Demonoid busted by Ukraine Government

In the wake of last week's distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, Ukraine authorities have seized Demonoid's servers, pending investigation.

The website, which was the target of a massive DDoS attack last week, has now been shut down and its servers seized from host ColoCall, with TorrentFreak attributing its information to an anonymous source at the data centre.

The seizure comes in the wake of the DDoS attack, and the US is definitely involved — at least, according to another anonymous source; this time from within the Ukraine Government, who said that the seizure was timed to coincide with Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovskyi's first visit to the US.

The ColoCall source told local Ukraine newspaper Kommersant:

Investigators have copied all the information from the Demonoid servers and sealed them. Some equipment is not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to withdraw the agreement with the site.

The kicker is that Demonoid is not breaking any laws in the Ukraine, even down to blocking local Ukrainian IP addresses.

United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky released a joint statement yesterday, which said:

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 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. 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.

Demonoid has had to relocate before, so it may do so again, but this hole is looking like an increasingly difficult one from which to climb.