Demonoid Shut By Ukrainian Authorities 178
hypnosec writes "After a prolonged outage that lasted for nearly a week Demonoid has reportedly been audited and closed down by the Ukrainian law enforcement agency. According to reports the Ukrainian anti-cybercrime police division carried out an investigation of ColoCall – the hosting service provider for Demonoid. Servers were sealed after all the data on the servers was copied. According to ColoCall the servers haven't been seized but, they are not operational any more. The hosting service provider is going to end the agreement with Demonoid. 'Investigators have copied all the information from the Demonoid servers and sealed them.' a manager from ColoCall, wishing to stay anonymous, said."
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Well if the story is anything to go by, then the site was not closed down over copyright claims, it was shutdown over serving malware adds.
I can see why the Ukranians would shut it down over that.
Russian doesn't give a damn about US copyright claims.
Re:Oh it's just the Ukraine (Score:5, Interesting)
The data is being delivered to the US as a gift. [torrentfreak.com]
DDOS (Score:5, Interesting)
So, are we comfortable with officially labeling the DDOS from which Demonoid has been suffering these past few days an act of officially-sanctioned vandalism on the part of law enforcement, local or otherwise? Because this is damned coincidental, if not... and should be terrifying to businesses the world over if true.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Ukraine != Russia.
The former Soviet republics that are now independent states (including Ukraine) tend to be friendlier to the US and EU than Russia itself is, because they rely upon NATO support to maintain effective independence from Russian control.
Ukraine != Poland, either. The entire northern half speaks Russian natively and, despite the best efforts of the Ukrainian Ukrainians, they appear to have the upper hand in parliment right now. I'd say that the jury is still out, and while Ukraine certainly isn't Belarus, they lean a lot more towards Moscow than you suggest.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
there's another twist of the story that ". According to one source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the investigation was timed to coincide with Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky's visit to the United States, after he released a statement with the US Trade Representative agreeing to "redouble" intellectual property enforcement. While the ColoCall source says Demonoid has backup servers elsewhere, nothing has been restored at this point."
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/6/3223253/demonoid-bittorrent-tracker-shut-down-by-ukrainian-police [theverge.com]
so they're doubledowning and redoubling efforts. Maybe they won't bother with finding out who to prosecute and for what, but that's not the point of eastern european lipservice police work really.
In fact, there were plans to join NATO (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations [wikipedia.org]
It's currently on hold because of their current president and parliament, as part of trying to keep Russia from coming unglued at them. However, if their stated intention to join the EU goes through, it's likely they will become a NATO member state (21 of the 27 EU member states are currently members of NATO). Currently, they engage in joint military exercises with NATO.
Re:well.. crap (Score:5, Interesting)
One area that is constantly ignored are the grey-area copyrights (where no one knows who owns the copyright because a copyright holder has gone bankrupt) and the stuff in torrents that is not even in print. Trading that stuff doesn't hurt anyone and, as a matter of fact, often gets them noticed again and brought back into print. Has anyone ever heard a greedhead from the *AAs even acknowledge this?
You don't understand. If you're consuming entertainment material that isn't available legally anymore, you're STEALING from the makers of content that is legally available. How can this be? Simple. You have X hours of entertainment time in your week. If there is no free entertainment available, you will purchase entertainment that is not free. By going back to out-of-print material or by dipping into TV/movies that are no longer available, you are wasting your valuable entertainment dollar-hours that should have been invested in Big Entertainment. For shame.
Re:Color me surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Ukraine is incredibly corrupt. It's the main factor dragging the country down. A young girl can hitch-hike home in the early hours of the morning after clubbing and be safe. There is nearly no aggression I have seen. Hanging out around the Black Sea on a Friday night is safer than being in London. The people are really friendly, and sometimes even charge the real price! However the police patrol the streets and if they see a drunk tourist they will drag him down a side street and kick the crap out of him before taking his watch and wallet. Even simple paperwork at the police station means bribes for everybody you come into contact with. Scams from "law enforcement" officers are rife. If one top guy decides Demonoid is out, don't expect them back. Certainly there will be no appeal. Wonderful country with fantastic people, but don't expect real justice.
Phillip.