A message posted on the
Demonoid frontpage confirms that Deimos, the former administrator, left the
Demonoid staff. The site seems to be working properly, as does the tracker, but
there could be some downtime in the next few days. All the people who had an
account at the time the site shut down can still sign in with the same username
and password.
The resurrection of the popular BitTorrent traffic marks the end of a tough
year for the site. The trouble for Demonoid started back in June last year, when
the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN started to put pressure on Demonoid and their
ISP, Leaseweb. Deimos decided that the Netherlands wasn't the safe haven it used
to be and he to moved the site to Canada, which resulted in a few days of
downtime. Deimos never really told the administrators or members of the site
exactly what was happening. Initially, most members assumed that there was some
hardware failure, but after a few days it became clear that Demonoid was more or
less forced to move. Maybe there could have been hardware failures too, who
knows, but the outcome was the same - Canada here we come. Relocating the
servers to Canada initially solved the problems, but, by the end of September
Deimos took Demonoid offline for the second time. Again, nobody knew what was
going on until we found out that the CRIA was responsible for the downtime,
which was later confirmed by Deimos. It turned out that Canada wasn't the best
choice after all.