Earlier in the week we reported on the plight of LeechersLair. Launched in 2006, the BitTorrent tracker has around 20,000 members who enjoy all the usual content.

Not at the moment though since the Content, Consumer and Network Security Division of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM) ordered Shinjiru, LeechersLair’s webhosting provider, to close down the site citing a breach of Section 41 of the Copyright Act 1987. Shinjiru complied immediately and took the site offline.

And now they’ve shut down SuperFundo too. As an open indexer, SuperFundo doesn’t have a tracker of its own, so perhaps this is a more unusual target for the anti-pirates. Nevertheless, the claims are that SuperFundo breaches the Copyright Act 1987. The site admins weren’t exactly given long to take action either;

You are required to resolve the illegal activities issues within 1 hour after this warning notification. TMNet has the right to block this IP if there is not any notification from your side within this one-hour timeframe.

Plenty of time to sort everything out, then. But never fear, admin at SuperFundo told TorrentFreak that the site will be back, asap. LeechersLair will be back too, as soon as they have secured another host in a different country.

In the meantime the message is pretty clear – Malaysia shouldn’t be on the top of anyone’s torrent hosting list.

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

This morning TorrentFreak was informed of the closure of another long-standing BitTorrent tracker.

Although it doesn’t have the profile of sites like The Pirate Bay, LeechersLair (LL) is a well-established tracker. Launched in 2006, LL has around 18,000 members who enjoy all the usual content. Until today the site was hosted in Malaysia – not any more.

This morning the Content, Consumer and Network Security Division of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM) ordered Shinjiru, LeechersLair’s host, to close down the site, citing a breach of Section 41 of the Copyright Act 1987.

SKMM is a government body which enforces the communications and multimedia laws in Malaysia. It informed Shinjiru by faxed letter that if it failed to close LeechersLair, it would be breaking the law. Shinjiru immediately complied and took the site offline.

The government of Malaysia has moved against torrent sites hosted by Shinjiru before, as we reported back in June 2008, but most of them returned elsewhere.

However, there was a worrying development when one of the sysops of another torrent site, tbkresources.org – also hosted at Shinjiru, told TorrentFreak that a hard drive had been attached to their server and it was copying data for use in a copyright infringement case against them. Shinjiru confirmed the report.

At this stage it is unclear if LeechersLair will return, but we will update this post when we have more information. In the meantime other trackers hosted by Shinjiru continue to operate but whether or not they are being monitored is anyone’s guess.

Both Shinjiru and the Malaysian government were given the opportunity to comment, but as yet we’ve received no response.

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