Short Bytes: What.cd, a widely popular music torrent website that first appeared in 2007, has shut down. This is a result of an operation by cybercrime unit of the Gendarmerie (C3N) in France. While French news sources claim that the authorities have seized the data, What.cd says that all the data has been destroyed in the process.
World’s most popular music torrent website What.cd has shut down. Now, What.cd shows a farewell message on its homepage that cites some recent events as the cause of this shutdown. The announcement also reads that the site isn’t likely to return in near future in its current form.
The What.cd shutdown news was also confirmed by its Twitter handle that has about 28,000 followers.
Wondering what triggered this shutdown? As many of you would’ve suspected, this is a result of the government authorities’ actions. According to the French news website Zantac, military center of the fight against criminality digital (C3N), National Gendarmerie, grabbed the main server, IRC, and trackers of What.cd. The website claims that all the data of the website has been seized.
The operators of the website say that they’ve destroyed all the data in the process. This claim is contrary to the reports of the What.cd database being seized.
All site and user data has been destroyed. So long, and thanks for all the fish. <3 2/2
— What.CD (@whatcd) November 17, 2016
In the investigation that has been ongoing for two years, the French music industry group SACEM is also suspected to be involved.
It should be noted that the demise of What.cd, which first appeared in 2007, comes just few weeks after the crackdown of another big music-tracker website, oink.cd.
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