Bulgarian ISP speaks out on BitTorrent crackdown

The Bulgarian government has been cracking down on BitTorrent tracker sites as of late, and the people of that country are none to happy.

Just this last Sunday, as a matter of fact, Hundreds of people filled the streets of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to protest against the closure of the country's BitTorrent tracker sites

I had a chance to talk with a guy over at the Bulgarian ISP Linkos Ltd who was able to shed some light on the situation and how he his company has been affected by the crackdown.

He writes:

We are a Bulgarian internet provider – Linkos Ltd. and used to support the p2p torrent site Zamunda.net.

On March 12th, 2007 GDBOP (General Office for Fighting Organized Crime) and the Metropolitan Investigation Office held an action in our offices. It was directed against the Zamunda.net site which we had already sold to a Syrian citizen a week earlier.

When the state bodies raided in our offices, we were announced that if the above mentioned site wasn't closed down, all our company's machinery and equipment would be seized, including the communication one (the document they presented allowed that).

After seeing that the site wouldn't stop its activity and they convinced themselves it wasn't on Bulgarian territory the same officials embarked on confiscating the equipment. It meant the immediate discontinuance of the whole business of Linkos Ltd. and its bankruptcy. In order to prevent our company from being affected, the new owner of the site agreed on suspending the access to main sections indefinitely.

After the suspension of the site one of our administrators was arrested with the explanation he had been administrating and supporting the servers on witch Zamunda.net was presently hosted. An accusation has been brought against him.

The above mentioned government officials indulged into sending a police order to the internet providers in the country obliging them to filter the access of Bulgarian internet users to torrent sites including arenabg.com. With this action of theirs the officials from GDBOP and the Metropolitan Investigation Office prohibited users the free access to information which is guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria and violated the European regulations. A few days later the order was cancelled and some obscure and indistinct reasons for that were pointed out.

The action against the torrent sites in Bulgaria has been ordered by an offshore company registered on the Islands of Virginia named Amotera Ltd. which states presenting the rights of the big major companies for Bulgaria.

Now he meant to say "The Virgin Islands" I'm sure but, it does bring up an interesting question of how exactly copyright holders, presumably originating from interests in the United States, are able to bring about a crackdown in countries beyond their shores.

We have seen it happen again and again in countries like Singapore, Russia, Malaysia, and just about every other country in between. There never seems to be any discussion between the country and its people, and rather simply the country and a group represnting copyright holders like the MPAA and RIAA.

It's more than just a little disturbing to see that companies can bypass all the natural orders of a country's popular will FROM FOREIGN SHORES and see their interests carried out in a decisive and expedited manner.

It also shows that the will of coporate interests has no bounds, and is not limited by georgraphical or popular interests. The will of the people be dammed, its profits first and foremost, and it's sad to see another governemnt surrender its sovereignty to a foreign corporation.

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