Latvia?s Largest BitTorrent Tracker Shutdown, Admins Arrested
 

Interesting........


Latvia?s Largest BitTorrent Tracker Shutdown, Admins Arrested



Much to the disappointment of more than 100,000 users, Latvia?s largest BitTorrent tracker has been shut down by the authorities. Following a joint operation by Lativa?s Economic Police and a local IFPI-affiliated anti-piracy agency, two administrators were placed under arrest.

LAmpAFile.lv, Latvia?s largest BitTorrent community, was taken offline a few days ago. The 100,000 member tracker reportedly went dark after a joint effort by the Latvian Economic Police and the IFPI-affiliated Latvian Music Producers Association, otherwise known as LAmpA.

According to various Latvian reports, the site was taken down and two of the main administrators placed under arrest. Other gaming and sport related projects connected to the tracker also disappeared. Reports suggest that up to 40 servers were seized.

The two admins, believed to be known as FileX and Tralivali, are believed to have been detained by the Economic Police, an outfit similar to the Dutch FIOD-ECD which was involved in the closure of OiNK. As usual, rumors are circulating that prolific uploaders are also being investigated, although that is far from certain at this stage .

Reports indicate that in 2007, admin ?FileX? received a letter from a German media company which requested the shutdown of File.lv. Failing that, it was demanded that File.lv should at least block users with a German IP address, with legal action threatened should they not comply. It?s unclear whether or not the site complied with the request, or if the threatened action is connected to the site?s recent disappearance.

Almost exactly 12 months ago, the Economic Police and public prosecutors met up at a ?cyber-crime? summit in Sigulda, Latvia, to discuss how piracy on the Internet could be detected and recorded in a fashion acceptable to the courts. One of the guest lecturers at the meeting was Jeremy Banks, head of Internet anti-piracy operations at the IFPI.

With this news about File-lv, it sounds like it took them a year to get organized.

Story Here
http://torrentfreak.com/latvias-bigg...rested-080827/

Good stuff...

100,000 people on a BT tracker? That seems incredibly small. It's a win, but how much of one?

usually they will be back open in a few days, but shadily run by the MPAA and RIAA :/

There are only 2.2 million people in Latvia, so that would equal to 13.6 million users in the US :2 cents:

Did they only allow local user registration?

I've been saying for yrs and yrs... sites like those will not be around long-term because it's based on theft. Sooner or later most will be shut down :2 cents:

Yeah once you see this happen a bunch of times in a bunch of countries, you'll start to see a lot of people wonder if ruining their life is worth keeping their website.

34,7843728688652
 

Looks mostly like a local site:

File.lv users come from these countries:

Latvia 78.4%
Russia 5.8%
Estonia 3.1%
United Kingdom 2.4%
Ukraine 1.9%

File.lv traffic rank in other countries:

Latvia 19
Estonia 376
Ukraine 7,441
Russia 14,508
United Kingdom 34,752

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...etails/File.lv

They have just made way for another 2-3 to become more popular by doing this.

Where are all the current sites traffic/surfers going to go?
Im guessing it will be to the next site along in google.

another one bites the dust

40 Servers? Id like to see their revenue..

So would I, and just think the piratebay have hundreds of them