Razorback2 killed

ONE OF the largest eDonkey2000 P2P communities, Razorback2 has been shut down.

The network, with more than three million users, has been switched off after a Federal Belgian Police raid. Razorback2's servers and a suspected administrator were seen being pushed into paddy-wagons.

Meanwhile Swiss authorities have arrested the site's operator at his home. Although some users might be able to ping what appear to be Razorback2 servers, word on the street is that these are being operated by the copyright enforcement bodies.

Razorback2 was an important eDonkey2000 indexing server and was only available through an eDonkey2000 client such as eMule. It did not host files or material, but it did provide aid access to lots of copyrighted material by indexing eDonkey2000 network files. It will be interesting to see what charge the Belgian authorities will try to make stick.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has issued a press release claiming a great victory in its war against pirates. It is clear that they are spinning Razorback2's claims that it has no control over what people use it's network against them.

Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said the operators chose not to exercise control over files being traded by users which including those containing "child pornography, bomb-making instructions and terrorist training videos". Of course if they had control of the network the MPA could have done them for piracy.

More here. µ