TorrentFreak

Yesterday the torrent world lit up with news that Demonoid had somehow been resurrected under the new domain D2.vu. However, the site was quickly taken offline by its host in the U.S. who claimed that it was serving up malware. With the site now back online with a new host, TorrentFreak caught up with its admins who tell us they have no malicious intent and simply want to bring a community back to together. While there is still uncertainty, one thing is absolutely clear – they do have the old Demonoid database.

During the past few hours TorrentFreak has been absolutely overwhelmed with hundreds of emails asking about the possible resurrection of the infamous Demonoid BitTorrent tracker. After tracking down the owner of the new domain but being met with silence, we have now been informed by the site’s host that at the very least the site was hosting some kind of malware. The site has now been suspended, pending full shutdown.

More than half a year has passed since Demonoid went offline but many of its former users still haven’t lost faith. They cling on to every string of hope and this has led some to believe that the site returned as a meta-search engine under the new domain Demonoid.mk. While most people who are familiar with the old Demonoid know that the new site just trades on the brand of the famous torrent tracker, quite a few believe it’s a legit incarnation.

The demise of Demonoid has been cited as one of the main victories against online piracy in 2012, but the case against those responsible for the site is reportedly stagnating. According to new information an alleged operator of Demonoid has been released from jail and criminal proceedings have been halted. The small amount of information that is available comes from U.S. copyright holders who are keeping a close eye on developments.

This week it’s been six months since Demonoid went offline. With more than half a year of downtime Demonoid breaks the previous record it set in 2007/2008. When Demonoid went down at the end of July the site’s admin initially blamed a DDoS attack. In the days after the raid things went from bad to [...]

After more than five months of downtime Demonoid’s website is showing signs of life again. Instead of timing out, demonoid.me has started to redirect to a new demonoid.hk domain, displaying a “403 Forbidden” HTTP status after initially showing a “nothing to see here” notice. While Demonoid is not back yet, these recent developments show that there’s activity behind the scenes.

In a filing to the Office of the US Trade Representative the major movie studios describe how successful the shutdown of Megaupload has been. According to the MPAA the file-hosting industry was massively disrupted, with carry-over effects to linking and BitTorrent sites. Nonetheless, the movie group says the work is not done yet and lists The Pirate Bay, Extratorrent, isoHunt, Kat.ph and several other file-hosting and linking sites as remaining threats.