This week police and anti-piracy groups moved to close down a very large BitTorrent tracker. With 250,000 users, Snowtigers was possibly the largest French tracker. According to reports, police arrested 10 members of staff and seized more than 20 servers, after the military assisted in locating the operators.

As rumors persist that SnowTigers invitations were available to buy via various sources for around 30 euros each, while other users simply donated money to the site, Frédéric Delacroix of ALPA was keen to sow the seeds of doubt in their direction. “All people who have paid money [to the site] can now be questioned,” he said.

Attacking the other major lifelines for any BitTorrent tracker - the releasers and heavy users - Delacroix hinted that there may be prosecutions around the corner for them too. “We are dealing with a truly international network,” he said, adding “the investigation is not complete, it exceeds our French borders.”

Indeed, according to Zataz, SnowTigers had other servers located outside France, namely at LeaseWeb in The Netherlands and Netelligent in Canada. The status of those servers is unclear.