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What.CD taken offline
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 18 November 2016
French police have taken BitTorrent tracker What.CD offline, seizing twelve servers at two hosting companies that were used to power the service.
Although the site and its domain name are still operational, visitors are now met with a message: “Due to some recent events, What.CD is shutting down. We are not likely to return any time soon in our current form. All site and user data has been destroyed. So long, and thanks for all the fish”.
According to Zataz, the raid was conducted following a police investigation carried out in partnership with French collecting society SACEM. It’s not clear if any arrests have been made, although the news report suggests that data on the servers may provide a trail back to various people involved in the file-sharing operation, including its UK-based founder.
The invite-only What.CD was launched in 2007 after British file-sharing community Oink was taken offline. In the criminal case pursued against that set-up, the site’s founder, Alan Ellis, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to defraud. He was later found not guilty.
