RIP Demonoid - BitTorrent site shut down by Ukrainian authorities

Demonoid, one of the biggest torrent file sharing sites, has been taken down by Ukrainian authorities in a raid on the site's data centre. The shutdown comes after Demonoid has been unreachable for users for more than two weeks because of a distributed denial-of-service attack.

Demonoid is the latest high-profile torrent site to be eradicated by authorities, following the closure of Megaupload and several European countries blocking access to the resilient The Pirate Bay.

Investigators raided the data centre in Ukraine that allegedly hosted Demonoid's servers, according to a TorrentFreak report. The site was hosted by ColoCall, the largest data center in the country. Authorities sealed the site's servers and copied the information on them.

However, no arrests were made, as it is unclear who is behind Demonoid. It is believed that the people behind the site could be based in Mexico, where the site has been completely blocked since last year.

Unconfirmed reports from TorrentFreak via Ukrainian paper Kommersant indicate that the story runs much deeper than that. It appears the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the new Ukrainian prime minister's first trip to the US, which has copyright infringement on the agenda.

Since Demonoid was apparently not contravening Ukrainian laws (as a tracker site, Demonoid was not actually hosting the pirated files, such as music and movies, but rather just linking to them), the paper suggests the bust was a gift to the US government ahead of the visit.

At this stage, it is unclear whether Demonoid will be back online any time soon.