Hollywood hails shutdown of music-sharing server
Date: Wednesday, February 22 @ 11:42:18 UTC
Topic: Off Topic
Swiss and Belgian police have shut down a major component of the eDonkey file-sharing network, used mainly to trade copies of copyrighted movies and music, the Motion Picture Association said on Wednesday.
Razorback 2 was the biggest server on the eDonkey peer-to-peer (P2P) network, which transfers data from user to user. Music companies have blamed P2P piracy for causing a drastic downturn in sales, and Hollywood is trying to prevent a similar impact on the movie business.
"Swiss authorities arrested the site's operator at his residence in Switzerland this morning and searched his home," the MPA said in a statement. "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."
As of last year, eDonkey was estimated to have up to 3 million users spread over 100 to 200 servers. Razorback2 was the most popular server, used by about 1 million users.
While the music and movie industry have had a string of successes in their fight against online piracy in the last year, raiding P2P servers and winning judgements in court, in many cases users merely migrate to a different network -- a pattern than has happened many times since the original Napster service was shut down.
News-Source: http://news.yahoo.com
Discuss: http://www.xbox-hq.com
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