The recent shut down of Demonoid has caused much controversy. The site was subject to continuous DDoS attacks and authorities shut down its server after a while. Some articles blame the United States for the shutdown. Others claim that Demonoid was inconsistent for a while before the shutdown. Others point to the fact that it could be shut down with a high bid. In any case, the future of the site remains unclear.
Despite the arrest of the administrators in Mexico, the site’s ISP has pulled the site’s service and investigators have been copying data from the servers. Since then, the site has re-launched and grown to become the largest BitTorrent community on the Internet. However, it still hasn’t been free of criticism. As such, it remains a controversial topic and is facing further scrutiny from the French authorities.
As a result of this latest development, Anonymous has threatened to take legal action against the Ukrainian government. Ukraine-based ISP Colocall was the one responsible for Demonoid’s shutdown. The authorities copied the site’s data after local authorities contacted its office. In addition to being shut down, the BitTorrent site has been added to the Notorious Markets List, a list of websites which facilitate the growth of global piracy.
While the site’s website is down, the Demonoid IRC network is up and running again. The torrent tracker is back online and the new website is being hosted by Weechat and ZDNet. However, it is possible that the site may be blocked again due to legal problems. If it’s shut down again, we’ll know for sure by the end of the day. But until then, it remains a viable alternative.
While downloading torrents from a torrent site is legal, the French authorities are taking it more seriously. Although sharing copyrighted content is perfectly legal, it’s still illegal to redistribute it. That’s one of the primary reasons why torrent websites are banned in many countries. It is best to share the torrents you find on other sites. That is a far better option than facing the difficult loaded authorities.