BitTorrent Sites Safe Haven Under Threat
Written by Ernesto on June 23, 2007Leaseweb, the ISP of some of the largest BitTorrent sites like Torrentspy, BTjunkie and Demonoid was forced to take down everlasting.nu, a relatively small BitTorrent site. The outcome of the lawsuit initiated by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit Brein could spell trouble for some of the key players in the BitTorrent landscape.
In response to this decision (Dutch link) several BitTorrent admins, who prefer not to be named, already announced that they have plans to leave Leaseweb. Others are setting up backup locations in case their site s are targeted. An admin of one of the bigger BitTorrent sites said:
“It looks like we’re not going to be very safe anymore on Leaseweb, we are putting backups in place on another location, just in case.”
This Thursday, the Amsterdam court concluded that everlasting.nu structurally facilitated copyright infringement by allowing their users to download copyrighted content via torrents hosted on their site.
Leaseweb’s lawyers argued that there was no evidence that these torrents really pointed to copyrighted works. They referred to the fact that rights holders often upload fake files themselves and that the name of a .torrent file is not sufficient to prove that copyrighted works are being distributed. Brein responded to this argument by stating that everlasting.nu then would be a very customer unfriendly BitTorrent site if this was the case, and the judge agreed with this.
At the end of the hearing the court decided that Leaseweb has to take down everlasting.nu and hand over the name and address of the owner. Additionally, Leaseweb is obliged to take down everlasting.nu, in case the site returns in the near future.
It still remains unclear what made the judge decide that everlasting is facilitating copyright infringement and how this will affect the position of all the other BitTorrent sites hosted by Leaseweb. The fact that everlasting has their own BitTorrent tracker was not used as an argument in the decision. So does this mean that hosting .torrent files is illegal now?
Brein sure thinks so, they already announced another lawsuit against Leaseweb to take down another BitTorrent site. At this point it is not sure whether this is one of the big players like Torrentspy, BTjunkie and Demonoid, or yet again a smaller BitTorrent site.
To be continued.
Previously: Mac OS X Leopard Leaked to BitTorrent
Next: FlixFlux: BitTorrent Site Includes Movie Trailers
55 Responses
I hate to say I told you so but…
I told you so! It’s time to relocate people. If you want to stay close to home, invest in co-location in Sweden. Don’t care about colo? Malaysia.istheshit.net.
Sweden won’t stay a heaven for a long time, do you guys really think that the provocative attitude of ThePirateBay will remain unpunished ?
What about ThePirateBay sponsoring other trackers and hosting them in exchange for ads?
Run, run and run some more… I love my demons. Better than gettin nailed by BREIN.
“Brein responded to this argument by stating that everlasting.nu then would be a very customer unfriendly BitTorrent site if this was the case, and the judge agreed with this.”
Now would BREIN’s argument in return not mean that a site, where those fakes are common, can be hosted safely in the netherlands?
from the link
“De bestanden worden aan de gebruikers van Everlasting aangeboden en uitgewisseld door middel van het zogenaamde BitTorrent-systeem. Dit houdt onder meer in dat een bestand in stukjes vanaf meerdere computers tegelijk kan worden gedownload en dat die stukjes direct weer geupload worden bij andere gebruikers. Het BitTorrent-systeem van Everlasting bestaat uit twee onderdelen, te weten de website zelf waarop de bestanden worden aangeboden en de onderliggende ‘Tracker’ die het up- en download verkeer regelt. Beide onderdelen bevinden zich op de server bij Leaseweb;”
my bad dutch knowldge reads here that the judge was under the impression that the copyrighted content (”bestanden”) is hosted on that leaseweb server from everlasting.nu. Some native dutch speaker can clarify please?
[quote comment="121726"]
my bad dutch knowldge reads here that the judge was under the impression that the copyrighted content (”bestanden”) is hosted on that leaseweb server from everlasting.nu. Some native dutch speaker can clarify please?[/quote]
This is pretty confusing indeed. “bestanden” translates to “files”. In this paragraph they make it look like the copyrighted content is stored on their servers. They say that the “files” are hosted on everlasting, I’m not sure whether they refer to .torrent files or the actual infringing content..
It is not clear to me whether the judge understands the difference between the copyrighted files and the .torrent files.
so change the file extension to something else instead of .torrent
make it .tnerrot.
the it would take another couple of years before that extension became illegal.
[quote comment="121788"]so change the file extension to something else instead of .torrent
make it .tnerrot.
the it would take another couple of years before that extension became illegal.[/quote]
i agree.
some sites already stop putting the .torrent and its not that hard to add it yourself so this is the best way for time being
the irony in my eyes from this story is that Amsterdam, home of legalized Pot is bitching because of a .torrent… whats next… they gonna make pot illegal too?!? That would crush so many peoples hearts. But hey look at like this… in about 4 months I’ll be pressing my luck and attempt to host BitTorrent Sites here in Portugal. After all… The Portuguese are the Original founders/owners of the world and we don’t believe in the Courts as much as the rest of the world.
Red Wine anyone?
I’m Dutch myself, and as usual, BREIN makes bullshit claims. The lawyer accepted the ‘fact’ that this website was sharing the content. Again, as usual, the lawyer doesn’t understand a pee about computing/torrenting. I hate BREIN :@
P.S.: The Dutch word BREIN means brains.
BREIN has got no brains ^.-
To be honest the answer is pretty simple.
Buy up servers in areas where there are no real laws against copyright.
Sure it may mean third world countries with bugger all infrastructure, but it also means complete privacy and copyright free goodness.
“Brein” is the Dutch word for “asshole”
[quote comment="121788"]make it .tnerrot. the it would take another couple of years before that extension became illegal.[/quote]
How about .brein or .{judge-name-here} or .riaa-authorized or .valenti in his honor?
[quote comment="122647"]To be honest the answer is pretty simple.
Buy up servers in areas where there are no real laws against copyright.
Sure it may mean third world countries with bugger all infrastructure, but it also means complete privacy and copyright free goodness.[/quote]
It means too that the MPAA and RIAA can do what they want. Don’t even start about the agencies of the US that mix into it. They can do what they want to.
I believe the only save havens you’ll find regarding such ordeals will be in countries like Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, where piracy is already rampant and I doubt anyone could do anything against it. If people were to come here and retrieve, for example, all the pirated Windows they’d most likely take 90% of the home based computers. I don’t think they’ll be able to do that, and if even so imaginable, it’ll most likely be in a very very long time. Also, torrents aren’t so popular in said places so litigation would be much more difficult against the filsharing scene, at least regarding .torrents.
Demonoid is down today. Anyone know if this is related?
#19 i see that too! i found this page by googling to find out why demonoid is down. i had so many friends on those forums =[ but the guys at demonoid are smart and they’ve already had to switch hosts multiple times so im guessing they’ll be back with their backups. whats confusing is that google is still picking up .torrent files and recent forum posts by usernames ??? =\ =’(
Good, So it’s not just me. I always get paranoid my ISP is up to something. The wierd thing is I’m dling a low seed/leech torrent and it’s still connecting to the tracker. Must be a DNS resolution issue.
damn this sucks im with demonoid and all other torrents the whole way.
i hope for everything that they have a large amount of backups.
i hope that demonoid being down is only a temporary thing….cause I’m a “donor” or whatever(they take out $5 each month and my ratio never falls below 1) and they charged my card again today….
Something is there at http://www.demonoid.com and it’s answering pings. Whatever is there is refusing http connects. “Best case” scenario: Maybe they got hacked and are restoring from backups? “Worst case”: Well, given the timing of this article they got taken down and are setting up a new home?
They do have an IRC channel, conveniently listed on the site :-) Anyone know it?
As of June 25th, 2007 Demonoid’s website servers have gone offline. Though Demonoid’s torrent tracker still active, but it is unsure if any torrents are still registered with the tracker. This seems to be in response to Leaseweb’s termination of everlasting.nu, and the pending legal implications. Read more @ Torrent Sites safe haven under threat – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonoid_%28BitTorrent%29
I R SAD
so demonoid is no longer a website??
I am just coming from Demonoid’s IRC channel.
Here is what they have written at the top of the channel :
“Demonoid.com Site offline for a few days while harddrives get replaced”
Figure ?
Anyways check it out yourselves :
Server : irc.p2p-network.net
Channel: #demonoid
Hope this helps.
Long Live Demon.
Thanks for the update. That’s sad. I hope we hear from demonoius if they will soon have a new home. IRC anyone?
To Brein and the unnamed shill judge, may pox beset your genitals and they be painful and sore.
I thik its Deimos ? I am at IRC @ my nick is asdzx
Hate Brein.
By the way jackson , come @ demonoid channel, we can discuss and flame BREIN their at our heart’s content! :P
And I agree with your sentiments !!
Thanks for the update! I thought that I was going crazy – I thought that my ISP blocked me too, because I go to Demonoid at least once a day.
http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-offline-for-a-few-days/
F**k. I was almost done getting Halo 2 fully working on XP too! *sigh*
At last!! I find a friggin’ reference to this demonoid problem somewhere!
Amazing that with google news and all the rest of it, nowhere could I find anything about why demonoid was not responding. Until I thought to check my rss feeds and then saw this! OOPS. Hehe.
I would have thought it would be a leading story just by the fact that a lot of blogs would carry it but now..nothing.
Twats.
anyway I also thought my ISP had blocked me. I did the pings and saw the tracker was responding so I had to conclude that my ISP had blocked demonoid on port 80 or HTTP or something.
So while I am sort of glad to find out the truth, it hurts.
My favourite site…surely this cannot happen.
Can it?
Peace be with you Demon Lord! :-)
Justanobody: Yeah, my sympathies. TorrentFreaks is the only site to carry news of this. I googled and checked news and found nothing.
Check the later story: Good to know it will be back. I uploaded 4Gb on the last day I guess I won’t get credit for, but so long as the downloaders enjoyed it I’m happy anyway :-)
Take advantage of the downtime to organize your files and say to wife: “Honey I spend too much time on demonoid, but damn it, tonight we’re hitting the town!” :-)
Long Live Demonoid!!!
only just got on site as well. some bigwigs just cant leave things alone…… good luck demonoid
I recently know Dem was out! Today 27 at 15:00, before (26 and 25) I was downloading at speed of 60K, so I didn’t worry about check demonoid.com, until now when I saw the speed rate of download at no more than 1.5K.
Can somebody tell me when exactly demonoid.com was out?
My torrents are active, so the rate are sslllowly, do they keep slow until they finally disspear?
Thank You and LIVE DEMONOID!
F___ BRIEN!
Demonoid-User asks “My torrents are active, so the rate are sslllowly, do they keep slow until they finally disspear?”
The tracker is still running (don’t ask me how), but because the web site is down no one new will be joining. Eventually your peers will get fewer and fewer, so the slower dl speeds. When Demonoid comes back online, you’ll get new peers.
Thank you Jackson, that’s clear, I recently knew It hapened in the past, I’ll wait.
And there was i thinkin that dutch society was permissive and tolerant!
LONG LIVE DEMONOID!!! LONG LIVE TORRENTSPY!!!
The forum is back online.
http://fora.demonoid.com
With respect, the term “safe haven” doesn’t exactly apply for two fundamental reasons: 1) It is a US term, applicable to ISPs under DMCA legislation (neither the site nor the owners live in the USA) 2) the site in question is a prolific tracker and therefore deeply implicated in the act of distribution.
Passive indexing sites (those not directly associated with trackers) operate merely as search engines, and there is very little indeed that can be done to interfere with their operation.
Whilst I wish the owners of Demonoid every success, the choice of Canada as a supposedly friendlier jurisdiction seems a bit strange. As for Sweden and using PRQ….
you know, this is ridicilous….
the stupid judge was probably some 60 year-old fart who knows dick about computers and how torrents work. Likely the cunts that Brein hired as lawyers explained to the old man whatever they wanted in a skewed way so as to present it in a manner that suited their case.. Torrents cannot be legal by definition. There is no possible way that anyone using a torrent is commiting a crime. There is no theft. And even more, a site like demonoid does not keep the files. It just has the trackers. That’s more than just innocense. I mean, in the end, you don’t really need any site to for torrents. I can make a torrent with my isp and ports open, and publish the torrent in a forum like here.. people can do whatever they want.. A torrent is like keeping your door open, and letting anyone make random copies of random parts of your stuff…
You know what? i got an idea that will be impossible to shut down if it works. If everyone, i mean everyone who is in favor of torrents, becomes with their isp ort of a mirror or site or what not, keeping bits of information world wide, there is no fucking way they can shut down everyone online worldwide. It is just a metter of time.
can someone please send me an invitation code… i’ve been looking for one for a really long time and cannot seem to get one.
thank you.
Bkknappy@yahoo.com
What if I am on a shared connection? Can they track an individual if they download using a WiFi hotspot or something? What if I am in Starbucks using their wireless downloading Pirates of the Carribean or some dumb movie, and they track the ip? Will it trace to Starbucks or the person downloading? Sorry for the ignorance, thanks to all who answer.
haha! shame, you guys are retards!
noob
TO ALL DEMONOID FAMILY:
LET ALL OF US KEEP THE SEEDING ALIVE TILL OUR PARENTS ARE BACK HOME !!
LET HIS BE THE BACK-UP FOR TORRENT ! A MORAL SUPPORT TO DEMONOID ADMINISTRATORS..
John Britehouse – You loser
download from home. Nothin’ will happen
Long live Demonoid,being a great fan and member for a few years now,hardcore users like myself are normally quite computer literate and use the site more for testing purposes,if i like the software or movie,game or whatever i BUY IT.Having paid hard earned money for crap, hyped up by the author’s,or marketer’s.
we are also the the people that Beta test the crap that get’s released,because we know how to fix our machines after installing crappy software,and are not afraid to do so!!!!!
oink goes down… what now?
come on demonoid your gremlins are waiting for you
Yes, take the torrent servers to a third world country. Train a couple of the locals and give them jobs running torrent servers. Pay their wages with advertising. You would provide needed jobs, some education and money to those in need and when they get on their feet they’ll be pass laws making BitTorrent servers their national symbol.
And which judge would sentence a village back to poverty and starvation just because they had served some torrents?
Brilliant!
So sites like
http://tvscreenonline.com/ can get shutdown for referring to movies, tv shows, and other videos? That is just plain sick
Copyright is theft when taken to the extreme, I think the world would never have had most of the accomplishments we’ve gained if people hadn’t drawn off of others ideas and developments.
Pre-viewing films and games gives us all a better idea of what we want, like and need before buying official products and merchandise, therefore not putting money toward funding lame ass crap the world seems so full of nowadays!!!!
FOOTNOTE: Those trying to close down sites can afford pretty much what the hell they want and those of us with little are always the ones that suffer, may they all rot in the world we call hell!!!!!!!
26 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.