French police have at least temporarily shut down Youceff Torrents, one of the largest torrent sites and recently listed in Slyck’s Top 10 SuprNova Alternatives.

Arjan, the site administrator, was given no warning. The first signs came Monday afternoon when the site went offline. The hosting company initially said it was due to an electrical fault.

This morning, Arjan received and e-mail explaining that the servers had in fact been deliberately terminated and the police where on scene. Slyck spoke to a rather nervous Arjan, who explained that the police would find nothing on the servers but torrent files. He does not host any FTP servers or warez.

Arjan does not live in France, or believe he has done anything wrong, but he is naturally apprehensive that the local police will make a visit to his door.

He also remains defiant, saying that even if the French servers are shut down permanently, he will find elsewhere to host.

Youceff has been struggling to gain more information due to lack of English speaking staff at the hosting company.

At time of shutdown, Youceff Torrents was using 7 servers with a constant bandwidth usage of 18mbit. The servers, run by CTN1, where chosen for their price. The original American servers where shut down after too many DMCA complaints.

UPDATE

News.com are reporting that criminal actions have been filed against the owners of file sharing websites in Europe. A representative of the French government has said the operator of seven French based servers is still wanted by French police.

Slyck has been unable to reach Arjan for comment.

UPDATE 2
15th December 2004

Arjan has not yet been arrested by police. He spoke briefly with Slyck to say that Youceff Torrents will not be coming back, no matter the outcome of the raids.

"Youceff is not going to be defiant, we're not coming back," he confirmed.

The raids have left Arjan badly shaken, describing himself as "a total wreck."

This story is filed in these Slyck News categories
Legal/Courtroom :: BitTorrent Lawsuits
BitTorrent :: Trackers/Indexers

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