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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I am from Bulgaria and am more or less affected by this ridiculous mesures from the Bulgarian government. I only want to point to a very strange fact. The “persecution” ot the torrent trackers strangely coinsides with the preliminary report on the so cold “list 301″(in this list the US government warns its companies in which countries in the world “violatins” ot authority rights are most spread).In this line of thoughts I have a question. 90% of this “authority right protected” movies/music/software come from the US then why the hell are the making such a list???
Hi I am from Bulgaria too and I think the things are mutch more complicated. It’s not th US government or MPAA who enforced Bulgarian special forces to persecute trackers and uploaders. It’s the greed and lawlessness of our Bulgarien government in the face of people who are at the highest states of this government. Don’t think that they weren’t get their part of the deal…
Hello from me i’m BG too. Trouble with this law enforcement is it’s HARDLY NOT respecting the Bulgarian laws as well as the BG Constitution. The police officers who carried out the “action” show neihter knowledge of the bit-torrent system nor of the law that they are supposed to protect and oblidge to. Not to mention the attempt to filter the internet an illegal measure which is used by the contemporary communist regimes only. At the same time the government shows few to none interest to the sellers of piracy CD’s and numerous cases of copyright violations such as TV shows tv/radio commercials etc. Some of us strongly believe the government anti-torrent actions are mainly dedicated to the pirate CD sellers since their bosses are the ones who would benefit in case the torrents stop. Without torrents most of the people would prefer to buy cheap pirate discs instead of copyrighted. Not to mention BG government shows A GREAT deal of respect and tollerance to the criminals on all levels where big amounts of money are involved.
Здравеите аз съм Българин и живея работя в БЪлгариа . Много съм обеспокоен от поведението на държавната репресивна машина която наложи безпрецедентна цензура върху свободата за обмен на информация . Това е нечувано посегателство върху човешките права на което трябва да се даде силен отпор . Призовавам всички които могат да прочетът това съобщение да се вклъчат з организирането на организация за защита на свободния обмен на информация за не търговски цели в интернет.
‘Piracy doesn’t rob….politicians do!’
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8574/%27Piracy+doesn%27t+rob….politicians+do%21%27
I think that it is about time for us to reveal the affairs of our Bulgaian government so the whole world be able to see what is happening here.
P2P will never die let’s fight for our freedom!
Hi i`m from Bulgaria too and i want to share my indignation from this act from the Bulgarian government.
After uppers comments i can’t to add nothing they said enough….
I give my undivided support for Zamunda.net !
I think that those guys that can are controling those operations are kind of .. psycho. How can the kids smoke drugs on the streets other stupid guys to murder for 3-4 bucks and many many more things? Bulgaria is not controlled by politicians. Bulgaria is controlled only by the money that the politicians want. You gave them money – they gave you what you want. Nice ehh? No need to wonder on that. That is bulgarian stuff and it can be only in here.
P2P will never die
The infringment of the right to receive and exchange information has no legal basis because Bulgarian jurisdiction relies on written laws not precedent. Thes case concerns corporate interests and though there may be other players with as yet unfulfilled intentions this is clearly a case of private interests.
We are not a criminal. We will fight for our rights. We are just people who want to watching movies and listen music. Is that too much?
P2P will never die
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