A
court in Hamburg has recently ruled that a hosting company has to
identify the owners of 3 popular BitTorrent trackers, which coordinate
dozens of millions of transfers every day. The court order was delivered
following a complaint from German music group BVMI, which also claimed
responsibility for the shutdown of the torrent trackers that went
offline earlier this year.
OpenBitTorrent, PublicBT and Istole.it
were popular torrent trackers that coordinate the downloads of 30
million people at a time. In order words, each of these non-profit
websites, powered by the open source Opentracker software, handled 3bn
connections per day. However, the services went offline almost 4 months
ago, and now the German music industry group BVMI takes credit for the
shutdowns. It explained that the hosting company took the tracker
offline after it was ordered to identify its operators.
It also admitted that the host was fighting against the shutdown,
initially refusing to disclose the personal details of the site
operators. Now it is obliged to do so in accordance with the court
injunction. This court ruling follows a complaint from the German music
industry group BVMI and is recognized as the first against the so-called
standalone BitTorrent trackers, which don’t actually host or process
any infringing content themselves, but are just a neutral part of the
BitTorrent ecosystem.
The entertainment industry admitted that they had to target standalone
trackers, because they make it possible for those who offer and seek
unauthorized content to make the first connection. The only problem is
that these trackers are also used by legal torrents to coordinate
connections.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.
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