The increasing antipiracy initiatives in Sweden have claimed yet another popular BitTorrent community, but this time the site’s administrators closed up shop willingly before the authorities had a chance to come knocking at their door.
Piratetorrents.nu, which used to be one of the country’s largest private BitTorrent communities and was still 25,000 members strong, abruptly shut down this week due to the mounting risks associated with running such a site.
“As you can see, our website and tracker are not working anymore, this is because we don’t dare take any more risks! All of the staff have a private life to think about, and they no longer want to take the risks inherent in running a tracker,” reads a statement from Piratetorrents’ staff posted on the main page of the now-shuttered community.
“In other words, we are throwing in the towel and ending this business before something possibly happens to us in staff,” the message continues. “There are too many laws and rules against this stuff and it’s not worth the punishment.”
According to TorrentFreak, the decision to close the site was largely influenced by last month’s raid on BitTorrent tracker XNT.nu, and the arrest of two of that site’s admins. The report also indicates that one of the detained XNT admins also had connections to Piratetorrents.
Of course, there are still plenty of BitTorrent trackers and communities out there to which former XNT and Piratetorrents members can relocate, but the numbers are certainly beginning to dwindle, especially in Sweden.
