A Russian porn star known as Alexander Pistols is taking credit for (temporarily) shutting down Pornolab, one of the largest adult BitTorrent tracker in the world.
While it might be assumed the action was a result of breaking numerous porn distribution laws, the Russian pornstar claims otherwise, saying he asked officials to yank the site.
If you recall, Pornolab seemed to have serious lasting power as it outperformed competitor sites PureTNA and Empornium – who both fell victim to the wrath of government shutdowns.
But then, Pornolab and its 2 million registered users came under attack by Ukrainian police who swooped in on the operation in April 2011 and seized a number of servers.
Law enforcement officials cited the reason for the shut down as a violation in a law designed to limit Ukrainian minors’ access to porn, rather than the usual suspect: violation of copyright law.
This charge is somewhat tricky as it states the website would have to be distributing the unlawful data itself to be held liable.
“In terms of procedure, it would be very difficult to hold torrent organizers responsible,” said Tetiana Popova, chief executive officer of the Internet Association of Ukraine (InAU).
“They do not know who seeds content or how much of it is uploaded. It is seeded in parts to many computers. The same for the leeches who receive information, gathering it in pieces from hundreds of other computers,” he added.
Pornolab obviously didn’t stay shut down for long, as it resurfaced in a Lithuanian datacenter. Soon thereafter, the site was taken offline by host company ZServers, but moved further and further west, from Ukraine to Lithuania and currently resides in Germany.
The site is currently accessible and seem to be fully functioning.
(Via TorrentFreak)
