p2pnet - rss feed: Razorback Bust: by the MPAA
p2p news / p2pnet: As Ratiatum’s Guillaume Champeau posted earlier, eDonkey/eMule server Razorback was this morning shut down by Belgian police.
The cops were, it goes without saying, acting for, and on behalf of, the entertainment cartels.
Below is the relevant action-packed section from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), released under its MPA (Motion Picture Association) clone.
Brussels, Los Angeles– In a joint operation today police and prosecuting authorities in Belgium and Switzerland shut down the infamous file-swapping network Razorback2. Razorback2 was the number one eDonkey peer-to-peer server facilitating the illegal file swapping of approximately 1.3 million users simultaneously. Razorback2 was operated as a commercial enterprise indexing over 170 million files including millions of copyrighted movies, software, games, TV programming and music with international and U.S. titles. The site was regularly used by people located all over the world, with the vast majority of users based in Europe.
“This is a major victory in our fight to cut off the supply of illegal materials being circulated on the Internet via peer-to-peer networks,” said Motion Picture Association (MPA) Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman. “By shaving the illegal traffic of copyrighted works facilitated by Razorback2, we are depleting other illegal networks of their ability to supply Internet pirates with copyrighted works which is a positive step in our international effort to fight piracy.”
Swiss authorities arrested the site’s operator at his residence in Switzerland this morning and searched his home. At the same time, on the authority of a local magistrate, Belgian police seized the site’s servers located at an Internet hosting center in Zaventem near Brussels. The operation conducted by Swiss and Belgian authorities aimed at cutting off a major supply and facilitator of illegal files to several popular illegal file swapping networks. By shutting down Razorback2, the ease with which pirates can obtain illegal content online will slow dramatically. Since November of 2004, authorities have closed down all of the major eDonkey servers in the United States, and now, Europe.
The operators of Razorback2 had clear financial motives. In addition to collecting “donations” from users, revenue was also generated through the sale of advertising on the site, usually promoting pornographic websites. In addition, the availability of offensive content will be inhibited. The operators of this eDonkey site chose not to exercise control over files being traded by users which including those containing child pornography, bomb-making instructions and terrorist training videos.
“Razorback2 was not just an enormous index for Internet users engaged in illegal file swapping, it was a menace to society,” said Executive Vice President and Worldwide Anti-Piracy Director John G. Malcolm. “I applaud the Swiss and Belgian authorities for their actions which are helping thwart Internet piracy around the world.”
Razorback2 posted statistics on its site regarding the number of uses online at any one time, reveling in its reputation as the world’s largest P2P facilitator. Today, users attempting to connect to Razorback2 read the message “Razorback space 2.0 appears to be dead.”
Chris Marcich, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the MPA’s European Office said: “We are very grateful to the Swiss and Belgian authorities for their cooperation and effective action in dealing with this particularly egregious enterprise and the individual profiting from it.”
The rest of the piece rants on with the usual BS about how much the movie studios have lost to counterfeiting, how hard they’re working to combat it, etc, etc.
Also See:
shut down - Belgian police bust Razorback, February 21, 2006
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:24 am
This action is no more effective than the successful closure of Napster was by the RIAA.
What resulted instead was that the Napster file sharing site was closed and a multitude of other sites sprung up, tailored to the laws of the time, that allowed file sharing to get a generation jump over what they were dealing with Napster. This in turned resulted in the various **AA’s not having anything to grasp at till they got more laws in place.
The next step in all this is encryption from end to end. Already the torrent software designers and programmers are working on it with expected soon to be released new clients that encrypt the headers and will result in the next generation; repeating the same as previous action/reaction. This time it will ensure that ISPs packett filtering won’t be as effective and in addition, so will getting evidence of shared works be made more difficult in the same move.
I am sorry that the host of Razorback2 has drawn the ire of this copyright enforcers. He’ll be another victim in a long list hoisted to preserve status quo, without actually doing anything other than making yet another suffer.
The movie and music cartels are victim of their own business models and until they address that, this sort of farce will continue. Not only is the buying public being turned off by all this negetive publicity but they are turning to other means of entertainment as this turn off continues; making it ever more difficult for these established corps to continue to do business as usual. The days of constant remakes and serial installments of movie themes are coming to an end as more and more customers decide they have been ripped off too many times. It is already a common preception that sequals are rarely as good as the original and many are deciding that it isn’t worth the money to see those sequals as they are the equivalent of music filler on music cds.
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:37 am
This will have no impact on the P2P networks. There are loads of other servers out there, so most clients will simply jump automatically to the next server in their list without the user even noticing.
In fact, you could take every ED server off the net, and it would still make no difference as both Edonkey and Emule have had serverless Kademelia built into it for a long time now.
The media cartel missed their chance - today’s P2P networks already have built in redundancy no single point of failure, and they were forced to go that way by the MPAA forcing evolution of these features at an accelerated rate. Next step is encryption, anonymisation and obsufication, and we’re already seeing that with some of the other P2P apps.
The current business model of the media cartels is already dead - they just don’t know it yet, despite all the kicking and screaming as the get dragged into the twenty-first century.
February 22nd, 2006 at 7:36 am
The word “Cartel” sounds like mafia’s cartel…
You have to know that Razorback 2 was a great seeder of Legal content and moreover their huge servers were used to participate to the operation folding@home for research of gentics. That is really useless…
February 22nd, 2006 at 9:10 am
Razorback was a “menace to society?” Oh please!!!!
If this isn’t hyperbole in the mold of Jack Valenti……
If anyone cares to support this fallacious assertion then please tell us all how Razorback was going to:
1. Enable large commercial airliners to fly directly into tall buildings.
2. Detonate explosives in train stations and subways.
3. Release biological toxins in densely populated areas.
4. Cause Suspension Bridges and Underwater transportation tunnels to collapse.
5. Cause the downfall of Western Civilization.
The “menace to society” remark is just another load of specious crap from a cartel spinmeister and purveyor of garbage utterly lacking any kind of integrity.
–TurboGeek
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:18 pm
sorry for my bad english
-There are no illegal file on razorback 2
-Razorback 2 is an association (with a legal statut wrote by layers) not a commercial enterprise
- Razorback2 association want a legal P2P and support freeware(http://www.ratiatum.com/tel.php ) and young artists (http://www.jamendo.com)
-”This is a major victory ” victory ? a server is dead (not sure the law are not the same in belgium ) 10 are create . what a victory …
“The operators of this eDonkey site chose not to exercise control over files being traded by users which including those containing child pornography, bomb-making instructions and terrorist training videos.” False there are filters for child pornography for the rest only a word “fake”
“Swiss authorities arrested the site’s operator at his residence” Now he’s free (nothing to reproach himself)
The only commercial enterprise is the MPAA
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:48 pm
It’s bad news ,,
Razorback the best server in p2p
please back Razorback again .
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:26 pm
they think by shutdown razorback server they prevent people to share illegal file ,i would say that big mistake
there is thousands and thousands ways to share illegal files
i think by shutdown razorback server we’ll see another great server
more powerfull and more strong
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:55 am
Oh well, next server in the list it is. The MPAA cant stop shit.
March 13th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
You Aint Gonna Stop Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 30th, 2006 at 2:41 am
Ah, the whole story is absolutely clear: music maker are losing a lot of profits. Why should I pay $20 for the whole CD, if I need only 1 song?
They are tying to shut servers down? It will not do. Another server will appear. If all big countries will comply, servers will be established in another countries, that’s all. It’s like raising tobacco taxes: smokers went to internet. US authorities started to close online stores and people started to connect to the stores in EU. There is no way the general movement can be stopped.
Razorback was shut down? Fine, in no time a server Kcabrozar will spring up.
The only one good thing happens: such actions boost innovative development.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:15 am
It’s laughable!!.Quote: Govt Authorites shut down major server hosting 1.3 million users simultaneously.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1102
But within hours user numbers were back to normal ….LMFAO!!
I hope emule stays the largest P2P Network forever.Why should Music Executives own multi-million dollar homes and drive around in Bentleys?,while they pay the Artists pittance!.Disgusting.
I download music and if I like it I go and buy the Single and/or Albumn.Why?,because of the high quality sound you don’t get from MP3’s.
And as for Quote: The servers also hosted Terrorism articles and Child Pornography.You can never ever stop this.Freedom of expression is SUPREME.It’s a fact of life.It’s everywhere on the internet.
So for those of you whom say we rip of the industry.Wake up to yourself!!.