world

World :: Ukraine Closes File Sharing Website Demonoid

One of the world's largest torrent file-sharing websites, Demonoid.com, has been taken down by the Ukrainian authorities.

Torrents allow users to download music, video and other internet content by downloading small bits of files from others' computers at the same time.

Ukrainian government investigators raided the data centre, ColoCall, which hosts the website's servers, and sealed them, according to reports.

ColoCall is the largest data centre in Ukraine, and has been home to Demonoid for the past few years.

Demonoid was initially unavailable for a limited time after being subjected to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, but the raid on the ColoCall centre has resulted in a permanent closure of the website, it appears.

The torrentfreak.com news site said it received a tip from an unnamed source at ColoCall who said: "Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them.

"Some equipment was not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to terminate the agreement with the site."

It added that the source believed the DDoS attack on Demonoid pre-empted another exploit, saying: "Shortly after (the DDoS attack), a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators."

Reports suggest that the action against Demonoid is a bid to demonstrate to the US that Ukraine takes copyright infringement seriously.

The shutdown is the latest in a campaign against file-sharing sites, and coincides with a visit to the US by Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minster, Valery Khoroshkovsky.

It comes after the US closed Megaupload, and several European internet service providers (ISPs) were ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay.

Demonoid and both of those sites appeared on the US government's Notorious Markets List, produced at the end of last year, which drew attention to services that "merit further investigation for possible intellectual property rights infringements".

Although Demonoid's servers are located in Ukraine, its administrators are in Mexico, leaving it open to question whether the website will be restored, although one of the administrators was arrested in Mexico last October.

Website socialbarrell.com said Demonoid was not actually violating any local law, and even blocked incoming IP addresses from within Ukraine to prevent friction with the local government.

It reports that Russian newspaper Kommersant learned from Ukraine's Interior Ministry that the Demonoid raid was deliberately timed to coincide with Mr Khoroshkovsky's first visit to the US.

"The Division of Economic Crimes [DEC] received an international request from Interpol to send a request to the company ColoCall. DEC sent the request to the provider, after which the ISP decided to stop working with Demonoid," it reported Sergei Burlakov, of Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs, as saying.