Malaysian Government Orders Immediate Torrent Site Blackout

Quote:

---

Malaysian Government Orders Immediate Torrent Site Blackout

Reports are coming in that the government in Malaysia has ordered the immediate suspension of many BitTorrent trackers hosted in the country. In a shock move, the government - citing the ‘Copyright Act 1987' - has ordered hosts to suspend servers hosting BitTorrent sites, pending an investigation. Many sites are offline.

When BitTorrent sites get into legal trouble or other pressures force a move to a new location, the speculation begins on the safest place to go.

For instance, would a site bail out of the Netherlands and move to Canada? Is Canada too dangerous now, and would a move to Sweden be more appropriate? What about moving to Ukraine-based hosting like Demonoid or further afield - China or Russia maybe? Inevitably, discussions usually involve ideas of moving sites east, to countries like Malaysia. Fairly high-tech countries like this seem an attractive proposition, particularly given their government’s track-record in failing to do much about piracy.

Given this background, BitTorrent tracker admins with their sites hosted in Malaysia were confronted by a very unpleasant surprise today. An administrator from a well known tracker contacted TorrentFreak this morning with worrying news, he told us: “Malaysia’s government suddenly forced all torrent websites to shut down today until further notice, a complete surprise to torrent admins and the offshore hosting companies in Malaysia.”

The news was given to this and other site admins, via an email from the hosting provider, which indicates the action has been ordered down from a high level. The email informs the admins that their servers have been suspended by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, under the Copyright Act 1987. As the request came from the government, the host makes it clear they had no choice but to shut down the site. Among the affected sites are Extremebits, Rapthe, Superfundo and several others. According to sources, although torrent sites have been taken offline, other sites dealing in pirate material have also been suspended after the government decided to act on mounting copyright-related complaints.

Prominent Malaysian host Shinjiru confirmed the closures, telling TorrentFreak: “We can confirm that this is accurate. We had enforcement officers from MDTCA visiting the office to confirm the closure of BitTorrent sites hosted on our network. We will comply to all shut down instructions from the local authorities or agencies with warrants or documents.”

More on this breaking news as we get it.

---

Source: TorrentFreak

Could this be why FTN is down this morning?

Maybe they are moving, maybe they are doing maintenance (category icons?).

But I see that TDC is not down...

Either way, that isn't good news. I hope it doesn't affect FTN or TDC.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dunson

Maybe they are moving, maybe they are doing maintenance (category icons?).

But I see that TDC is not down...

Either way, that isn't good news. I hope it doesn't affect FTN or TDC.

---

Ftn is down too..........

For what it's worth, FTN's DNS, when you resolve it, now points to an IP in Florida.

This isn't good.. two small Swedish sites is down cuz the Malaysian Government took their server, it was hosted on the same server and have the same owner. It's Extremebits.org and Rapthe.net..
And what about PTN? PTN is down, but is it cuz this? I miss it..

slightly off topic , where exactly is the TPB hosted ?

HAHAA....... that is a good question... but for their security.. they never said, i don't think

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mr.sharer

slightly off topic , where exactly is the TPB hosted ?

---

I think their servers are spread out all over the world, in various countries.

wasnt Malaysia supposed to be "safe" ?

hopefully the malaysian government don't confiscate any servers, because once that happens it will be hard to impossible to get them back.

i wonder who put pressure on the government. i'm sure it wasn't like they noticed they had an 11 year old "copyright act" all over sudden which is broken by some hosting companies.

it's more likely that our beloved music/movie industrial complex had a finger in the pie.

not anymore... :(

I wonder if this Malysian - happening has really got sg to do with FTN being down. Never liked coincidences.

It's funny how there was just a thread yesterday where people suggested Malaysia for torrent tracker hosting, as it would be safe..

i was about to get tehsource hosted in malaysia lol.
i think denmark (actually illigal but sct and thegft survives still, i heard that scc is moving to denmark, anyone confirm?), canada, the netherland and sweden is the safest countries atm.

who said sweden is safe man ..

why isnt anyone considering communist countries ? am sure MPAA or whatever anti piracy shit wont be able to influence a communist government .

is it the lack of good hosting companies ? :unsure:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mr.sharer

why isnt anyone considering communist countries ? am sure MPAA or whatever anti piracy shit wont be able to influence a communist government .

is it the lack of good hosting companies ? :unsure:

---

Countries like China are indeed a good choice, as the piracy rules are almost inexsistance. but those government are very unpredictable, like for example, as the olympics is drawing near, there is a huge clamp down on video sharing stream sites where you could view Heroes and GA on those sites. But one of them - 56.com was shut down and the others removed all the "pirated" shows all of a sudden.

how aboot host in Mars? I am sure it would be "safe".

Can we compile a list of all the currently "safe" countries? I would honestly like to know how many are still left.