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It took nearly 10 years, but authorities have finally targeted and taken down What.cd, which had risen to become the Internet's largest invite-only, music-trading torrent site.
The news was confirmed by the tracker's official Twitter account on Thursday via two posts: "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."
Those posts, whose text was duplicated on the site's official front page, noted "recent events," which is a mild way of describing French authorities apparently seizing the site's full load of servers. French technology news site Zataz reported on Thursday [Ed: English translation, ymmv] that the nation's National Gendarmerie office nabbed the servers that hosted the site's database, IRC, and trackers.
[...]Ars has received a response from the operator of What.cd's Twitter account. The respondent would only identify him or herself as "an administrator" of the former site, but the person alleges that the torrent site's operation was shut down by its administrators, not a police or government force.
The more they tighten their grip, the more systems will slip through their fingers.
Additional reporting on this story was submitted separately via IRC. You can find the TorrentFreak story here.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday November 19 2016, @12:21PM
I'd never heard of them, but apparently it was quite the resource for audiophiles.
In any case, they imply that the authorities will not have gotten any user data. This implies that they had time to wipe the data. And any backups? That would be an impressive wipe command, but nice if its true.
Can we dream of a time when copyright has been reduced to a sensible period? In today's world, maybe seven years?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @12:29PM
I don't imagine backups of incriminating data are common...
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday November 19 2016, @12:29PM
Not only that, but androids can dream of electric sheep.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @01:29PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @01:38PM
> This implies that they had time to wipe the data.
It has been suggested that the MAFIAA got their proxies, but did not get the actual system. That the admins decided to shut it down because they felt it was only a matter of time before the MAFIAA got to that point.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @01:50PM
> That would be an impressive wipe command, but nice if its true.
It's actually very easy. If you use full disk encryption, you just have the wipe the right blocks. There's a cryptsetup command for that.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday November 19 2016, @04:41PM
Recommendation: MP3Million.com - $.09 / track.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Finkus on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:15PM
I'd never heard of them, but apparently it was quite the resource for audiophiles.
That's an understatement. It wasn't just the free music, but how everything was obsessively tagged and organized by the community. For a lot of people really into music, it's like wikipedia or youtube just got shut down.
They're also responsible for a number of high profile leaks. They're the first place COFEE and The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls were posted, along with several high profile albums.
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