Reports: Demonoid Blocking Countries
Written by enigmax on June 20, 2008According to an ever increasing wave of emails to TorrentFreak, it appears that residents of at least two countries can no longer access Demonoid. Not only are users from the Netherlands complaining they cannot access the site but now it’s the turn of Brazilian BitTorrent fans to wonder why they’ve been cut off.
Whenever a popular torrent site goes down, it’s fairly normal for us to start receiving emails from users concerned about what’s happening, which then dry up fairly quickly after the site in question returns. Just recently we’ve been receiving a steady stream of emails asking why Demonoid is down which seemed strange because the site was operating normally each time we checked.
These sort of problem - when users in one geographical location can access a site when others can’t - is usually down to DNS issues which generally resolve themselves in a short time. However, in the case of Demonoid, this doesn’t appear to offer the answer.
According to reports we’ve received, when users from the Netherlands try to access Demonoid all they get is a blank white page. However, should they try to access the site using a proxy or VPN making the visitor appear they are not from the Netherlands, the user can now gain access. The block happens on all the major ISPs, and are persistent.
Canadians, having been previously blocked, remain unblocked, presumably after Demonoid fell out of range of the CRIA. However, more recently reports indicate that not only are Dutch users blocked from Demonoid, but in an unlikely scenario, Brazilians appear to be blocked too. So what could be at the bottom of this?
There could be some purely technical issues with the web, but as time goes on, this seems less and less likely. It is of course possible that Demonoid itself has some technical problems, having reported that the site had a few bugs to be ironed out around 9 days ago or so. If this is the case, there will be lots of relieved people around.
It’s also possible that there is a legal angle to these blocks, after all this type of action by Demonoid isn’t new in its quest to stay within the law. Around 12 months ago Demonoid blocked Dutch users for a while, as the pressure from BREIN increased quietly behind the scenes, and then later on very publicly blocked millions of Canadians following pressure from the CRIA, only to unblock them again after moving to ’safer’ Ukraine-based hosting.
But, if Ukraine is ’safe’ as a host country, why block the Netherlands, and why block Brazil of all places? As it turns out there is a Demonoid/Brazil link, in that the Demonoid.com domain has a protected WHOIS provided by the Brazilian-based Neurocube.com, which in turn is hosted in the Netherlands at Demonoid’s old host, LeaseWeb. And of course, Netherlands-based anti-piracy group BREIN aren’t the biggest supporters of Demonoid either - and have lots of resources - but whether or not they still hold anything over the site in order to force a block of an entire country is a matter of speculation.
In the absence of any announcement from the new admin of Demonoid (which seems incredibly unlikely), it’s some users of Demonoid who asked us to find out why they can’t access the site. Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer for them right now, maybe they will become more clear in the future.
In the meantime, please keep us updated in the comments with access reports from your country and we’ll try to keep people updated on the position for Dutch and Brazilian Demonoid fans. If you can or cannot access Demonoid, we’d like to hear from you.
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296 Responses
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Works perfects from the UK.
Hi Dim, I used the proxy you suggested and Demonoid loaded just fine for the first time since last june. Thank you so much and I would like if you can suggest where I can find more information about this proxy thing. And by the way, I am in Brazil. Thanks again.
I’m in Brazil, and about a month ago it was possible for me to access Demonoid by refreshing (F5) pages some 4 or 5 times.
Then it stopped to work…
So I started to use http://www.webwarper.net - and Demonoid was accessible again.
Then it stopped to work…
Now I’m using http://www.surf-proxy.de/ - and it works perfectly (at least for now…).
Thanks for the tips Sam. Where are you in Brazil?
SP, SP.
I live in Belgium and my provider Dommel has banned Demonoid as well !
Can’t access here from Brazil either… for quite some time now, maybe a couple of weeks, or more. Blank Page on Firefox and HTTP 500 error on IE. A friend of mine though, can do it with his Mac, only a few blocks away from my house … weird.
thats really odd. i’m from brazil and my ISP give me dynamic ip. When I receive one 189.x.x.x i have acces to all pages from demonoid, but when I receive one 201.x.x.x i can’t access home page, download torrents or view the forum. but again, i can access feeds and 404 pages(demonoid.com/foobar)
yup no access from India..looks like an ISp nexus here..
well demonoid seems to blocked in INDIA too,indians too are in the torrenting community,its about freedom of speech and expression!!! whatever problem demonoid seems to be having i pray it comes out clean!!
Same here in INDIA,
Can’t access Demonoid for about 3 weeks now without foreign proxy
I can’t access the site from the last few days, 3 days to be exact and have to use a foreign proxy and can inform that I have used France and HongKong proxies and they all work. altough the HK one is very slow.
Its been 3 weeks since this article was posted n we seriously want some updates on it from TF ppl.. I mean really wats going on wid demonoid these dayz , is it tech issues or legal issues or wattt ???
I have been a demonoid user for a 3 yrs since last 3 days i am getting a blank white screen when i type in the address. Is demonoid down or am i just blocked. i am from India on Airtel network.
Demonoid’s inaccessible in India as well. Just to let you know…
Hi this is the second response of mine here from India.Apparently this week on i just get blank white page on Demonoid. No use even after reloading the site.I Firefx 3.
So India is down for Demonoid.
The Netherlands our down again aswell, foreign proxy like TOR still work
Demonoid down since three weeks here in Bangalore, India. Earlier i used to refresh the web page frequently to show up on screen, now its shows a blank white page which pissed me off.
I doubt that this could be an ISP issue as members from other countries experience the same dilemma. No official notification for Demonoid either. I smell a rat here!
I am a Rogers user in Canada and the site has been down since July 10th or so.
I am from India the site has been down for 10 days
India blocked..
seems to be like internal 500 erroe and a blank page
blocked here in INDIA too
Everything in Dhaka- Bangladesh is 100% Fine…Hopefully Demonoid and all users hopefully can get back online using Demonoid…
Good Luck and hope to c u all back on Demonoid!
icesteed
(Demonoid User)
Am from New Delhi, India. Seems like demonoid’s back here. Am on bharti broadband n noticed that it’s back after quite some weeks. :) :) :)
Wat bout other countries ??
I’m in Brazil… just found out demonoid was working almost everywhere but here WTF!!
Can our ISP legally block demonoid.com? (in my case NetVirtua)??
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