bbbbbby:Tom Corelis
BitTorrent host stands up to the attack
Following its pattern of attacking offending websites’ hosting companies, the Canadian Recording Industry Association served BitTorrent-friendly webhost Moxie Colo with a cease-and-desist order, ordering the company to pull the plug on a number of “top-ranking” BitTorrent sites, including What.CD, SumoTorrent, BTMon, and FullDLs.
Moxie CEO Sean Corbin said that his company will not be honoring the CRIA’s request. “We … will be fighting for the rights of our clients as to date laws in Canada protect them. We have looked into the matter and from what we understand these sites are not breaking any laws in Canada,” said Corbin.
Moxie says that it is fully aware of the possible consequences for defying the CRIA, and the company is prepared to fight the record industry if need be. “They believe [that] without us these sites could not do what they do,” said Corbin, “so therefore we are as bad as they are.”
In addition to demanding that Moxie pull the plug, the CRIA’s cease-and-desist order seeks personal details on torrent site administrators and copies of site logfiles, reports TorrentFreak.
The attack against What.CD and friends closely mirrors similar moves made against popular BitTorrent tracker Demonoid, which went dark last November after the CRIA forced the site’s host to take it offline. Since then, Demonoid reappeared on the scene in April and is fully operational under new admin Umlauf, thanks to its new Ukrainian host Colocall.
The What.CD community already has a storied history, from when it and its other half at Waffles.fm were together under the popular music-sharing BitTorrent tracker OiNK.cd, which fell under the boot of an Interpol raid in October 2007 and promised a “criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's users.” Internal chatter between users indicates that neither site is interested in repeating OiNK’s history, and the date of October 23, 2007 is commemorated with a 9/11-style message of “never forget.”
For now, What.CD appears unaffected by the CRIA’s threats and remains online.
