German Authorities Pull The Plug On eDonkey Servers
After court injunctions in Germany, seven of eDonkey’s mega servers were shut down last week. The shutdown follow similar eDonkey server closures in the Netherlands and France. “In the last few weeks the number of eDonkey users worldwide has been reduced by more than a million, knocking an estimated third of users off the network,” the IFPI, who spearheaded the legal action, reported. “Fresh actions will continue to target the remaining eDonkey servers.”
eDonkey is a peer-to-peer file sharing network widely used to swap copyright infringing music files. The eDonkey network relies on servers for its effective operation. eDonkey servers are run by one or more individuals using software to enable users to find other users connected to the same server that have files the user wants to download. Although eDonkey is a decentralized network, the mega servers act as intersections to direct traffic. Pulling the plug on the German servers will disrupt the service, but not kill the network.
In the last few weeks the number of eDonkey users worldwide has been reduced by more than a million, knocking an estimated third of users off the network. Fresh actions will continue to target the remaining eDonkey servers. A variety of legal tools and measures were used, depending on national law, to knock out the servers offline. Earlier this year, steps taken by French anti-piracy experts led to the closure of all the music-related eDonkey servers in that country. In August, Dutch anti-piracy investigators took action against the so-called BigBang servers in the Netherlands.
