In February 2010, however, an event occurred which rocked the boat. Citing copyright concerns, authorities seized the domain name of Torrents.ru, the country’s biggest tracker with millions of members.

The site continues today under a new domain, Rutracker.org, with its troubles seemingly behind it. The same cannot be said for its sister operation, the adult torrent site Pornolab.net.

Despite being Russia’s 93rd most popular site, Pornolab chose to operate out of a datacenter in Ukraine. The authorities there say it was a huge operation, serving 2 million registered users. With the recent demise of Empornium and PureTNA, this may mean it was the biggest porn tracker in the world. In the last 24 hours, however, all that came to an end.

According to police in the capital, Kiev, yesterday their officers swooped on the site’s datacenter and seized its servers. Unusually for a case of this type, the complaints that led to this action were not related to copyright infringement but to the unlawful distribution of pornography.

The police are citing contraventions of Part 2 of Article 301 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine which covers crimes against children using the Internet – in this case the importation, production, sale and distribution of pornographic material without age restriction.

In addition to attempting to bring the operators of the site to justice, the police say that they will also try to identify Ukrainian users of the site. Due to the nature of BitTorrent – downloaders automatically upload too – they too are being accused of the unlawful distribution of restricted material.

In the past, Article 301 has been used by the government to shut down various publications deemed to be offensive, including literature aimed at the gay community. Punishments can extend from large fines to 5 years in prison.

Ukraine is also home to Demonoid, one of the world’s largest BitTorrent trackers. Unlike Pornolab, Demonoid expressly forbids the tracking of any adult-related content. It also goes one step further, probably to ensure it stays the correct side of the Ukrainian authorities, by banning all local traffic. Pornolab did not and according to estimates, up to 700,000 of its members called Ukraine home.

This is not the first time Ukrainian police have shut down a an adult themed torrent site. In May 2010, xsweet.net.ua was targeted for the same reasons and its 35-year-old operator arrested.

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

The grounds for the seizure was a breach of Article 146 of the Criminal Code – “Illegal use of objects of copyright or related rights, as well as acquisition, storage, transportation of counterfeit copies of works or phonograms for sale, committed on a large scale”.

Torrents.ru was quickly restored with a new domain, RUtracker, but this fight back has only spurred the authorities on to take even more aggressive action.

“The police will take action to stop the operation of file-sharing sites like torrents.ru and will fight with their creators,” said Economic Security deputy chief Lt. Gen. Victor Vasilyev from Moscow’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Our task is to stop those sites’ owners activities,” he told a press conference.

The existence of file-sharing networks is causing considerable damage to copyright holders, said Vasilyev, although he admitted that thus far the police campaign against them has returned limited success.

Vasilyev noted that many sites (including RUTracker) are registered outside the .RU domain which makes them more difficult to deal with. “But even if they are registered in the Russian Federation it is often really hard to establish the identity of the owner and make them liable,” he added.

Dreamtorrent Corp spokesperson (the creator of torrents.ru) Alexander Volkov believes that the police fight should work against the exchange of pirate material, not BitTorrent trackers. Volkov said this would avoid the risk of limiting users’ ability to share information which could constitute an encroachment on civil rights.

“If we are talking about limiting pirated materials, then authorities already do what they can,” Volkov added.

Nevertheless, it seems the police are already looking at this problem from two directions. Citing developments in Europe, the authorities believe that going after sites and holding users of those sites responsible for their actions is the way forward.

Nikolay Nazimok, head of Moscow police’s Economic Crime Department, says that since users of file-sharing networks like BitTorrent not only download but upload too, they effectively become part of a distribution network for counterfeit goods.

“The problem of file-sharing networks is becoming very acute,” Nazimok told a press conference yesterday. “They are a dangerous web that form a network of networks. By downloading movies from the resource, you become distributors of these products to other users,” he added.

Nazimok has proposed that illegal file-sharers should be treated in the same way as criminal counterfeiters.

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

A representative from RU-Center confirmed that the domain was blocked on the orders of the Investigative Division of the regional prosecutor’s office in Chertanovo district, Moscow, but at that time could not disclose the reasons.

Subsequently it was revealed that the seizing of the domain was due to violation of Article 146 of the Criminal Code – “Illegal use of objects of copyright or related rights, as well as acquisition, storage, transportation of counterfeit copies of works or phonograms for sale, committed on a large scale”.

Although Torrents.ru operated a ‘notice and take down’ procedure whereby copyright owners can have torrents removed “no questions asked”, the complaint specifically mentioned software developed by 1C and AutoDesk. Both companies have since denied initiating proceedings against the site but rumors persist that they were somehow involved.

After so easily losing their domain in the .RU zone, the operators of Torrents.ru weren’t about to take any chances by registering a new domain with the same authority. Within hours the site had relocated to a new domain at rutracker.org, apparently registered from the Bahamas.

Understandably the Torrents.ru domain seizure has caused quite a stir in Russia. Even though the law allows a month for a dispute to be rectified, RU-Center acted immediately and without being ordered to do so by a court, prompting theories of back-room deals under the influence of US interests. The operators of rutracker.org say that they are prepared to go to court over the case and will complain to ICANN.

“It was absolutely illegal,” said the owner of Torrents.ru in a recent interview. “We will appeal against it, but in this case it’s not the most important thing. The precedent is created. If you are an owner of domain name in .ru zone, you should know that it can be suspended at any moment by the order of an investigator.”

Following the domain closure a petition was set up addressed to President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, asking them to investigate the authorities who are said to have overstepped the limits of their powers. It currently has more than 15,300 signatures.

Other less conventional responses to the seizure have also been underway, with the Russian Pirate Party reporting that the websites of 1C and online cinema EKinoT have been subjected to DDoS attacks. In January, EKinoT said it would work with the Ministry of Culture to ‘blacklist’ sites which compete illegally with its business – Torrents.ru was one of the sites mentioned along with sharereactor.ru, intv.ru, binmovie.ru and epidem.ru.

Thanks

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

One such giant is Torrents.ru, a huge Russian BitTorrent site with 4 million users and one million torrents which has operated relatively trouble-free – until now.

RU-Center, Russia’s largest domain name registrar and web-hosting provider, today pulled the plug on the Torrents.ru domain name, suspending it with immediate effect.

Andrey Vorobiev, Director of Public Relations at RU-Center said that the domain was blocked on the orders of the Investigative Division of the regional prosecutor’s office in Chertanovskaya, Moscow, but could not disclose the reasons.

In the meantime, the operators of Torrents.ru have been working on some counter-measures to mitigate the effects of the suspension.

Already they have set up an alternative domain at Rutracker.org in order for users to keep accessing the site, but of course this doesn’t help to keep existing torrents running since they contain the URL of the tracker located at the old domain.

To fix this issue users can change the announce URL in old torrents from bt.torrents.ru, to bt.rutracker.org. Alternatively it’s possible to simply go to the site under the new domain and re-download the torrents which now contain the new tracker URL.

A video report is available here (Russian).

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