AfterDawn: News

Spanish police shut down torrent sites

In stepping up their efforts to prevent piracy, Spanish police have shut down two torrent tracker sites as well as arrest the administrators.

The sites, todotorrente.com and trackertdt.com were both taken offline and their administrators were charged with "facilitating copyright infringement".



todotorrente.com had over 30,000 active users and was one of the largest tracker sites in all of Spain. Users trying to access the site are now greeted with this message (translated from Spanish by TorrentFreak):

“CLOSED BY JUDICIAL ORDER”

According to the Police, todotorrente.com was responsible for more than 500,000 € in losses to copyright holders, while the site itself made more than 30,000 € in profits. Numbers that can’t be backed up by any evidence of course, but we’re used to that.

Todotorrente.com was not the only site affected by the raids. In addition, the police took down trackertdt.com, a sister site of todotorrente.com. Gamesfive.net, another sister site, now redirects to blackdivx.org.

This is not the first time that Spanish authorities take action against BitTorrent sites. Last year, 15 administrators of BitTorrent and eDonkey sites were arrested, in the largest P2P raid in Spanish history. Most of the sites that were shut down last year (17 in total) remain unavailable up until today, however, pctorrent.com now redirects to newpct.com, one of the largest BitTorrent sites in Spain.

Source:
TF

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Jul 2007 19:58

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• 3 comments

• borhan9

  Just another site that has been closed down by the authorities. Which means another five probably have opened up anyways :P

  29.7.2007 15:54 #1

• ZippyDSM

  I am sorry but thats not how "net" losses are accumulated first lets look at the number,500,000 now lets look at how many people would pay for the items in question lets say half of 30% making it 15%,why 30? because you can find 3 out of ten that would like to buy stuff and half of them would be able to pay for it.
  
  
  as for the 30k in "profits".....did they factor in hardware and server costs at ALL?
  
  To me its simple free market demands torrents be used to send files and CP owners need a 10% cut from ad rev of the torrent sites...of corse they will never stipulate that some profit is better than none so I look forward to the day the RIAA closes because of non payment of fees and the big labels close because anyone can make produce and sale their own cheaper and safer than if a big conglomerate steals your ip/cp from you in the form of a low money contract.

  29.7.2007 16:14 #2

• Unfocused

  This closing of trackers and stuff is just like a pyramid scheme. One is okay until its gets closed, and then yes it does seem like five more pop up. When these get closed, even more pop up.
  
  And if that isn't enough, sites that have been previously closed are coming back (suprnova) to revisit us once again.

  15.8.2007 19:23 #3