European police flogging a dead eDonkey

Police raids in Switzerland and Belgium have shut down peer-to-peer site Razorback2

A cross-border police action in Europe has shut down Razorback2, one of the world's largest peer-to-peer operations.

Razorback2 was the top eDonkey P2P server, capable of handling over 1.3 million users simultaneously.

The bulk of its users were based in Europe, and the service indexed more than 170 million files including copyrighted movies, software and music.

"Razorback2 was not just an enormous index for internet users engaged in illegal file swapping, it was a menace to society," said John G. Malcolm, anti-piracy director at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

"I applaud the Swiss and Belgian authorities for their actions which are helping to thwart internet piracy around the world."

Swiss police raided the home of the site's operator in Switzerland at dawn and searched his home for evidence. Meanwhile Belgian police raided the location of the site's server in Zaventem near Brussels.

The MPAA claimed that the site contained child pornography, bomb-making instructions and terrorist training videos, and was funded by user contributions and adverts from the pornography industry.

"We are very grateful to the Swiss and Belgian authorities for their cooperation and effective action in dealing with this particularly egregious enterprise and the individual profiting from it," said Chris Marcich, managing director of the MPAA's European office.

The raids follow a concerted effort by the MPAA to shut down eDonkey aggregators worldwide.

However, although Sam Yagan, the creator of the software, has been prevented from continuing his operations, an open source version called eMule continues to be used by millions of file sharers.

"EMule computers actually usurp some of the bandwidth that should be allocated to eDonkey file transfers, degrading the experience of eDonkey users, " said Yagan in a testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee. 

"So, have we had any success trying to stop them? No. I have no doubt that the Recording Industry Association of America will have better luck finding them than we have, but it surely will not be quite as easy as finding me."