Nov 6 2008

South African Music Industry Group Closes that Country’s Largest BitTorrent Site

  • Written by soulxtc
  • 4 Comments


BitFarm shuttered despite not hosting any actual copyrighted material.

I received word this morning that BitFarm, the largest private BitTorrent tracker site in South Africa with more than 10,000 registered users, has been taken down due to a legal threat and possible cease and desist order by the Recording Industry of South Africa (RISA).

Its sister site NewsHost, which indexes NZB files for Usenet Servers, has not yet been shut down, but it’s running extremely slow and some believe they are monitoring those attempting to download.

Visitors to BitFarm are greeted with the following unusual message and IP logging.

Visitors to NewsHost get this:

The fact that the action was allowed to proceed by the ISP Telkom isn’t surprising since it enjoys a virtual monopoly over the fixed line telephone system and the ADSL network in that country, but it’s still odd since both BitFarm and NewsHost don’t host any actual copyrighted material, only the files that link to it at a third party location. If these ywo sites are to be held accountable then so should sites like Google and Yahoo.

jared@zeropaid.com

Related Posts

  1. Colombo-BT.org, Largest Italian BitTorrent Site, Busted
  2. South Korean Copyright Groups Demand P2P Site Filters “Or Else”
  3. South Korea to Become 1st Country with “Three-Strikes” for File-Sharers?
  4. isoHunt Sues Canadian Record Industry to Prove BitTorrent Legal
  5. FlixFlux – BitTorrent Site Lets You View Movie Trailers in Search Results
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Comments

  1. open_universe

    I don’t get it. What’s with the “Your IP address has been logged” nonsense both at BitFarm and NewsHost?

  2. soulxtc

    Its the RISA’s own twisted sense of humor…..remember how the MPAA did the same thing with EliteTorrents?

  3. soulxtc

    Its the RISA’s own twisted sense of humor…..remember how the MPAA did the same thing with EliteTorrents?

  4. soulxtc

    Its the RISA’s own twisted sense of humor…..remember how the MPAA did the same thing with EliteTorrents?

  5. soulxtc

    Its the RISA’s own twisted sense of humor…..remember how the MPAA did the same thing with EliteTorrents?

  6. soulxtc

    Its the RISA’s own twisted sense of humor…..remember how the MPAA did the same thing with EliteTorrents?

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