What Happened to Demonoid? End Days for Popular Illegal File Sharing Site?

Many avid file sharing peers, aka pirates, are fearful that Demonoid, the second most popular file sharing site, has closed its virtual doors for good. Though reports are mixed as to the status of the favored Torrent tracker.

Coincidentally, this action follows on the heels of the introduction of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act intoduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) last week. "The PIRATE Act has passed the Senate on three separate occasions; this should be the Congress in which it becomes law," reports arstechnia.com.

However, Demonoid's legal issues involve Canada rather than the U.S. Threatened earlier in the year with legal action from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), the Torrent server is reportedly "threatened" by the organization. More specifically, the Web hosting company that services Demonoid torrents is under fire. This current notice can be found on the Demonoid.com Web site.

"The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding."

A Wired blog reported a similar instance in late September with the same notice posted. Later, an addendum stated that the CRIA claimed to have no involvement with the closing of Demonoid.com and that Demonoid system administrators could not be reached to confirm their closed status. The semi-private Torrent site re-opened.

This latest closing, as of October 12th, appears to be legitimate. Whether or not it is a permanent closing for Demonoid remains to be seen.

Demonoid may indeed find another country with a file sharing loophole.

Previously, the operator(s) moved the BitTorrent service from the Netherlands to Canada, according to Wired.

Angry fans are touting Sweden as Demonoid's potential future home. This where the number one Torrent tracker resides. Other suggestions, of questionable merit, range from Russia to Egypt.

Much of the anger, however misdirected, is with the CRIA. Across numerous forums and blogs, some users claim the group is overstepping their rights. Further, that a number of Demonoid users do later pay for music and other files, after "evaluating" the illegal copies.

This claim has marginal merit as file sharing can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and is riddled with risk and poor quality. Though it's unlikely the disappointed Demonoid fans will find much sympathy, and most torrent users do not pay for the products they "try."

It is interesting to note that while file sharing sites cost other industries billions of dollars, the entertainment industry, notably music, is on the forefront of the anti-piracy battle lines. According to Havoscope, Global Index of Illicit Markets (TM), annual piracy costs in U.S. Dollars per industry include:

Music piracy -$4.5 billion
Web video piracy -$60 billion
Software piracy - $39.5 billion

Other sectors such as movies, games and books combined total approximately $22 billion dollars.

Whether or not Demonoid is resurrected, it is a reminder that nothing lasts forever, especially the free and illegal. Though it is doubtful this favored Torrent web site closing will have more than a marginal impact on the music industry or piracy costs in general. Many more illegal torrent sites remain.

Statistics: Approximately 35 percent of software installed on personal computers is pirated.

Sources:
Torrent Tracker Taken Offline, Wired (http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/09/torrent-tracker.html)
Slashdot Forum (http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/161558461/article.pl)
Demonoid.com
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonoid)
Havoscope.com