Police Shut Down P2P Server


In a major crackdown on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that circulate illegal material on the Internet, joint raids by police in Switzerland and Belgium have shut down the Razorback2 server - a popular server of the eDonkey file-sharing network.

The police arrested Razorback2's Swiss owner, and seized Razorback2 machines from a Brussels-based Internet hosting firm.

The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) said in a statement, that the Razorback2 was one of the largest of the 200-odd index servers on the eDonkey P2P network, and that it held eDonkey's most widely used indexes of pirated movies, games, TV programs, music tracks and software.

Unlike several other file-sharing servers, Razorback2 was run as a business and generated cash for its owners via advertising and donations.

Earlier raids have shut down eDonkey's most popular servers in the US. Commenting on the latest raid, Dan Glickman, chairman, MPAA, said that this is a major victory in MPAA's fight to cut-off the supply of illegal materials being circulated on the internet via P2P networks.

All said and done in a scenario wherein studies find eDonkey becoming increasingly popular - especially in countries like South Korea, Italy, Germany and Spain, it is not clear as to how the shutdown of Razorback2 will affect the overall filesharing figures.

Typically it is observed that file-sharers simply switch to other networks such as BitTorrent, Usenet, etc, following such raids and shutdowns.