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Top BitTorrent Sites Have Domains Put On Hold Pending Legal Action

Several BitTorrent sites including Torrentz and Fenopy have had their .EU domains put on hold by EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names. The new status for the domains, forcibly applied by EURid within seconds of each other yesterday afternoon, suggests that legal action against them might be pending and prevents the owners from making changes.

Earlier this week Homeland Security’s ICE unit announced a new round of domain seizures. Unlike previous operations that centered purely on United States-held domains, this one was broader in scope.

Dubbed Project TransAtlantic, the seizures took place with help from European law enforcement agencies and Europol.

“Recognizing the global nature of Internet crime, this year the IPR Center partnered with Europol, who, through its member countries, executed coordinated seizures of foreign-based top-level domains such as .eu, .be, .dk, .fr, .ro and .uk. This effort is titled Project Transatlantic and resulted in 31 domain name seizures,” ICE announced.

Prompted by this new development, TorrentFreak spoke with the owners of several BitTorrent sites to get their opinion on what this might mean for their sites. The general feeling was that ICE might be sending a message that no TLD is safe, even those in Europe.

But despite the concern, what we didn’t expect was any immediate action to seize domains. However, although not concrete, activity involving several top BitTorrent and other file-sharing related .EU domains in the past 24 hours has given cause for concern.

Yesterday afternoon the statuses of Torrentz.eu, Fenopy.eu and BTscene.eu were all forcibly changed by EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names. Rather than being simply marked as “registered”, the domains were flagged as “on hold”.

“This domain name has been registered and is on hold. It is active but may not be traded or transferred pending the outcome of legal activity,” EURid’s notes explain. The domains are not seized or taken offline, but the owners are unable to make any changes while they are on hold.

Similar status changes we also applied to several other related domains including DDL linking sites Sceper.eu and Downextra.eu, torrent site RealTorrentz.eu, and streaming links sites WatchSeries.eu and ChannelCut.eu.

The changes all took place within the space of a few minutes, starting at 16:31 and ending at 16:35 Friday afternoon. Other domains may have been affected but so far those listed above are the only ones we were able to find.

No other information has been provided by EURid so at the present moment it is not possible to state the exact reasons for the status changes. We do not know for certain if the action is file-sharing related or connected to some other issue.

However, all of the sites listed above appear in the first few pages of Google’s Transparency Report, meaning that they are connected to a relatively high number of takedown requests. Only three .EU domains in the early pages of Google’s report have not had their statuses changed by EURiD.

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  • http://twitter.com/Mathew30 Mathew Lisett

    they are all dump sites, so not really much of a panic

    • Mr. F.

      start small, see response – go bigger, see response – you get idea now…

      • Guest

        USA & MPAA – teaching an entire generation that government + corporate interests = corruption.

        Political tsunami heading the way of yourself and like-minded scum, Chris Dodd. Sucks you’ll be dead when it lands.

        • asdf

          It’s called Fascism.

        • http://twitter.com/MarioGo42549782 MarioGomez

          what Gloria said I’m alarmed that a student can get paid $6157 in 4 weeks on the network.

        • http://twitter.com/MarioGo42549782 MarioGomez

          …..goo.gl/SEnjq (Click on Home)

        • ThoseKids

          In the past, Europe tried to colonize other regions,
          in the present, they are unofficially declared colonies of USA.
          Terrorism works very well, USA just needs to say “do this”
          and they say “yes, master”. Like that embargo made against Iran,
          because US gave an order to European Union.

    • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

      IT doesn’t matter whether they’re all dump sites or not. It’s the principle behind what EURid are actually doing that’s eventually going to adversely affect our favourite sites.

      Whether those site can simply start a-new by setting another TLD in a non-USA and a non-EU Country remains to be seen.

      But this shit going down, and only we the People can get it changed to what we want them to do. Write complaints to your elected politicians and start voting and joining your Nation’s own Pirate Party.

      • PiRat

        OpenNIC?

        • FreeBSD

          Exactly!

      • FreeBSD

        why do people persist in registering domains that are inherently vulnerable to this sort of action? there are alternatives out there.

        • Whatever

          Why would a non-US domain need to be vulnerable ?

          Not so long ago the EU were close to dividing the internet into a US and a non US internet (taking it away from ICANN). Now the politicians have rolled over and are jumping to grab the USA cookie.

          “On hold” is just a test to see if they are able to get away with it.
          Smaller steps keep the sheep looking at Greece while they are led to the cages.

          This really cries for another US secret documents leak. Actually Falkvinge should be able explain why the EU has turned over its DNS decisions to the US.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Because of ignorance, for one thing. Most sane people would tacitly assume that running a site on a domain operating in a jurisdiction should be safe it said site was operating legally in that jurisdiction.

          Just as people in Sweden by default would not count on being arrested by Latvian police if they walked in a Gay Pride-parade in Stockholm and a doctor performing an abortion in Berlin would not count on suddenly being prosecuted by an Irish judge.

    • Anonymous

      stupid comment! doesn’t matter what the site is or might be, it is still censorship! so much for the EU trying to make out how it stands up for freedom and privacy! as for Google, it’s about time it got it’s comeuppance and everyone moved to using another search engine. their balls have shrunk so much, i have bigger peas for dinner!
      i keep saying the only way to stop this shit is a joint effort by all internet users, from ISPs to search engines to businesses to consumers. the entertainment industries think they are going to win. they must be in cloud cuckoo land. as soon as all the sites they want taken down are down, the governments are going to take over. this is about taking control of the internet away from people. the entertainment industries are willing participants but eventually they will be just as deep in the shit as the rest of us. and the country that is forcing this? not china; not russia; not n.korea; not even iran. it’s the good ol’ USofA!! dont you just love the ‘land of the brave, home of the free’? yeah, right!

    • Guest

      Goodbye internet freedom.

    • Glenn C.

      I actually like Fenopy, go there quite often. It’s the principle of the whole process, our freedoms are up to the highest bidder with the government acting as enforcers of a cartel. The government should be listening to the people and tell the MPAA and RIAA, etc. that this is how freedom works and no matter how much they contribute, they cannot corrupt freedom, but of course that is why we need to revolt and take back all they have stolen, correct the laws, remove anti freedom sentiment, and laws, and give the power back to the people.

    • brudda

      EURid sounds like a can of bug spray that you can use when you have a Eurotrash infestation. Thailand should buy about a million cans of the stuff…

    • Guest

      OpenNIC ftw

  • Mr. F.

    Europe bend over please – apply vaseline – … go go go

  • Gee

    They should get .pirate TLD, from http://www.opennicproject.org/
    Of course the problem with these TLDs is that they’re not indexed by Google.

    • Guest

      If they are not indexed by Google then that is a good thing and if its out of sight then its out of mind.

    • Guest

      And how is that a bad thing?
      In fact everything should move there. This needs to go back underground.

      • Anyone

        no
        it should be legalized

        if it goes underground only technically adapt can use it, that’s not how it should be, everyone should have access to all content

        • Who

          “if it goes underground only technically adapt can use it”
          that’s the problem, stupid people that “don’t know how” to shut there hole about it, is what started this problem. and because it will NEVER be legal, it needs to remain underground.

          another problem is http://www.dhs.gov/ Homeland Security, has no jurisdiction in the UK unless its got something to do with Terrorist activity’s.

          yes that’s right stupid MPAA P2P is NOT an act of terrorism! YOU ARE!

        • chronoss

          WHO is right
          and this site is perfect example of it.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          What was the province of the technically adept yesterday is today a point-and-click functionality built right into the browser or OS of choice for the unenlightened.

          That’s how it goes. By the time the darknet becomes commonplace, the average user has already gone there.

    • http://www.blockaid.me/ BlockAid DNS

      We will be working tomorrow to make sure that our users will not loose access to these domains. I should add that BlockAid DNS also supports opennic, just in case any sites decided to register a .pirate domain.

      • the musings of a madman

        have you guys thought about regsitering any torrents sites you come across or know of and sending them accounts you have precreated with you?

        that strikes me as a good start to get people moving over to your service.

      • Whatever

        There are lot of things brewing to solve all the problems but for any ordinary user it will just get too complex and even annoying for the more technical people around.

        Things like: VPN, OpenDNS, OpenNic, Blockaid DNS (still have to find what you are), F2F, darknets, freenet, tor, oneswarm, name obscufated newsgroup posts, encrypting harddrives and so on….

        To effectivelly get all the people sharing (and caring) to migrate to these new filesharing systems/sites a software package to setup all the parts in a few steps is needed. Secondly public knowlegde about this new setup would be needed. As an added advantage of massive migration will be the plausible deniability because of the instant massive amount of members (except in Germany where darknets are prohibited).

        Until that moment nobody will know about this except for TF readers and a few other dedicated places.

        • Anyone

          there was a time when we had just as many different p2p protocols, then slowly everyone started to gravitate towards bittorrent

          I’m sure something similar will happen in this case, it’s the evolution of the net

  • Anon

    solarmovie.eu is changed to ‘on hold’ too – they should change to .li or .ch

  • Mary Hairy Minge RHS.JJIP

    http://www.watchseries-online.eu is up so there. and even if it wasn’t, pulling a few blades of grass out of the lawn does jack all. what on earth is going on?. this is all a complete waste of of everybodies time, mass lawsuits, arrests and generally making the public feel bad when ever they use the internet for fear that they may press a wrong button and end up with a life sentence. this is utterly futile and crazy and it has got to stop, you stupid stupid governments, you do not have a clue how to spend the worthless money you have wasted and bankrupted yourselves with other than war, court cases prisons and your own corrupt lives. the public are close to a revolt, this is not going to help the situation one iota, especially when our money is worth less every day and nobody is going to get to retire anymore. . there, i feel better after my friday rant, time for a couple of pints and a game darts

    • Guest

      Those in the US don’t care how many people are hurt or how much it costs to get these sites shutdown. All they want is the shutdown of any site they object to legal or not.

  • http://pogue972.blogspot.com/ pogue972

    I can access all of the sites listed, and I am using OpenDNS. Some of them redirect to other domains, but the rest load properly. What happens when you try and visit them otherwise?

    • ndmushroom

      “This domain name has been registered and is on hold. It is active but may not be traded or transferred pending the outcome of legal activity,” EURid’s notes explain. The domains are not seized or taken offline, but the owners are unable to make any changes while they are on hold.

      From the article.

      • http://pogue972.blogspot.com/ pogue972

        Oh, I see. I guess I misunderstood.

        • Ghfyyhj

          Problem is this also means no nameserver changes can be made – So if these sites need to do this in the near future they kinda screwed

        • Violated0

          Then the question to ask is that if the NS details are unchanged then why are some effected sites down? There is no mention yet of raids on the servers hosting these sites but such raids are then not unexpected.

          A good day for any concerned site owner to take a backup copy.

      • chronoss

        this is when you circulate a hosts file with the domain pointing to an ip and then can change it and teach everyone how to open the ip

    • Guest

      What you don’t understand is that OpenDNS will send you right to the US Government’s servers whould they decide to seize those domains.

      • http://pogue972.blogspot.com/ pogue972

        I realize that, since most major public DNS servers are attached to the global US root servers. The problem isn’t so much a legal one as a technical one. You simply need access to those root servers to resolve domain names.

        If the issue was simply with Internic/Versign operating all .com registrations and handing them over to the US govt when they seized them that would be one thing. But when you have European governments (amongst many others) thats a completely different ball game.

  • d3xt3r

    ok. now what?

    i know what you will do. you will rant your heart out in this comment section. piss on anybody who disagrees.

    your ADHD will let you forget the whole issue to the back of your mind. you will stick your thumb up your warty butt and spank your little monkey on an illegal tube site riddled with ads.

    then you go to try to sleep. you think of your life. wonder why you don’t have a girlfriend. why your electra complex is still omnipresent in your life. you clearly have your issues.

    with so much baggage you are an impotent. thats what your partner says.

    you are a lost cause.

    you are a loser,

    i just f****d your mom in her A, V and M!

    back to the topic.

    bottom line: you are idiot; who doest matter or belong anywhere

    • Guest

      Oh my oh me, first there’s no girlfriend, then he’s being told off by a partner? Make up your mind silly boy!
      But before you do that try to learn the language you’re speaking before flaunting around as though your pants and underwear are the flag while you run around naked.

  • ElseAndrew

    Yet another TLD that isn’t safe… Time to move again.

  • anon

    Since EU is US’s bitch, it’s a bad idea from the start to use a .eu domain name.

    Too bad that North Korean domain registration is impossible, id rather go with them than any of these “corrupt by US” countries.

    • Universal Soldier

      .in is working for Torrentz

    • musings of a madman

      why is it impossible?

      • Anyone

        because they don’t allow foreigners registering domains

        • musings of a madman

          well. that just sucks and strikes me as dumb. they’re limiting money coming into the country that way.

  • Dangerous

    Unless we start retaliating in a big way against these corporate asshole it is going to get a lot worst. When crimes remain unpunished the criminals do it again. When a government break the law the citizen are released from following the law as well in order to dismiss such a treasonous government, restore the law and prosecute. No time to be all nice an polite folks! A DDOS operation is not a military operation but a protest. There is no point to simply protest when the government refuse to listen.

    • http://pogue972.blogspot.com/ pogue972

      Although a DoS attack might result in some media attention, it won’t resolve the issue and probably make those in charge push back harder against the cause. What we need is real political moves. Boycotts, petitions, demonstrations (online or off) to let these corporations/governments/etc know that we’re fed up with this kind of behavior. This is seizure of property without a trial by jury.

      Groups like the EFF & ACLU are involved in helping domain owners in these kinds of disputes and filing legal briefs to help support them. Although they are based in the US, there are other groups in other parts of the world that do similar things.
      https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2011/09/23
      http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/ice-domain-name-seizures-threaten-due

      Sometimes these groups will have links to “take action” where you can send a prewritten letter to your senator/congressperson/etc, but if they don’t, you can look it up, draft your own, post it to pastebin and encourage others to send it to their representatives as well. You can also donate to these groups to help them keep fighting the good fight. The EFF has a cool sticker pack for your trouble: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/eff-sticker-pack

    • Ben

      What can you do when you’re eu leaders are unelected and removable

    • JordanKratz

      Someone or some people who are a lot smarter than me with IT, ETC really needs to hack into the RIAA & MPAA.We the people should be able to see all the crooked dirty laundry those assholes have been filing away.
      Wonder what the Public will think when the Truth is thrust into their faces.

  • RoestVrijStaal

    As a citizen in Europe, I’m even less proud for being one when reading this.

    • asdf

      Dear European Citizen,

      I am sorry that my government is bending yours over. We are actually great people over here.

      Regards,
      American Citizen

      • Harkingiz8

        Shut Up Obama..

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        Dear American Citizen

        I am not so sorry to see your government bending my government over as it is my firm belief my government should have objected a bit more before dropping it’s pants.

        What upsets me is that my government seems to like it. And that upsets me as, according to the paper, my government should bend before no one but me. I can see that you are, however, in a similar position in that regard.

        Regards,
        European Citizen.

    • musings of a madman

      come on cameron, give us the vote on getting the fuck out of europe. i’ve been anti europe for as long as i can remember.

  • Anon

    .li or .ch domains are the wat to go :-)

    • Nombu
    • RoestVrijStaal

      But those tlds lack the ability to hide (in case like .com, .net, .info, .org and several other tlds I can’t remember now do ) or cloak (like .eu does) the real WHOIS.

    • MyNameIsFred

      watchseries just switched to the .il domain
      heh

  • Danger

    Hey TorrentFreak … PLEASE DELETE THIS POST!

    Open discussion and information is DANGEROUS!

    • Anyone

      if many people flag a post it will be “deleted” until a moderator unlocks it again (provided it isn’t spam)

      so be patient

      • Deleted

        TorrentFreak deletes posts that contain working hyperlinks.
        TF also deletes posts that make them “nervous”.

        Spam and Trolls generally survive.
        Talk about real issues and … DELETED!

        • Anyone

          I often post hyperlinks, and those posts stay
          and yes, the spam stays for too long, but just keep on flagging that, and it gets removed

          trolls are annoying, but currently they aren’t really disruptive, so why should they be deleted?

        • Deleted

          Anyone. I Agree with you. But in the past 12 hrs my posts were deleted.
          Not Spam. Not Troll. Just valuable information.

          For example: If I post a link to this software …
          http://www.vim.org/

          This post will be deleted. WHY IS THAT?

        • Guest

          @Deleted

          Are you a troll or just dumb? Posting a URL tends to put your comment into moderation thanks to spammers, and sometimes it takes awhile for it to be approved because the mods are actual people with lives outside of this website.

          As for deleting comments with “valuable information”, nope. Again, they only delete spam.

          And no, your post linking to vim dot org won’t be deleted.

        • Guest

          @Deleted off topic

        • WTF

          I had originally posted a comment on this TF article:
          http://torrentfreak.com/sharing-7-movies-on-bittorrent-1-5-million-damages-121201/

          But TF DELETED it. I guess they were scared or paranoid or something. The article describes how Flava Works embeds a “client code” in their video files. The article points out that Anwar Ogiste was “busted” because of his embedded client code “oxfglyrf”.

          I researched this issue and came across this lead:
          http://dietrolldie.com/2012/11/01/1-5-million-default-judgment-against-kywan-fisher-flava-works-inc-112-cv-01888-ndil/

          And the evidence submitted by Flava Works:
          http://dietrolldie.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/analysis_01888il.pdf

          That case was about Kywan Fisher, his “Flava” code was “xvyynuxl”.

          I noticed the ‘Vim’ logo on the screenshot of the evidence.
          And found the Vim webpage with their FREE editing software.
          http://www.vim.org/

          Obviously Flava Works used Vim editing software to present the evidence against Kywan Fisher. They did the same thing with Anwar Ogiste. TorrentFreak clearly displays the screenshot of that evidence.

          I simply point out that the Vim software can EASILY remove this code.
          Just open the video file and edit out Flava’s bogus client code.

          Just a million dollar clue for whomever cares to heed it.

          But TF DELETES this information.
          WHY?

        • Guest

          Something bad happens, and you go all autistic and cry censorship.

          Just post it again, like you did with your dozens of apparently uncensored posts.

    • magpieGRL

      @WTF

      Sorry, I looked at the vim site and at first look it seemed like an ad for powertools so I deleted it. I’ve since realised that it is not that and I promise that such posts will not be removed in the future.

      —> new mod, still getting the hang of it <—
      My bad.

  • Pingback: Top BitTorrent Sites Have Domains Put On Hold Pending Legal Action – TorrentFreak « DomainUSA – USA Domain Names from ConsultUSA

  • Just Curious

    Sooo sick of USA bashing… “it’s not our government’s fault”… it’s The USA… it’s The USA.!.. the longer you keep doing this the longer it will persist.

    TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT DUMB SHITS AND QUIT WHINING!!

    (Whining)

    1. To utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint.
    2. To complain or protest in a childish fashion.

    • Yeah Right!

      The USA has the largest number of stupid people living than any other country.
      The majority of US citizens are without doubt the most ignorant people on the the planet. They are a nation that is need of an enema.

      • musings of a madman

        they are kept intentionaly dumb and uneducated. the last thing america wants is a populace that can think for itself.

      • Ted

        The USA really needs non-biased educational media. A mate of mine recently returned from a trip to the usa, and he said that what they get on TV over there is very biased, and you just dont see things from the point of view that you do here (Australia). His point was they dont have a channel like the ABC (in Australia) or the BBC (in the UK) which has a charter to educate and, essentially, keep it real. Its my opinion that those 2 stations have done an excellent job in providing balanced education to those who are interested where they are available. This is how america has gone so far wrong. Up untill the internet gained massive popularity it was very hard for American citazens to get real information about anywhere else. Now they have a lot of catching up to do, and lot of fixing of their own country ahead (as we all do, to some point..).

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        Anyone claiming that the USA has the biggest proportion of stupid people living hasn’t talked to many of the citizens in their own country.

        I would make a claim that the US has a larger proportion of uneducated people…
        …but that doesn’t mean “stupid”. Real staggering stupidity is the more terrifying when it is voiced by a man in an expensive suit who functions well in society except for the blind areas where he makes even the most inbred hillbilly look like Albert Einstein in comparison.

        See most of the mouthpieces for the copyright industry, for instance, some of whom even believe the cognitive dissonance-inducing garbage they are venting.

    • musings of a madman

      tell us about how you didn’t loose the vietnam war and realy won it hands down.

  • Anonymous

    Well, considering that any idiot can now have any domain name seized for no reason whatsoever (e.g. dajaz1), I’d say this is the beginning of the end for the classic DNS system.

    Something will replace it. Whether it’s a distributed, decentralized improvement on the old system, or just sharing a hosts file (the method used before DNS), when DNS is finally strangled to death, everyone will have already moved on.

    Political power spent, laws broken, businesses ruined, and it won’t stop a thing. Perhaps after this they’ll attack the IPv4 protocol, just in time for everyone to upgrade to IPv6.

  • Just Curious

    Keep NOT taking responsibility for your own governments actions–that’s what they want–dumb, dumb. Hilarious!

  • Mc

    People assumed that domains in other registries were safe. But there has been plenty of evidence over that past few years of how authority and enforcement structures around the world are happy to bend over backwards to impress the Americans, even where there is no official mechanism for doing so, and effect their ever expanding extra-judicial reach. All the people pushing opennic will get a nasty surprise too if it ever gained any traction.

    So now we see the truth that the hierarchical DNS system is and always has been completely vulnerable to authoritarian coercion, and is those broken from a free speech point of view. Perhaps now people will start to see the real need for truly decentralised name resolution, such as namecoin or something. I had hoped such systems would be ready before we REALLY needed them, but perhaps people have to got feel the pain a little bit first before it happens.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      People conveniently forget how many aspects of our society have been shaped and created by the urgent need of the citizen to keep too much power out of government hands.

      And every time government overreaches itself, more such control mechanism accrete, grow, and eventually become what we take for granted.

      Tomorrows “internet” may very well be one seamlessly intermeshing set of darknets where everything from banking and online purchases to chatting and copying takes place – because the tools used to access the internet with the best way will by default use encrypted tunnels, anonymization, and ad-hoc networking.

  • Just Curious

    (Whining)

    1. To utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint.
    2. To complain or protest in a childish fashion.

    • ThumbsUpThumbsDown

      You must be describing Copyright Trolls?

  • Violated0

    I checked torrentz.eu and they are working fine for now.

    However, I would certainly blow a fuse if they are attacked, when beyond Torrentz being torrent focused they are much like Google. Indeed enter “torrent” into Google and you just got yourself a Torrentz clone. You may say “but… but… Google complies with DMCA take-down notices!” but of course so does Torrentz.

    I am standing here now thinking I must have slipped over into an alternate reality where I now exist in a Universe where SOPA, PIPA & ACTA were passed which allowed for such attacks. Lets get this straight when the democratic voice of the population has spoken, Congress & the EU Parliament agreed that this is bad for society, but here are some stupid fuckers doing it anyway?

    So long Democracy, bye bye due process, you wont be forgotten known law, see you later Justice, maybe. Welcome to the new fascism including tyranny where those copyright cartel cunts are known liars too. I can only think this one is going to get real ugly real quickly.

    • Violated0

      I have had a quick look around and while fenopy.eu is down other EU domains like publichd.eu & movietorrents.eu are up. The domain of Torrentz is on hold but still working here for now.

  • J0N

    Is .org good?

    • Who

      no its a US domain

  • John Space

    I just dropped by Torrentz.eu. The searchbar seems disabled but I still could use the site with Opera.

  • Who

    BTW Torrentz and Fenopy are NOT popular BT sites.

    • Violated0

      Torrentz is correctly a BT site search engine.

      I am sure Fenopy must have been in the top 20, if not top 10, but besides popularity I can say for sure that Fenopy is one of the biggest BT sites around with over 5.5 million torrents indexed.

  • Foff

    Why don’t we ask why the sites have not been seized yet. Unlike counterfeit goods these sites do not sell a product. I imagine the laws are fairly clear and straight forward with respect to selling counterfeit goods. But we know file sharing laws are a bit grey at best. In the us the copyright orgs have been so zealous at attacking any site that can be construed as facilitating copyright that as far as I no US based linking site exists. Europe has been slower to react in this case. Since sites that are not product based only transfer information are not as easy to shut down because Europe is sensitive to intrusive censorship. Once you shut a pirate site down by declaring the information they contain is illegal you open a pandora’s box of censorship. The authorities know that if they take down a site they must craft the language very very narrowly or or requests to take down any site anywhere for any reason will flood in.

    The fringes of the net are really already censored try putting up a hate site or racial site and see how long it lasts. Post a racial comment or hateful comment anywhere in any forum and it will be deleted in fairly quick order. You might think this is good but hate is a natural human emotion that needs to be vented on occasion. Just as prostitution exists to keep otherwise good men from becoming rapists or worse. Suppressing hate leads to mass murder either by individuals or government itself.

    Torrents are a simple and easy way to get entertainment and some training stuff. Shutting this down simply adds to the misery of those that can’t afford it and increases government control over the media gives them ever more power to suppress the masses. A major economic collapse of epic proportions is on the horizon. Capitalism has been somewhat stable but is failing and if we weaken censorship laws too much new Hitler or Stalin will step in and promise the moon.

    Just look at the US they just reelected a complete failure of a president because they felt he promised to protect the masses and provide never ending aid and bailouts to them. He achieved this through major control of the media as almost anything negative to him is ignored or suppressed. He is the only US president that has never been directly attacked and/or vetted by the media for no other reason then they support his left wing agenda.

    Lets hope that Europe does not follow this nascent dictator to hell and accede to his requests to take down these sites. Stand for freedom torrent sites and don’t let the machine take you down!

    • Vhgn

      I have seen “on hold” status before with .eu domains.

      MyP2P.eu domain was shut down shortly after this status was shown.

      The sites with this status should move to another safer domain!!

      • Dude

        Damn not that site too,any other streaming sites?

      • Dude

        Regard last comment, it has been myp2p.mu for a while now

        • Wiziwig Streamer

          No it hasnt – Myp2p.eu changed to wiziwig.eu when the domain was put on hold.
          Myp2p.mu and all the other ones that appeared are other webmasters jumping onto the myp2p name

    • Anon

      lol yeah good call, Foff. Law enforcement is all about “suppression of the masses.” Very astute. lol

      Pirates. I’m begging you. Get better, more intelligent leaders or hide under a rock and shut up. You are killing yourself.

      • Anyone

        in what world is censoring legal sites ok?
        just because some failed business have bribed politicians doesn’t make it ok

      • Anon

        yes, that is what law enforcement is often for. if the irish had mindlessly and meekly obeyed all the british of the era’s various unjust laws against them, well, not many would even be here today. if blacks in the usa had just accepted unjust laws, they’d hardly be better off today either.
        copyright monopoly law is a terrible wrong, and we have a duty to undermine and destroy it like any other bad law. one should never obey a law ‘because it’s the law’, that is a childish stage of moral development most people get over by their late teens. sometimes it’s right to break a law. copyright steals from us all.

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Don’t tell “Baghdad Bob Anon” that.

          If you do, he’ll just end up ranting about how Martin Luther King Jr. ought to have been subjected to “withering and lifecrushing punishment” for giving the “pirates” a set of standards to go by.

      • SomeYahoo

        MAFIAA. I’m begging you. Get better, more intelligent leaders or hide under a rock and shut up. You are killing yourself.

        FTFY

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        “Pirates. I’m begging you. Get better, more intelligent leaders or hide under a rock and shut up. You are killing yourself.”

        …whatever you say, Baghdad Bob.

        So your paroxysm of joy today would be because yet more collateral damage due to domain seizures has ensured tomorrow’s internet belongs to decentralized DNS without governmental agencies getting a say-so in sideways?

        Only you, Anon, only you.

  • Erwr
  • diogio
  • Foff

    Update: Since TF is not updating the story I will. Fenopy appears to be down but looks like it is transferring to a new domain. Torrentz and Btscene are still up for now but unless they transfer may be shut down soon.

    These sites are just collect torrents from other sites so in the event they are taken down no real damage will be done. They could easily be kept up by transferring but what remains to be seen is what threats are made to the owners. They may run and shut down for good if they rather then risk jail.

    • Goodbyenoway

      Fenopy is invaluable to me as there are 2 or 3 uploaders there who upload arts-related stuff that is not available anywhere else.

      If the UN and Obamanuts have their way the Internet will be entirely controlled by them. Sad.

  • Guestz0r

    So, what should we use now? Which TLDs do you guys recommend? Asian? African?

    • Violated0

      What I would recommend is standing ground and fighting. Abandoning the US domains was obvious enough but this is the EU where US bullying can only go so far. Look at the cases that have already passed when sure they do have some success but many times they have also failed.

      In other words the action they take today may not be justifiable once such cases reach court. Then lets not forget that EU courts have already made many favourable rulings on the concept of linking.

      Keep in mind that the copyright cartels abuse the law along with bullying and harassing the market. They use their monopoly powers and money to exert control over the world. Things have been that way for decades no matter the technology where it is this aspect we do need to fight and destroy.

      If you believe in the legality of what you do then one day you need to stand and be counted just like when we took down ACTA. On the day we do win we can then demand the release of all our political prisoners.

      Then if you prefer to run you will one day need to pen a letter to the North Korean Government to see if they have interest in sticking one to the United States.

  • Anon

    The more you struggle to break the law, the more they will put you down like poisoned dogs.

    • Anyone

      so you are advocating genocide now?
      classy

    • Violated0

      Most of these sites actually aim to follow the law including the DMCA.

      The problem is the copyright cartels don’t like DMCA with something about too lazy to do the work. So they want to upgrade the law to censor away whole websites but we have already managed to stop SOPA, PIPA and ACTA with CETA and TPPA to go if they are also bad.

      I have no doubt in this case that the USA is reaching beyond their lawful grasp. Make no mistake when this is bullying and law abuse. So if you want to see the future go ask Kim Dotcom who in his case have been proven to break the law multiple times.

    • SomeYahoo

      The more you struggle to keep your obsolete business model alive with extortionism/trolling/bullying/bribing/lying/whining/shilling/screwing over legitimate customers and websites/wasting millions on a wild goose chase you cannot stop and will never win, the more they will put you down like poisoned dogs.

    • Leia

      The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

    • ScrewEwe2

      Don’t you mean “The more you struggle to break the law, the more We will put you down like poisoned dogs.”

    • Anon

      Did everybody get my joke? Nobody puts down poisoned dogs because they die on their own. They will actually give you pillows and blankets so you can rest comfortably as you pass away. They might also give you a belly rub.

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        I thought the part about “…and the infidels from the west are fleeing before the wrathful righteous horde of the faithful and heroic republican guard…” was the joke, Baghdad Bob.

        Now you’re telling us the infidels were poisoned like dogs and get tummy rubs? Hmm. Not Epic enough. Not enough sulphur and brimstone, i think, in that diatribe of yours to make for a good bible-thumping session in your usual style.

        At the very least you need to describe the groaning hordes of pirates being paraded én másse in chains before the gallows singing “hoist the colors high” in vivid and gleeful detail – like you usually do when you think you’re commenting about the real world.

    • Wallace

      “Putting down poisoned dogs” is the best description I have ever seen of the MAFIAA response to piracy. Redundant, unnecessary and a complete waste of time and resources.

      “Struggling to break the law” is a good description of piracy too, since it’s actually pretty hard to break a law when “pirating.” You have to really work at it.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      You mean the more we win, the more they lose? I’m trying to understand your logic here, Baghdad Bob, but it’s kind of hard.

      Given that decentralized DNS has been a fact for many years and that all that kept it from evolving was that government-controlled TLD’s worked “well enough” you are now happy that even more of the internet just slid right out from under government control ability?

      Because, to be honest, that’s the only outcome here.

    • Psyko

      Suck my pirate dong, faggot!

  • Xp

    In order to rally people, governments need enemies.
    They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them.
    And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

    “When it gets down to having to use violence,
    then you are playing the system’s game.
    The establishment will irritate you, pull
    your beard and flick your face to make you fight.
    Because once they’ve got you violent,
    then they know how to handle you.
    The only thing they don’t know how to
    handle is non-violence and humor.” – John Lennon

    Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing
    the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that
    is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until
    it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates
    a country where everyone lives in fear.

    “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

    • SomeYahoo

      “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

      woah, that sounds like a lot of artists today, they love being serfs to copyright even though it hurts them in the long run (just look at DeviantArt) the MAFIAA doesn’t even have to do anything at all the morons do all the work for them

      • Anyone

        I’m curious, what happend to DeviantArt?

        • ScrewEwe2

          No problems with deviantART. It’s up.

  • JimTonJo

    Wow thats messed up man, I guess the wild west days of the internet are truly over. Thats sad!

    http://www.NetAnon.tk

  • huli

    if i see one more person spell the word “loose” in place of “lose” I’m going to lose my shit. Is this an epidemic among our young people these days? Don’t get me wrong I could give a fuck about grammar and what not. But this situation PAINS me…I mean it’s not a contraction issue or even a then/than or their/there it’s the complete mis-spelling of a damn word lol.

    Anyway DOWN WITH CORPORATE IDIOTS

    • ScrewEwe2

      Hey man, your totally loosing it. Colm Downe oar your goin to half a phucking Hart Atake.

      • Guest

        This is called censorship.

        Send emails to EFF.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      “I’m going to lose my shit.”

      You mean as in loose bowels?

  • HELLO!

    Whining)

    1. To utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint.
    2. To complain or protest in a childish fashion.

  • huli

    Just fyi buddy, pal, chief, I’m 28, not some hillbilly old guy. When I was growing up no one spelled lose, as loose. This is a recent epidemic with the texting generation I guess. Maybe you youngins watched Jim Carey say, LOOOOOOOOOOOSERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR too much and think that is how it’s spelled, I dunno.

    On the real though, I’m the first person to put an idiot grammar nazi 6 feet deep in his place, but this situation is totally different. Everyone can be forgiven for the, their/there/they’re, it/it’s, an/a, were/we’re, etc. I mean do you young idiots spell chose as choose? nose as noose? There’s so many other places it comes up.

    :Like…when you spell lose, as loose do you not know what the word loose is? If your pants are too loose how would you spell it? Shit is just annoying as fuck.

    I know it’s the wrong place to bitch about it but someone fucked it up at the beginning of the thread. So if this helps one person then good for them.

    • HELLO!

      One simple suggestion; If you are ignorant and do not “no” how to spell… go back to school dumb dumb. Or else NOBODY will take you seriously.

      Does this make any sense?

    • Curious_Aint_It

      In addition, spelling lose with a single “o” would save on keystrokes and extend hardware life. I wonder how much time and hardware would be saved over a 10 year period across the globe if this simple rule was followed?

      Sounds like a worthwhile venture for the US Government to sink a few billion into. I wonder if I can write a grant proposal for that?

      Title -> Modern day acronyms and their destructive effects on global understanding and innocent computer hardware.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      I feel for you. Really.

      Problem is, around here everyone is so busy trying to teach “anon” and “Nejtillpirater” fundamental language recognition (“no, white isn’t, in fact, black just because you happen to feel like it”) that actual grammar and syntactic rule becomes the least of their worries.

  • YourHighnes

    mafiaa is on a loosing spree , they need more attention now to pull some more cash ;d no big deal its dying slowly now, thats why they puting now every possible step they can.

    • Feimwyuu

      LMAO!

  • SMILINGBONE

    This comes as no surprise as Belgium was always a bitch of the US.

    • Napoleon

      Belgium is not a real country

  • FD

    so soon we will get to the good old http://ip_address ,

    • Anon

      Well, that’s one simple option. But modern clients have fully decentralised search too, and one can use magnet uris. Really, by attacking our DNS, all they’re doing is making the tech for sharing information more robustly more advanced. The overly centralised nature of the DNS has always been a known weak point of the internet infrastructure, and lo and behold it gets attacked by evil government censors.

      • chronoss

        this crap called decentralization is perfect to harvest ips in nations where the ip is considered you. SO NO and cause its public tracker it means they can do so without warrants or violating privacy laws….only a moron uses public trackers.

        • Feimwyuu

          You mean there’s no mafiaa that are members in top private trackers for years and years and some are even staff?

          Really?

          Private trackers are totally safe everyone!

        • Scary_Devil_Monastery

          Which is why decentralization by necessity should include anonymization by encrypted tunnels. Centralization always fails on security because webs of trust are easily compromised.

          I use public trackers. Through a VPN. I feel secure enough. And if I’m using DHT or a public tracker I feel the tracker’s reliable enough as well.

          A private tracker otoh, actually has enough personal information to uniquely identify you stored some place. That makes it a huge liability in itself.

      • Scary_Devil_Monastery

        Yes, it’s interesting to see the “DNS – the single point of failure” being realized around us.

        Used to be the big topic on old bulletin boards and toted like Diogenes of sinope’s lantern by tinfoil hat theorists of the worst kind.

        And yet now here we sit, finding them in the right and we more cautious and optimistic thinkers in the dead wrong. Somewhere, some old old internet guru with a neckbeard to his knees who hasn’t come out of the basement for twenty years is laughing his head off in full vindication.

        As you say, in the long run we benefit from this as it removes several proofs-of-concept from the drawing board and puts them in production.

        Ten years from now, the only domain government’s will have a say in will be .org. And they’ll have to run it from a decentralized TLD just so anyone can access it.

  • Roswell1701

    All the sites mentioned in the article suck. Still, I don’t like to see ANY site, or ANY ONE’S favorite site, fucked with…

  • chronoss

    so say you move to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX a new ip instead jus tput up a new hosts file for everyone and have it inside that have YOURDOMAIN.com/whatever point to the above ip…..

    then they can get stuffed….

  • Searinox

    So wait what?! The ICE, a customs policing agency for goods imported/exported to/from the US, is going after Internet domains which aren’t even located in the US?! Not only should such a body have nothing to do with Internet domains, but it is now taking down domains whose location has NOTHING to do with their legislative reach?!

    This is retarded! What if in some hypothetical country stealing a cookie was punishable by death, and they came to YOUR country and prosecuted YOU, because according to THEM it’s illegal?!

    Reinstate the law! Remind them that their reach has limits within their own borders! Tell them to mind their own business! Write letters to your EU PMs!

    • Guest

      This just show the abuse of US law but the MAFFIA don’t care. what the MAFFIA wants and that is these shutdown and they don’t care about breaking laws to do so.

  • Foff

    Update 2: I put in the fenopy ip and it now appears to point to a ca domain so it does appear the site is moving domains. I looked at the transparency report and there are not that many eu domains. What see in this report is that the Mafiaa orgs have taken on far too much power. Most of the take down requests appear to come from the music mafiaa and a porn org. We need to deball these orgs by passing laws to prohibit them from filing take down requests and only allow them to forward the requests to the copyright holders and make them file the requests.

    That aside what the fuck do these turd orgs think they are doing? Are the so seriously retarded to think that there is any hope at stopping piracy. Just how fucking stupid are they? No matter what they do and how much the fuck with the net we will find another way or just plain do without their shit.

  • The_Strawbear
    • Curious_Aint_It

      Hmmm… based on that premise the primary Internet backbone providers can be held responsible for transferring data through their routers, eh?

    • Dr Pepper

      The guy, William Weber, was running numerous monster TOR exit nodes.

      “In total, Mr Weber had operated seven Tor exit nodes that had piped terabytes of data every day”

      Nothing wrong with that but just remember that cops are dumb (and vindictive).
      They tend to do stupid shit all the time.

    • Scary_Devil_Monastery

      Interesting indeed. The main problem being that if the case stands, no one can operate an ISP any longer, legally.

      Meaning the internet itself will be a high-risk venture. I’m guessing we will see numerous cases such as these mounting in the near future. Eventually at the highest level of courts and politics it will boil down to whether the internet as a whole is legal or not.

      Because if you can be held liable without knowledge, neither the internet nor the post office can function without risk to anyone supporting the basic infrastructure.

  • Dfd

    Fuck us gov. thepiratebay.SE can been seized no? It’s a EU domain!

  • Him

    what the EU is openly ignoring is that nothing that is happening as far as closing web sites, preventing file sharing, fining and/or jailing people, preventing the sale or distribution of counterfeit goods (except medicines!) is concerned is going to help any industries except those in the USA and no government except the one in the USA. they are also very conveniently ignoring that the reason this is happening is to try to get the USA economy back up and running, which again is going to do very little to help other countries. remember where this crap cam from. it was the US banks that started the world financial crisis but the world is now supposed to do whatever it can to help get the US economy out of the crap. it’s the US pharma industries that are trying to stop the production of drugs that are a fraction of the price of their own, but do the same thing, so putting those drugs out of reach of the people that need them. result, multiple deaths but drastic increases in profits! everything is USA,USA,USA and fuck the rest of the world!!

  • Dfd

    Lol, sceper.eu change to sceper.ws ;).

  • ScrewEwe2

    It’s the end of the world as we know it.

    Fuh-Q ICE
    Fuh-Q MAFIAA

  • Bichat

    fkin cunts i love tz

  • Dogboy

    http://torrentz.eu/ working fine for me

  • Curious_Aint_It

    As we all know, ALL resources are limited (except the vacuum of space, and even then, there is some speculation that it has an “edge”). Therefore, the drug and human traffickers (including innocent children), arms dealers, terrorists, etc are REJOICING at this most recent witch hunt and the waste of law enforcement assets.

    They currently have much more freedom to operate their illicit activities which truly have a real human cost.

    What are we spending these resources on? So that Simon Cowell can have that 20th chauffeur driven Bentley and Steven Spielberg can afford that 5th vacation home in Cancun? The tragedy!

    It seems totally reasonable…

  • Zakkar544t

    If you look on http://www.torrentz.eu at the bottom of the page, you can see all their backup mirror sites.

  • shimeijiejie
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