UKR-RUS Collateral Damage: Rutracker.org is Down

Even the mightiest go down sometimes.

Longtime readers will know I have an interest in torrent sites as examples of the vast possibilities for intellectual property violation in the Internet age. Unsurprisingly, the United States--strongest enforcers of IP worldwide due to its creative industries' vast output--has lobbied governments the world over to shut down these torrent sites. I've previously written about the travails of Demonoid, which, at its height, was the world's top private tracker site. Despite moving its servers around the world and using all sorts of top-level domains to escape Uncle Sam, it was eventually brought down. (The Demonoid story would make a great true-to-life thriller, actually.) You know, Demonoid has come back up again, but the reborn site's content is but a shadow of what it had at its peak.

Thus, my theory of torrent site longevity is now largely based on a single metric: How insulated is the site from American pressure to discontinue intellectual property "theft"? By this measure, my pick would be Rutracker.org, a Russia-based site whose authenticity is undoubted since its text is in Cyrillic. Russia being the land of Edward Snowden's asylum and Crimean-invading macho men, you can bet your bottom ruble that Russian authorities would be the among the least likely to crack down on this torrent site at the behest of Westerners. Ironically given its activities, Rutracker.org has even trademarked its name [!]

That's not to say Rutracker.org is invulnerable. For a few weeks now, Russian sites have been hit by DDOS attacks, presumably over their annexation of the Crimean peninsula. I guess it was inevitable that these attacks would hit Rutracker.org, and that has now happened. Ukranian news sources further suggest that the attacks are emanating from Ukraine. Whatever the source, Rutracker.org is definitely down as Russian media confirms.

A lot of the highbrow (no porn, please) content that Demonoid used to track has since moved to Rutracker.org. Ultimately, I suspect that the vast majority of Rutracker.org users are not Russian. The only real reason folks use the site is that Russia appears immune to Western pressure to disband Rutracker.org. Then again, if the Russians figure out that it's mostly Westerners using the site, they probably may be less averse to shutting it down.

At any rate, expect Rutracker. org to be among the last torrent sites standing after the current DDOS attack blows over.

UPDATE: Rutracker.org is back up as of 1500 GMT, 4/7/20214