulgarian trackers, both those hosted in their home country and others hosted elsewhere. A special police unit usually dedicated to fighting organized crime recently starting working to identify the administrators of the sites. Once identified, the police set about making contact with them, and each was invited to a meeting.
At the meeting the administrators were ordered to shut down the sites. There were no explanations as to why they should, or which laws were being put into effect, but the order was clear – shut down the sites or the police will come and take the servers. Below is a rundown of sites that are currently affected, but we can’t confirm yet that all of these administrators were actually at the meetings.
ArenaBG, at one stage thought to be one of the larger European trackers, currently displays the message, “Dear user, We were forced to close our website.” The site was hosted at LeaseWeb in The Netherlands. However, the site has an alternative URL at 0.arenabg.com and appears to be setting up a new open tracker, which can be found at free.arenabg.com.
With 120,000 users, P2PBG is a pretty significant site. Although still visible, the site has been ordered by the police to cease tracking torrents. P2PBG is hosted in Bulgaria.
The MastersTB tracker has disappeared. AvatarBG, another Bulgarian tracker is currently down, but links on the homepage show a forum and alternative domain available elsewhere.
A site which intends to close altogether is Torrent-BG. There is no longer a torrent section on the site and the site owner says he will even give away the domain to a worthwhile new owner. Another site set to disappear is WordBG, and the administrators of Zarta.org have announced that the site will no longer have a BitTorrent tracker, and that it will go in a new direction. All sites were hosted in Bulgaria.
Currently, Bulgaria’s largest BitTorrent tracker Zamunda.net is fully operational. It has around 500,000 members with a tracker serving up to a peak of 1.8 million peers.
If any reader has additional information on this developing story, please contact us in confidence.
Previously: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent
Next: FrostWire P2P Client Starts Artist Promotion
59 Responses
Bastards.
Great i think this is th truth. the police in bulgaria sux
of course the US is behind that
lame asses, why bother?
I wonder why would one show up to a meeting with the police? Maybe the police posed as journalists or something like that? I can’t imagine why anyone would voluntarily just meet with cops and speak with them when the only purpose it would serve is self-incrimination. A simple “I have nothing to say” is always the best policy when dealing with police in any matter.
Second, if the police are THREATENING some sort of action, you should ask why they are threatening and not just proceeding to do whatever it is they are threatening. The answer, they are likely not able to lawfully do what they are threatening and are lying (something which police every do all the time) in order to intimidate their victim into compliance with whatever hidden agenda they are persuing. If they had legal grounds to seize equipment, they would just do it, not make threats under colour of law.
I hope the parties involved have the intelligence to hire a lawyer (it doesn’t cost much and is money well spent) and perhaps persue a formal complaint against the officers involved if in fact this was an unlawful order. In my country we are able to prosecute this ‘colour of law’ crap as a criminal matter if unlawful orders were given to a citizen for purposes of intimidation.
Officers that operate outside of the law need to be brought to justice. Don’t let thugs with badges intimidate you, they are accountable under the law like everyone else. As well, they are accountable to ’street justice’ too if they legal system fails to enforce your rights in a free society.
you are right but let me tell you how it works in Bulgaria.
They find out who owns the domain name and call him on the phone. They ask are you the owner of this domain. The obvious answer is Yes (you can`t sait no cuz they know you are the owner). After that they just say come here to talk about some stuff. What would you do in this situation?
@6 site owner
The obvious answer is to flee the country, no duh. Or, close the site, then exit the country (if there is any reason to delay), and then re-open it once out.
I think it would be good to send BREIN to hell… right about now.
Roze
The active facilitation of copyright infringement and civil infraction was never ethical nor legal, it’s just that torrents are temporarily out ahead of law, law enforcement and each country’s justice system. If saving the internet from a police state takes precendent–and I pray it does- then digital piracy will be curtailed through means of punishment, and we should all expect punishment to go through the roof.
But anyone who thinks the artists will keep making product we want while this industrial ransacking goes on forever must be on drugs.
@ Reasoned Mind
yeah i did to mary janes today but even before that i was thinking that there is not even one artist died from starvation because we were dowloading hes/her songs or movies. don`t you think so… cop
Several international admins using only one admin name and not revealing who they are would confuse the system of identifying admins enough to shake off any legal problems, but I guess that would be terrible for logistics.
FYI in the U.S…
If the police contact you: You don’t admit being involved with or an admin to any kind of site…EVER! You can only be sued or arrested if they have a name to write down on the court documents(mostly) so don’t give out or admit to your name. If someone says we want you to come here to talk, send a lawyer. A lawyer is an officer of the court and his/her testimony to any shady police business or threats at the meeting will be taken as truth.
If you are arrested, you should only say, “I want to talk to my lawyer.” The police cannot question you after this without leaving your lawyer the ability to say that you were questioned without an attorney and you were refused your right to an attorney.
IF I were called I would go willingly to the police station rather than Have them invade my home and privacy. Once there of course I would not be to cooperative but I would prefer it not to be in my home.
Not quite right they are calling you and saying that if you don’t go to speak with them they’ll just come and take your hardware on account of refusing to cooperate. Or they send you a letter with the address and time and say that if you don’t shutdown the site and/or appear on time they’ll visit you.
It’s a bit better since few years ago when they just came and took everything they could link to computers without even a warrant, just a peace of paper signed by there head of the unit…
Up to now they have confiscated allot of hardware but there isn’t a single case in court. On the other hand the boss of the unit in question have stated that since they can’t get enough evidence to go to court, the only thing they can do is seize the equipment and hold it for at least 2-3 years for collecting evidence at which point it’ll be useless, so they can ask the owner to visit them in order to fill the paperwork needed to get it back …
At that point most of the owners prefer to fill a single form and give it to the police unit as “charity” than to lose few more days filing paperwork so they can get it back.
@Anonymous
At firs it seemed that you`ve see stuff only in us but in your second post i can see that you know exactly how the things are … in Bulgaria :)
To “13 Dec 09, 2008 at 22:00 by site owner” the “10 Dec 09, 2008 at 21:13 by Anonymous” and “12 Dec 09, 2008 at 21:24 by Anonymous” are different people…
P.S. Anonymous == A person who want his identity to stay unknown/undisclosed.
i don`t get your post ?
Money rules, and everything that makes sense must come to an end in this world by greedy people who are far more powerful..
but go ahead.. try to gain control.. im not worried, nor do I care.
Once the internet shuts down, il go outside and see if the sun still works.
Pirate for Life.
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD (Piracy) POLICE
???? ???? ?? ???? ?? ????? ???? Anonymous ???? ? ???????? ??????? ????? ???? ?? ?????? ???????? == Anonymous
P.S. Sorry it seems site owner English is not so good …
Team Bulgaria: World Biggest Pirates :) :D
my English is fine enough. I just don`t get things that make no sense!
Johnny LaRue, I absolutely agree with you. However, you must live in a really nice country because, at least in mine (Spain), police threatening and intimidating citizens is quite common and you can’t really do too much.
Once in a blue moon, someone gets a brutal beating by the police and by chance it gets recorded on a security camera or there are enough witnesses and THEN you have a chance to have justice.
In this case: verbal intimidation with no recorded proof nor witnesses… good luck with that.
that is exactly what i was talking about. it is the same in Bulgaria. It is the same in the States too no matter what some people do
“I can’t imagine why anyone would voluntarily just meet with cops and speak with them when the only purpose it would serve is self-incrimination.”
I don’t see a problem with going, as long as you do just to see what they have to say and don’t admit to anything.
On an unrelated note, it’s strange that most Bulgarian trackers have their country code, BG, at the end of their name.
@Retarded Mind
Here’s a message you can give to the losers at the mpaa/riaa
“You money hungry pigs will never win”
hahahahahahahahahahaaha
riaa/mpaa will never win. the equivalent for bulgaria won’t either.
The dumb artists who sold their rights are now probably embarassed to be a part of this shit lately.
Meanwhile, you bulgarians need to fight back in court. I know you don’t want to, but its time you all get together as one big group (same way as media) and get some legal defense and fight together.
This is a good day for content creators everywhere.
fine ill just take my servers somewhere else where you cant put ur filthy paws on them [not that you would want to anyways because there probably quite hot] so butter your bacon
I SAID GOOD DAY!!!!1
Brainless Mind: “But anyone who thinks the artists will keep making product we want while this industrial ransacking goes on forever must be on drugs.”
Anybody who thinks the industry is being ransacked, when in reality music sales have actually been increasing for the past several years, is a complete and utter fucking retard.
Like you.
OK
Then go to live in to BG.It is not easy!
@ They`ll Neve Win
i agree with you.
fuck mpaa/riaa
Arenabg is fully operational…you can change this in the article
If the police have a problem with trackers, just switch to DHT and magnet links.
Sure, you can’t do ratio tracking, but fans will seed for the good of the community anyway.
Well,
I wonder if crackdown is related to the pressure from the EU on Bulgaria. AFAIK the EU cut subsidies to Bulgaria because the government supposedly didn’t do enough to fight crime and corruption. And piracy is a really severe crime in the EU-administrations view. Just have a look at that ACTA bullshit they are pulling.
They will never be able to stop the bulgarian trackers. No one in our government cares about this stuff and they act only out of fear of an international scandal. Everyone uses torrents in Bulgaria and most of the peers have a DSL connection or even fiber optics. When they stopped The Arena lat time, it took them several days to recover. Now it takes them a few hours, since they have a backup plan.
Again, people are under the impression that going to a ‘meeting’ and answering intrusive questions with the police is going to save you from anything.
If the police call you and ask a question like “is this your domain name”, whether they know it to be a fact already or not, you are under no obligation to answer ANY questions. A simple “who am I speaking with” and then “I have nothing to say” followed by hanging up is just fine. Or just hang up.
Going to a meeting with the police won’t stop them coming to your home and going through your stuff if they have the legal right to do so. If they can get a search warrant to do this, they WILL DO IT regardless of your actions. If they don’t have a warrant, they can’t go through your stuff, and they must leave your property when ordered to do so. But complying with their requests and demands WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AND WILL NOT SPARE YOU FROM ANYTHING despite their implication that it will.
You see, that is always the trick the police use, “if you comply with our request x, y, and z, we will spare you from oppressive action a, b, and c.” The trick is that they don’t have the right to do a, b, and c, and it is a bluff.
And I am totally surprised nobody has the foresight to bring a concealed recording device to such a meeting, or even a lawyer.
I would recommend (and don’t take this as bona-fide legal advice) that anyone who has interacted with the police should maintain business as usual and call their bluff. Of course, you should talk to a lawyer about all this too.
Attempts at intimidation don’t harm you unless you comply. Don’t fall for their scam.
Bulgarian P2P Will never die!!!
P2PBG.com FOREVER!!!
im a bulgarian expat living abroad now and i see the biggest problem with the country is that people dont stand up together. everyone is divided. that’s why the country is getting raped in every aspect, from natural resources to this copyright infringement crap. it’s sad to see this happen but im glad that the EU cut the funding, since if the people can’t get rid of the corrupt communists running the country the only hope is to starve them out. keep the trackers running!
ne slushaite na tezi smradove, hora.
Hahahahhahaha
please, do not lie with numbers and facts!
who lies? and with what
The message “Dear user, We were forced to close our website.” on ArenaBG site is only if you are not in Bulgaria and is from months and the reason for this is not BREIN.
Site is still fully functional and they are making another one on http://free.arenabg.com/
PLS Click: http://www.iHateCandy.de.gp
What about “mininova.org” – hosted in your country Holland?
Administrative role account
address: MiniNova BV
address: Wethouder Teselinglaan 10 A
address: 3972GB Driebergen-Rijsenburg
address: The Netherlands
phone: +31 877 843530
fax-no: +31 877 843530
abuse-mailbox: abuse@mininova.org
Yes, sure, all legal there – you morons!!!
Police in Bulgaria doesn’t sucks……it SUCKS BIG TIME!!!!
Don’t they have anything better to do???
PLS Click: http://www.iHateCandy.de.gp/
Access to Midnight Torrents (recently also called Midnight Fun Stuff) suddenly stopped at about 11.00 am GMT today.
Existing torrents will not connext and I can’t access the website. My ratio was up at 1.6 and I cannot think of any reason why I would be blocked.
Does anyone know what is going on at Midnight Torrents?
cunts
As a tracker owner, i have proof(screenshots) of police officers/departments who downloaded a shit load of porn from my tracker.
So, if i’ll ever go down, i’m taking them with me!
Johnny LaRue
glad to see someone clarifies how police works (/tries to work).
since we’re all used to motion pictures here :), check out these
*ttp://peek.snipurl.com/7qz7s
*ttp://peek.snipurl.com/7qzvv
I know there are related to america and shouldn’t be used as the only base to make an opinion, but still.
Even the cop says how they sometimes operate in europe and tells the audience they can be glad to call themselves americans or to be fortunate to live in america — don’t remember the exact words.
21 Dec 09, 2008 at 23:10 by Fred
to get beat up and seizing data are IMO two different things.
Glad to see the greeks don’t take any shit. I thought everything there is/has been dandy, apparently not.
Pues invita al primo, al batu the dog y se encarga de to. ¿Pero a que comunidad te refieres?
6 Dec 09, 2008 at 20:12 by site owner
try not to shit myself
9 Dec 09, 2008 at 20:59 by site owner
lol :)
25 Dec 10, 2008 at 01:55 by matt
lol @ artists
24 Dec 10, 2008 at 01:01 by They’ll Never Win
:DDD
Get em
Does anyone know what happened to Midnight Torrents?
Its tracker and website have disappeared for over 24 hrs.
No-one has sent me any information. I’ve tried both its old and new URLs.
Bulgarian police tool the rule of law too literally, i think.
But then again, Bulgaria is young democracy, people haven’t got used to idea that state “belongs” to them. That’s quite an epitome of post-communist states, sadly.
Copyright ftw!
there lots of things waiting …which need immediate action …like terrorist organizations…Drugs…corrupted politicians ………….
i don’t understand why this motherfuc*er cops get behind torrents or piracy ???
Andy you don’t understand why cops doing this? Who gives them orders? Who stands behind them? The answer is the big money guys, music, filming, gaming, software industry.
Believe it or not but if in your country the police respect the laws and your rights – your really lucky. And it seems like impossibility to you the things that the police doing in Bulgaria – go and say hi to the cowboy land you will see by yourself. No legal actions, no court only blue thugs. Over two hundred custom demonstrative murders for past seven years are undiscovered.
i come from bulgaria and since 2002 there is every year ANTI PIRATES campaigns, but this one is the largest i see. before one year the previous one i owned one local tracker with around 10k users once they give me the paperwork and the order to stop it i have been working on this site around 1 year and have spend 23-24 hours per day only for it. and guess what i said one big “No” and started the fight in two fronts i created a network of 78 computers and split the content of the site on 78 smaller parts and made it accessible from dynamic anonymnous domain and the site continued to work. on the second front i started to ask so said legal questions here and there and at the end one of their MASTER MINDS come to me and said “We have made a mistake sorry for the incon … etc”. at the end site still works and there is no way to close it. but every time i see a lost tracker wich surrenders i say “Hell what i will fight for one more day, hour, user” that is what we all should do continue to fight.
FUCK THE POLICE
FUCK THE SYSTEM
ALL COPS IS A FUCKING BASTARDS
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