Thread: Police Declare War on BitTorrent Sites, Operators and Users

Police Declare War on BitTorrent Sites, Operators and Users


Following the domain seizure of Russia’s biggest torrent site, Torrents.ru, Moscow’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has announced it will not only start shutting down BitTorrent sites and pursuing their operators, but also hold users responsible. One proposal suggests that file-sharers should be treated the same as criminal counterfeiters.

Last month RU-Center, Russia’s largest domain name registrar and web-hosting provider, was forced to shut down the domain of Torrents.ru, the country’s biggest torrent site with around 4 million users.
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



I guess, its gonna be difficult for us in future. If russians have escalated their procedures, the US and UK are not far behind and probably a global law or something

I guess you don't read many news articles about torrenting. In the last 9 years (when bit-torrent was made) hundreds of statements exactly like this have been said. It doesn't mean anything. You can't control something that is used by hundreds of millions of users that have the ability to be essentially 100% anonymous

and I hope we can stay 100% anonymous

nowadays we are getting lot of news relating shutting down of bittorrent sites...i am wondering how this will end...we just have to wait and see whether we win or the authorities against piracy....piratebay ll be worst affected since its the most popular one...

Originally Posted by ididit

nowadays we are getting lot of news relating shutting down of bittorrent sites...i am wondering how this will end...we just have to wait and see whether we win or the authorities against piracy....piratebay ll be worst affected since its the most popular one...

Torrent trackers closing is absolutely nothing new, during the time bitTorrent protocol exists many trackers were closed, but torrent trackers are sort of like Hydra, for each tracker that was closed there would always be at least two new trackers that would come to replace it.

Take a look at this FSF article for example, apparently there is still more then 900 private trackers online at the beginning of this year (and bare in mind that this are only private trackers, no mention of public ones).

Bottom line is, they can try to stop people from torrenting, they can cause us few inconveniences but ultimately they can't stop people from torrenting.

Same thing happened in Greece about a month ago. Meaning, the police started dealing with sites where torrent files were hosted. Over here, they chased the money, which resulted in a rather positive outcome (for them). They arrested most owners of the most popular sites and confiscated their computers, shutting down the sites in due course.

Luckily for all the users (more than 1 million) the information concerning them were deleted shortly before.

Now, this is rather major because if the number given by the coppers are correct about 1/10 Greeks is into piracy. Also, before March the department for Web Crime focused exclusively on child pornography (doing an amazing job too). It was all started after some lawsuits from who else? The starving record companies. Fingers crossed, the remaining owners who are behind bars will be set free. (some already have)

As far as the "global" law goes, i doubt it will happen, there is still loads of controversy as far as court decisions go, for instance a spanish judge decided that as long as they are non-profit operations, Bittorrent sites are legal. Also, a couple of days ago, two members of an Mp3 scene release group won the trial in Texas.

no one can do nothing, dude.. just relax and enjoy torrenting.....

Yeah, if Russian police can't be bothered to close the largest electronics SUPERMARKET in Europe (that is according to that supermarket TV advert), that is FILLED with counterfeit material ready for purchase, they will have hell of a time closing BT sites :001_smile:

come on dudes and girlies...

they can´t control/limit our internet activity, it´s against human rights. no were in hell would this happen in DEMOCRATIC countries. i could imagine this "shut down" happening in russia, whole asia and maybe even in US and A (i liked how Borat said it xD ).

though i agree that some things should be monitored or should have a "mouse-trap" - meaning, child pornography