Mobile/PDA About Us Advertise here


		User name	Password

		Not registered yet? Register here. Lost your password? Click here.

Browse by topic

News

Private torrent tracker taken down in Germany

28 March 2009 16:15 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 1 comment

German officials have taken down a private BitTorrent tracker this week, adding that they raided three apartments and confiscating multiple PCs, HDDs, DVDs, CDs and cash.

The authorities, along with the German anti-piracy organization GVU, added: "Members of the file sharing networks were able to buy download packages for up to 75 Euros. Users who paid 100 Euros or more received special privileges."

P2Pblog makes a quick note however of the bust, and it seems it is a giant waste of taxpayer money and time. The tracker only listed 300 torrents, and in comparison, The Pirate Bay currently has close to 2 million listed torrents. One could argue that TPB is a public tracker and cannot be compared, but most large private trackers have 15000 torrents available at any given time, a giant number compared to the lowly 300.

The press picked up on the story and stretched the facts a bit however to make it look like a great victory for the GVU. Spiegel.de reported that the tracker was a "so called paytracker, meaning a file sharing server that only provided access to paying users." That was not true, as users could download for free, but faced extended waiting times until their ratio was high enough.

Permalink to this article

File-sharing site Admin receives fine and 6 month sentence (12 April 2009)

Two Swedes arrested for copyright infringement (4 April 2009)

The Pirate Bay unveils 'IPREDATOR Global Anonymity Service' (24 March 2009)

doubleTwist hits Macs-- Windows version coming soon (25 February 2009)

Investigator paid by Warner not available for Pirate Bay trial (24 February 2009)

Three pirates arrested for sharing Oscar screeners (24 February 2009)

80% of torrents on Pirate Bay are for legal content says defendant (23 February 2009)

« Previous news article
RealNetworks speaks out about RealDVD lawsuit

Next news article »
Review: CyberLink PowerDVD 9

Post your comment

Discuss this article!
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 29 March 2009 14:10
Good if a tracker dose not run on general user kindness via normal donational methods it should be closed down. [ + quote]