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.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:39PM
> The more they tighten their grip, the more systems will slip through their fingers
This analogy is true but by driving users to more, smaller systems, the users lose the advantages of the larger ones (eg. for what.cd, the size of the catalogue and community seeding it).
The bigger things will remain in their grasp, filtering the slipping through systems into smaller and smaller... look, have you ever used a sieve, or your hand as one? Grip some mixed pebbles and rocks and sand sometime, and grind it around a bit.
So, you wrote it like it's a good thing. It's not.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:12PM
How dare you analyze the realistic plausibility of a Star Wars quote? I find your lack of faith offensive!
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday November 19 2016, @09:08PM
It will just force the system toward more distributed and resilient architectures. Evolution, it works baby.
For music organization and tagging, MusicBrainz and Beets together works wonders, and is entirely legal. For identifying high fidelity music, there are various audio fingerprinting tools in active development. For the actual distribution, which remains illegal, you really can't stop it. Torrents, XDCC, direct downloads over HTTP/FTP, hell, even sneakernet.
Since what.cd is a tracker, all of the data still exists in their user's collections. I'd imagine it's trivial to set up a new server and distribute a tarball of torrent/magnet links to restart the torrent web.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday November 19 2016, @10:21PM
It will just force the system toward more distributed and resilient architectures. Evolution, it works baby.
Exactly. A big problem for the "establishment" is that they continue to insist on fairly static, inflexible distribution models with control of the process from creation to consumer use. Consumers do not want to be limited to this and they will continually seek out and use whatever fits them best. Since the advent of the internet the big cartel companies have become less relevant, even though they fight to retain control and discourage innovative technology. Eventually it will come down to them either learning to profit some from new technology as fast as it comes out or using government to lock things down in their favor. I do not think the people, however sheep-like they appear to be now, will be happy with the latter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @09:46PM
> It will just force the system toward more distributed and resilient architectures.
No, not "just." In the process much is lost.
> Evolution, it works baby.
Not for everybody who has already been born. Evolution is frozen for them. So if circumstances change, they are fucked.