Share-online.biz taken offline
The largest file hoster in Germany, share-online.biz, is down after a raid. Three people of German nationality are being investigated. The online portal had established itself in the German-speaking piratesque scene as the successor to Rapidshare.
In an international raid on Wednesday, homes and business premises in Germany, France and the Netherlands were searched and evidence seized. The raid was directed against the file hoster share-online.biz. In recent years, this company has become the number one in German-speaking countries when it comes to direct downloads of copyrighted content. But now that has come to an end - the homepage now only features a still image of the public prosecutor and police.
Revenue of 50 million euros
No arrests were made during the raid. Three German men aged 40, 48 and 54 are under investigation. They live in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt - the file hoster's servers that were shut down were located in the Netherlands and France. The operators are said to have made a turnover of 50 million euros with the platform between April 2008 and October 2017. They are accused of multiple counts of aiding and abetting the unauthorised commercial exploitation of copyrighted works. The public prosecutor's office refers to cinema films, series, erotic productions and music as examples.
Server capacities in the double-digit petabyte range
The German Association for the Prosecution of Copyright Infringements (GVU) commissioned a service provider back in 2017, which subsequently sent over eight million deletion requests to the operators, which were directed against unlicensed content. The operator then cooperated and deleted the content. However, the content was made available again shortly afterwards. A criminal complaint against share-online.biz also followed in 2017. And now the public prosecutor's office has closed the gates and seized extensive evidence. According to a spokesperson for the public prosecutor's office in Cologne, it involves "incredible amounts of data". The server capacities are said to have recently been in the double-digit petabyte range.
It is unlikely that the takedown of the file hoster will also put a stop to the German-language pirate scene. This is because the illegal content previously offered on share-online.biz was and is also available on other servers and file hosters. This simply makes it a little more difficult for pirates, as it is no longer possible to obtain everything from one source. It is only a matter of time before another file host prevails and takes the challenge cup from Rapidshare and Share-online.biz.
A successor is already being discussed extensively on file-sharing platforms. A corresponding thread on boerse.to already has over 600 articles. <p
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