Filelist, a private tracker of BitTorrent has now been seized by Romanian authorities. This was found when the original, and old site Filelist.ro was displaying a message from authorities as it was seized. The site, and presumably its operators are facing criminal investigation lead by the Prosecutor’s Office of the High Court of Cassation and Justice.
Seized, and Nothing Else
Romania is often blamed by copyright owners for being irresponsive in handling piracy hosts. Many copyright infringing players are setup from that country due to this lenience. This made Romania retain its spot in USTR’s list of countries that face challenging enforcement issues regarding online and broadcast piracy. Interestingly, Amazon was included in the USTR’s list of notorious sites, but not the Filelist!
Further, Romania hasn’t issued any formal announcement of this seizure, so the actual matter of this case still remains in the dark. The operators have previously informed the community that they’re shifting from its two domains, Flo.org and Filelist.ro to a new domain called Filelist.io. But even before the transition, it’s now stumbled upon investigations.
We’ve seen a popular pirate site like The Pirate Bay, which has been inaccessible for a month and relived again with few changes. Sudden actions like being pulled down without any prior notices will make the community think it’s over. And many have thought the same in Filelist’s case too.
Users Will Be Safe!
There are people talking in Reddit that even the new site, Filelist.io is still kept alive as a honeypot to net users who participate in uploading or downloading any content. But, that may not be the case. After all, the operators of Filelist have assured users that, even if their servers are seized by any chance, they wouldn’t let their users’ data known that easily, as they’re following multiple protection and encryption systems to prevent access to the database and/or other files.
Further, “We care very much about the security and anonymity of our users. No personal data is stored on the server anyway. No allegations have been brought to our attention and we will continue to fight for the right of our users to free speech and communication.”
