This week, the Ukrainian authorities took Demonoid, one of the world's largest filesharing websites, offline.  Demonoid is not only one of the largest filesharing platforms, but also one of the most notorious on the Internet, as many users exchange copyright protected material illegally. 

The police raided one of the data centers of ColoCall, where the servers of Demonoid were running. After copying the data, they terminated the servers. Although, ColoCall confirmed later this week to the BBC that it had received several requests to reconsider their dealings with Demonoid from the authorities. "The decision to terminate the contract with Demonoid has been made without participation of the Ministry." ColoCall says.

The raid coincides with a visit of Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky to the United States, where he will discuss intellectual property rights amongst other topics.  

Demonoid is going through a rough time, as a few weeks ago, the site was down for a week after DDoS attacks. Before the DDoS attacks, the site was attacked by hackers. After the attacks, Demonoid redirected visitors to an ad server that turned out to contain malware. Also, the Mexican authorities started an criminal investigation against the administrators of Demonoid. 

Notwithstanding the fierce pressure on Demonoid to steer away from clandestine business, there also seems to be support for their side of the battle. Wednesday, hackers community Anonymous announced that they have started an operation against those responsible for the takedown. They begun to attack websites beloning to the Ukrainian authorities. Anonymous says that it will work on restoring the Demonoid servers "by any means necessary". 

The Demonoid takedown is another example of the intensified fight against piracy by means of involving hosting providers or other intermediaries. Earlier this year, MegaUpload.com had been taken down and ISP's were ordered by the court to block The Pirate Bay. FutureOfCopyright.com will keep you posted about the developments. 

Source: BBC

By: Marjolein van der Heide