Edonkey лишился крупного сервера.

[GNN]

BaF Newsletter

Yesterday the federal police confiscated the two largest peer-to-peer servers in the world. These so-called “Razorback” servers, located in Zaventem, managed one third of all traffic on the “eDonkey” network, which is mainly used for the exchange of illegal files.


The federal police of Brussels seized the peer-to-peer servers yesterday morning. The administrator of Razorback was detained for further questioning and the servers’ owner was arrested by the Swiss authorities.



The Swiss police started investigating the Razorback case last year, after the Belgian Anti-piracy Federation (BAF) and the MPA (Motion Picture Association) had gathered evidence to help strengthen the case at the end of 2004. Since the owner of the servers resides in Switzerland, the MPA filed a criminal complaint with the Swiss authorities. However because the servers were located in Zaventem, the Swiss investigative judge handling the case, called upon the Belgian authorities for their assistance in this matter. Following this request, the Brussels Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the FCCU (Federal Computer Crime Unit) to confiscate both servers.

Both notorious Razorback servers could handle upwards of one million simultaneous users and provided access to over 140 million illegal files, be it movies, TV-series, music, games or software.


The easiest way to describe the workings of a peer-to-peer server such as Razorback is to compare it with a phone book. The server indexes all files located on the PCs of the people connected to the eDonkey network, meaning the server indicates where all of the files (or parts of them) are located. This way, if someone wants to download a certain file, the server will refer – and connect – that person to the computers of the other users currently sharing that specific file. In order to connect to the eDonkey network, one needs a software program such as “eMule”.

Razorback (that started in September 2000) was responsible for one third of all traffic on eDonkey, a network that has distinguished itself from the get go as being a peer-to-peer network for the sharing of large files such as movies, TV-series, videogames, software and full music albums.

The owners of such servers are accomplices to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material. They incite their users to partake in these kinds of infractions and also provide the necessary tools to do so. The owner of the servers also obtained substantial financial gain by selling advertising space (banners) and by encouraging the users to give ‘donations’.

Right after Razorback was taken down, a decrease of more than 500.000 eDonkey users was ascertained.