Politics

Ukraine busts Demonoid file-sharing site to impress US government

Josh Peterson Contributor
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The Ukrainian government, as a gift to the U.S. government, shut down the file-sharing site Demonoid last week.

Demonoid was downed by a July 25 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, where the website’s server crashed due to overloaded users requests to access the site.

On Aug. 3, Demonoid’s site administrator vowed that he would work to make the site fully operational again. Monday, however, TorrentFreak reported that Ukrainian authorities went to the data center that hosted the site and shut it down.

Demonoid is the only latest casualty in the U.S. government’s war against file-sharing sites.

“Ukraine had promised the United States that it would improve its attitude and efforts towards enforcing copyright and no doubt its Western partner will be very pleased indeed that Demonoid’s head has been presented on a platter,” wrote TorrentFreak.

TorrentFreak wrote that a source inside of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said that the action was “scheduled to coincide with Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky’s trip to the United States.”

ZDNet reported that intellectual property rights was the first item on the docket.

United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky released a joint statement at the end of July stating, “We discussed the importance to each country of greater progress on the 2010 IPR Action Plan for protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR).”

The statement outlined the results “of the fourth meeting of the U.S.-Ukrainian Trade and Investment Council (TIC) in Washington, D.C.”

“The United States supported Ukraine’s commitment to redouble efforts, especially those identified in the Action Plan, to implement protections that benefit both Ukrainian and American inventors and creators,” said the statement.

“The United States also hailed Ukraine’s planned increase in intellectual property inspectors, as called for in the 2010 IPR Action Plan, as well as its adoption of a new Customs Code intended to improve customs valuation procedures,” it said.

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Tags : piracy
Josh Peterson