The City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has shut down torrentz.eu, the largest torrent search engine on the internet, although the site continues to operate under two alternative domains and is hoping to move the .eu domain to a new registrar.
Meanwhile, the Unit also seized the domain of one of the biggest free sports-streaming sites, Cricfree.tv, in the hope that people will not be able to watch the football World Cup on anything other than legal channels. However, like torrentz.eu, the site was apparently back up and running within a few hours using a different domain.
PIPCU’s activities began with the sending of warning emails to many domains around the world, warning them that non-compliance with police requests would result in further action.
Their action has taken several forms, including the attempted seizure of domains, reported disruption of advertising revenue and physical raids on premises to shut them down, such as the one carried out on Boxing Guru earlier this year.
There are now more signs of action of PIPCU, as over the weekend, file-sharing site FileCrop disappeared from the internet and was replaced with a notice from PIPCU that read: ‘You have tried to access a website that is under criminal investigation by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. This site is being investigated for online copyright infringement’.
The sign goes on to suggest that for a safe and reliable guide to online content, people should visit alternative sites, such as Pro Music, Find Any Film or The Content Map.
What makes PIPCU’s investigation of FileCrop unusual is that it is not the usual Pirate Bay-style torrent site but a search engine that allows users to look for content hosted on various file-lockers that all have strict notice and takedown procedures.