At the same time another site called Advbt.lv was targeted. Its owner, Tom Litovnieks, was arrested and a criminal case brought was against him. With Advbt.lv operating under the new name Torrenti.lv, two years later Litovnieks appeared in court and was found not guilty.

However, celebrations were short-lived when it became apparent that the authorities wanted a another chance at victory. A second criminal case had already been initiated against Litovnieks. The general details and allegations were the same, but with enough change to be deemed a new case.

In the meantime Torrenti.lv grew to become Latvia’s biggest torrent site. From a local population of around 2 million the site received 1.7 million unique visitors last year, an effort which made the torrent site the country’s 249th most popular site overall.

Last week, however, the site’s development suffered a large setback when Latvia’s Economic Crimes Enforcement Administration (ENAP) carried out a raid on Litovnieks’ home.

“Last week, Latvian Economic Police entered my home and three guys from the police attacked me while I was handcuffed which resulted in a concussion,” Litovnieks told TorrentFreak.

“There were many laws that were ignored during the raid and the police explained to me that I am a suspect now and I have no rights at all.”

In response Lativa’s national police chief says it is one of ENAP’s responsibilities to crack down on copyright infringement and “illicit traffic” on the Internet. Rightsholders claim that the site has cost them close to $3.8 million in lost sales.

In common with recent actions in file-sharing cases elsewhere it was not Litovnieks’ site that was targeted but its domain.

“The police believe that the Torrenti.lv domain name is illegal and it has been seized,” Litovnieks explained. “I am not talking about the site itself, it is just the domain name they have seized. They believe that through this seizure it will be possible to stop piracy in Latvia.”

If the authorities do indeed believe that, they appear to be mistaken. Torrent.lv’s code was published online for free and while its domain is now dead, the site has already been replaced. Litovnieks used the new domain to argue that Torrenti.lv complied with takedown requests.

“Here is the funny thing – there is a new site that popped up on the internet that looks just like torrenti.lv and has all the info torrenti.lv had, so I will use a link from the clone site to describe my point,” he explained.

“Unlike The Pirate Bay, Torrenti.lv deleted content upon receipt of DMCA notices, there is even a list of files that were taken down. I showed this to the police, but they don’t care, they think the domain name is illegal, they can shut it down, even if last time they could not prove that,” he adds.

In a closing message to former site members, Litovnieks offers the following reassurance.

“Site users should not be worried because all users’ IP addresses were accidentally deleted. It must be the concussion that resulted in this mistake while I was editing the database,” he concludes.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Outlaw.lv, one of the largest trackers in Latvia is currently offline following pressure from the Economic Police, while rumors say that one of the top uploaders was detained for a few hours. “Economic Police has shut down our project. Outlaw LV will be back in a new way and with a new mission,” reads a message on the front page.

It is clear though that the authorities aim to take more sites offline. Danger.lv is another tracker that has received a letter from the police, and they decided to pull the plug voluntarily, for the time being.

Similar to last summer, several other BitTorrent trackers became extra cautious after the renewed attention from the authorities. Bithack.lv was one of the trackers that took action. The site didn’t close however, but now serves recipes instead of torrent files.

TorrentFreak spoke with one admin of a local BitTorrent tracker, who informed us that they have also been receiving letters from anti-piracy organizations. “A handful of popular trackers are taking severe countermeasures to avoid any possibility of takedown and continue to serve the community for now, hoping that no takedowns will follow,” he said.

As with many of the takedown attempts in other parts of the world, lobbyists from the entertainment industry are the ones tipping off the police, and assisting in ‘evidence gathering’ and even raids. In Latvia it’s LAmpA, but the BPI and IFPI have also been assisting the authorities, most notably with the raid on the popular music tracker OiNK.

Needless to say, these anti-piracy outfits are not the most objective partner when it comes to solving these type of digital ‘offenses’, and it’s worrisome to see how they appear to be increasingly intertwined with local authorities.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to various Latvian reports, the site was taken down and two of the main administrators placed under arrest. Other gaming and sport related projects connected to the tracker also disappeared. Reports suggest that up to 40 servers were seized.

The two admins, believed to be known as FileX and Tralivali, are believed to have been detained by the Economic Police, an outfit similar to the Dutch FIOD-ECD which was involved in the closure of OiNK. As usual, rumors are circulating that prolific uploaders are also being investigated, although that is far from certain at this stage .

Reports indicate that in 2007, admin ‘FileX’ received a letter from a German media company which requested the shutdown of File.lv. Failing that, it was demanded that File.lv should at least block users with a German IP address, with legal action threatened should they not comply. It’s unclear whether or not the site complied with the request, or if the threatened action is connected to the site’s recent disappearance.

Almost exactly 12 months ago, the Economic Police and public prosecutors met up at a ‘cyber-crime’ summit in Sigulda, Latvia, to discuss how piracy on the Internet could be detected and recorded in a fashion acceptable to the courts. One of the guest lecturers at the meeting was Jeremy Banks, head of Internet anti-piracy operations at the IFPI.

With this news about File-lv, it sounds like it took them a year to get organized.

If you are Latvian and have any further updates, please email us at tips@torrentfreak.com

Update: It appears that most of the other well known Latvian trackers that were hosted in Latvia at the time of the raid have now temporarily shut down as a precaution. This is the first time in Latvia there have been actual arrests in connection with a torrent site.

Update2: Additional details coming in from this report. According to the site’s host, 3 servers were seized. Additionally, it’s being reported that the site used a “buy upload credits via SMS” system.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.