RARBG, one of the largest torrent sites in the world, has been shut down. The website's founders attributed the development to the COVID outbreak and the Ukrainian war.
The torrent tracker used to specialize in pirated movie and TV series releases. RARBG was founded in 2008 as a Bulgarian BitTorrent tracker. The site immediately began to attract an international audience, focusing primarily on English language releases.
The service will close after a "difficult" two years, according to a farewell note posted online by staff.
โSome of our team have died due to covid complications, others are still suffering from the side effects, unable to work at all,โ he wrote. "Some are also fighting the war in Europe, ON BOTH SIDES."
The strike comes as some experts believe the Internet may be entering a "golden age" of piracy, due to rising streaming prices and other challenges.
โIn addition, the increase in the price of energy in data centers in Europe affected us quite a bit. Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to cover,โ the staff wrote. "Therefore, we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket."
RARBG has been in operation for 15 years. It had grown to become one of the most popular torrent sites on the internet, even surpassing more well-known destinations like The Pirate Bay.
The update may affect more than just RARBG users. Both movies and torrents hosted there were mirrored to other sites, so the RARBG shutdown may make it more difficult to get stolen content elsewhere as well.
RARBG was first stopped in 2008 due to copyright infringement. Google also removed it from its search results in 2017. Currently, many countries have banned access to the website.
However, with the announcement of its closure, the torrent site became one of the rare cases where a torrent platform closed on its own.
Information for this report was found through the Economic Times, the Independent and the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to the organizations discussed. It is not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author has no licenses.
