French private tracker SnowTigers raided by police, admins arrested

[xmsax]

If you were a member of the semi private BitTorrent tracker SnowTigers, you might have noticed the site?s recent downtime. Unfortunately, SnowTigers is not offline due to a hardware failure or any other technical fault of that sort. The the site has been hit by one of the worst things that could happen to a BitTorrent tracker ? a police raid. According to available information French police have seized 21 severs associated with SnowTigers and have also arrested 10 of the site?s administrators.




At the time of its demise, Snowtigers had a huge user base of over 250000 members (Alexa rank of ~5000) and was one of the largest French BitTorrent trackers. It was an extremely popular tracker for French content and tracked movies, music and drama including some rare, unique, local releases not found on most other BitTorrent trackers. As things stand right now, it is highly unlikely that the site would make a return anytime soon.

To be honest France has not been a file sharing friendly place from the very beginning. They?ve only recently passed a ?three strikes? anti piracy law that could be easily be manipulated with a little money and power to rape all file sharers in the country.

xmsax Reviewed by xmsax on 7th Jun 2009. French private tracker SnowTigers raided by police, admins arrested If you were a member of the semi private BitTorrent tracker SnowTigers, you might have noticed the site?s recent downtime. Unfortunately, SnowTigers is not offline due to a hardware failure or any other technical fault of that sort. The the site has been hit by one of the worst things that could happen to a BitTorrent tracker ? a police raid. According to available information French police have seized 21 severs associated with SnowTigers and have also arrested 10 of the site?s administrators. Rating: 5

[Dotcom]

yea. they should have known better. this sucks.

[xmsax]

main tracker servers was located in canada and never get seized by any police entity.
Only owner and backup servers and "release seeder servers" was located in france, with all admin.

According to reports, police arrested 10 members of staff and seized more than 20 servers, after the military assisted in locating the operators.

Indeed, according to Zataz, SnowTigers had other servers located outside France, namely at LeaseWeb in The Netherlands and Netelligent in Canada. The status of those servers is unclear.

[xmsax]

The police and anti-piracy groups seem to be focused on the revenue generated by SnowTigers which they claim should have gone to the rights holders. ALPA president Fr?d?ric Delacroix insisted that SnowTigers was a criminal organization.
“The site has garnered several hundred thousand euros,” he claimed.


As rumors persist that SnowTigers invitations were available to buy via various sources for around 30 euros each, while other users simply donated money to the site, Fr?d?ric Delacroix of ALPA was keen to sow the seeds of doubt in their direction.

“All people who have paid money [to the site] can now be questioned,” he said.

Attacking the other major lifelines for any BitTorrent tracker - the releasers and heavy users - Delacroix hinted that there may be prosecutions around the corner for them too. “We are dealing with a truly international network,” he said, adding “the investigation is not complete, it exceeds our French borders.”

[Mareshal]

this is why is not good to pay for you oremium account to a hosting

[Azo]

They were seeding the content from their own servers?

[Whoo]

^Just the same question I was asking myself. A torrent tracker doesn't require THAT high server specs lol (or amount of servers)

[xmsax]

Yes, actually Military and Police got around 10TB of used space to verify.

military is getting involved with P2P? WTF?

I didn’t know that filesharing is a threat to national security? Since when is the military used for CORPORATE interests against CIVILIANS? France IS a police state! Let there be no question about that after this occurrence.

**pictures**
You click a link to a movie and just start to download it from a public tracker.
20 seconds later, there are armed Apache helicopters circling your house and a tank parked in your driveway. A suit walks in surrounded by 6 military troops carrying grenades, high-grade armor, and military-issue assault rifles.

“We’re from ALPA, and you have been found guilty of copyright infringement…”