IFPI was behind Demonoid takedown

The IFPI, which claims to represent the music industry “world wide,” has also claimed responsibility for the Demonoid takedown. While of course it didn't raid the Demonoid offices itself, it was the complaints to Interpol that eventually led to the action.

If you're not up to speed on the situation, here it is in a nutshell: Demonoid, one of the world's larger BitTorrent search sites and trackers, dissapeared from the internet a week or so ago, after being hit with a large DDOS and hacking attack. It hasn't been online since and reports have come in that the hosting provider in Ukraine – ColoCall – has ceased working with the site's owners, as well as there being several arrests and asset seizures in Mexico.

Until now, nobody had stepped forward to claim they had instigated any part of this attack on the file sharing site and its owners, but now the IFPI has. The anti-piracy director at IFPI, Jeremy Banks, said: “Demonoid was a leading global player in digital music piracy which acted as unfair competition to the more than 500 licensed digital music services that offer great value music to consumers while respecting the rights of artists, songwriters and record companies. The operation to close Demonoid was a great example of international cooperation to tackle a service that was facilitating the illegal distribution of music on a vast scale. I would like to thank all those officers involved in this operation to close a business that was built on the abuse of other people's rights.”

Users of the site have begun voicing their concern since the site's takedown became official. Many of them are worried about what user data Demonoid stored and if it was encrypted. The IFPI has so far made no statement on if it plans to target users of the site along with the owners.

We've contacted the IFPI's press office for further comment and will update this piece when we receive a response.

Unsurprisingly the shutting down of such a famous torrent site hasn't sat well with some of the internet's better known hacktivists. Anonymous, the guy fawkes mask wearing collective, has been hitting Ukranian government websites with DDOS attacks to voice their disaproval, as well as announcing their intention (speaking to TorrentFreak) to permanently mirror Demonoid. However they did say that they'd need need access to the site's .torrent files to be successful.

KitGuru Says: Demonoid has been a staple of the torrent scene for some time, so it's downing is a bit of a shame. But if the ineffectiveness of the authorities at taking down The Pirate Bay has shown us anything, it probably won't be long before Demonoid makes its reappearance.

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