TorrentFreak

BTjunkie, one of the largest BitTorrent indexes on the Internet, has decided to shut down voluntarily today. A combination of legal actions against fellow file-sharing sites and time-consuming projects have led to the drastic decision that takes out one the main players in the BitTorrent landscape.

Last week the Italian authorities moved against the general purpose proxy site proxyitalia.com because it could be used by Italians to access BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay. Their goal was to prevent Italians from secretly accessing these torrent sites, but this plan backfired. BTjunkie’s owner quickly launched a new proxy, one that will be much harder to crack. This time the Italian authorities have to censor Google’s App Engine to stop it.

Italy is taking its crusade against BitTorrent sites to an unprecedented level. The authorities have moved against the general purpose proxy site proxyitalia.com because it could be used by Italians to access BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay. Following this logic they will also have to censor thousands of other proxy sites and ban all VPN services, or shut down the Internet entirely.

A criminal investigation has been launched against two prominent Italian Internet providers because they allowed their customers to access the BitTorrent site BTjunkie. The ISPs are suspected of aiding and abetting online copyright infringement, after they ignored a court order to block subscriber access to the popular BitTorrent search engine.

A few days ago an Italian court ordered all ISPs to block subscriber access to BTjunkie, leaving hundreds of thousands of Italians with the task of finding a new torrent site. Or perhaps not? Just hours after the news was made public, a brand new and ad-free proxy site was launched. The site allows Italians to browse an uncensored web and access BTjunkie, as well as another popular blocked site, The Pirate Bay.

After similar action against The Pirate Bay, an Italian court has today ordered all ISPs to block subscriber access to another major BitTorrent site, BTjunkie. The public prosecutor described BTJunkie as one of the most prominent havens for pirated media and the authorities further blame the BitTorrent site for the failure of the Italian pay-per-view TV-station Dahlia TV, which shut down due to financial problems last month.

Earlier this week Europe’s warez scene was shaken up by multiple raids in Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain and several other countries. In the reports that came out, dozens of news sources also linked some leading Bittorrent sites including The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie to the busts. Just to be absolutely clear, these sites were completely unaffected.