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Torrentz.eu has been taken down in the latest attempt by UK police to curb illegal file sharing and then it was up again within... Torrentz.eu Taken Down Then Back Up Again

Torrentz.eu has been taken down in the latest attempt by UK police to curb illegal file sharing and then it was up again within 24 hours.  The registrar of its domain recently suspended the website’s domain after a request from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit.

Officers from the Police have been sending warning letters to websites for a considerable amount of time now and they made a fresh set of requests only last week. One of which was to include the registrar of Torrentz.eu, subsequently the site was taken down yesterday.  But in an alarming chain of events the website was put back online again within 24 hours!

City Of London Police

According to Torrentfreak : “This morning Torrentz.eu’s old DNS entries were put back in place, replacing the ns1.blocked.netart.pl and ns2.blocked.netart.pl ones.The Torrentz team informs TorrentFreak that their lawyer contacted the registrar yesterday afternoon. In a long letter the lawyer explained that the domain can’t simply be held hostage based on a third-party request.  Among other things, this argument is based on an earlier decision by ICANN’s Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy panel which concluded that a court order is required to take such drastic action.  While the registrar has not yet replied to the letter, the fact that the old DNS entries have been restored suggests that they admit that the suspension was in error.  The Torrentz team is happy with the outcome thus far and will continue operating from the .eu domain. The site should be accessible again worldwide, at least to those who have the latest DNS information

A site that is very similar called, FileCrop has also been removed form the public eye and it is expected that others may follow.  It has been reported that several supposed infringed sites were contacted before last weekend.  There are many sites that are similar to Torrentz.eu that have also been taken offline recently. Two of Torrentz.eu’s most noteworthy peers; isoHunt and The Pirate Bay, have been taken down completely or blocked in several countries.

Torrentfreak has reported that two alternative domains, which are registered in Switzerland and Montenegro are still in use by the firm and they are likely to be able to recover the domain or maybe get it transferred to a new registrar?

Towards the end of last year, the police started to block websites rather than targeting individuals when it asked Internet Service Providers to block 21 sites, which linked to infringing copyrighted material. Torrentz.eu was slightly different that a file sharing site, it acted as a search engine for torrents rather than storing the files themselves.  This of course makes the move unusual for the police to shutdown.  Perhaps they are widening their scope? Torrentz.eu received millions of visitors per day and is widely thought to be one of the biggest torrent sites on the Internet.

As always, if you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.

[Image via publicaffairs]

SOURCE: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/largest-torrent-search-engine-torrentzeu-taken-down-by-uk-antipiracy-police-9435167.html