ShareReactor shut down by Swiss authorities

[TankGirl]

As all active eMule/eDonkey users have no doubt noticed the best ed2k link site ShareReactor has been down for some time, and there have been plenty of rumors but no information on what happened to it. Now Slyck has confirmed that Swiss authorities are responsible for the shutdown of the site, unsurprisingly due to copyright related reasons. ShareReactor is obviously dead for good.

FRAUENFELD (kapo) Due to the suspicion of breach of copyright and trademark laws the cantonal judicial Inquiry department of Thurgau has taken down an Internet-Site that served as a link platform for filesharing offerings. A process concerning these matters against the 25 year old owner from Frauenfeld is underway.

The Internet-Site located in Frauenfeld was online for about 30 months and last had over 220.000 hits per day bevor it was taken offline by the Thurgau officials. The in search engines toprated site worked as a anchorpoint for links to downloads of copyright and trademark protectet games and movies that were offered on the filesharing network.

After a complaint from several large corporations, represented by the swiss association against piracy, the cantonal judicial inquiry department of Thurgau initiated an investigation, seized the servers in Frauenfeld and had the site taken offline.

The responsible owner, a 25 year old swiss proved to be very cooperative in explaining matters at hand. The inquiries continue and will take some time.

source

- tg

[multi]

a sad end to all the speculation ..

i hope a new way to distribute confimed hash links is in the process of getting discussed..it will be interesting to see what everyone comes up with..

[TankGirl]

As a direct consequence of ShareReactor shutdown Jigle.com administrator has decided to take Jigle down as well. Reported by Slyck.

As eMule/eDonkey network itself is intact, there is clearly a need for a new way to distribute ed2k links. A new ShareReactor type site would solve the problem temporarily but would remain a similarly vulnerable solution. A Freenet site has been proposed as a safer alternative but I fear the thresold for people using Freenet (just to get ed2k links) would still be too high.

- tg

[Blind I/O]

I never even got to use the site(s). Sharereactor must have been superb - many of the links I find whilst perusing originate from Sharereactor.

[AweShucks]

Sharereactor will be missed in the ed2k community that's for sure A noticable trend has been developing for the last month with the systematic closing of ed2k link sites most notibly Filenexus was the first big one to fall with legal troubles. Other less known ones were closed as a side effect or forced to relocate.
It's to early to tell but the fear is evident on many boards regarding Sharereactors fall and the possible trouble to follow.

[throwaway18]

The people who contributed to sharereactor admitted far too much for their own good. They should have stuck to saying "somewhere in the world a file with this name and hash exists" instead of "new release of copyrighted material! Please break the law by spreading it."

There is no reason that hashlinks have to be on a website. It could also be done by distributing a big html document over filesharing networks. Release a new document every week. Cryptographically sign the document with PGP or similar so that users can be sure new versions are from the same people. No need to find money to pay for web hosting.

The wayback machine has a year old copy of sharereactor.

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by throwaway18
There is no reason that hashlinks have to be on a website. It could also be done by distributing a big html document over filesharing networks. Release a new document every week. Cryptographically sign the document with PGP or similar so that users can be sure new versions are from the same people. No need to find money to pay for web hosting.

This is one possible solution, although the use of PGP might be a bit too much for an average p2p user. An easier and similarly tamper-proof method would be to publish/mail/distribute (through trusted channels) just a single ed2k link for each big html document you described.

Anyway, I am sure that this will be just a minor challenge for the very flexible and resourceful p2p community. In the long run it is only good to replace the vulnerable and bandwidth-starved websites with something more resilient and robust.

- tg

[pod]

Initially I thought that SR was just having problems with the forums, since jigle was still up. I rarely go to the main page, so it didn't even occur to me to visit it to see what was up. Too bad the admin decided to pull the search engine down as well, I'm not sure that was called for.

[throwaway18]

>Although the use of pgp might be a bit too much for the average p2p user

The average users can not bother to check the signature. That's just so people with a clue can check it and tell people the hashlink for this weeks release without having to have it passed down a chain from the original source.

>Initially I thought that SR was just having problems with the forums
I strongly suspected somthing was up because the DNS servers for sharereactor.com were and still are up but have been configured to reply that sharereactor.com does not exist.

[throwaway18]

If you have any sharereactor pages still in your browser cache please go to www.revconnect.com/sharereactor/
and upload them. The revconnect guys have reassembled a lot of the sharereactor content.

[multi]

http://www.isoheaven.com/

http://www.fucktheinter.net/

[AweShucks]

It all starts here


http://forum.pleasuredome101.com/

[multi]

some other places that look good

http://www.gerbilgenocide.co.uk

http://www.varkoume.com/shared/

http://isohunt.com/release.php

[pod]

Anyone know if FileDonkey is still being updated? I never liked that ed2k search engine, but it seems to be one of the very few remaining major ones.