YggTorrent, one of the most visited and largest torrent websites In France, it has become private, meaning it is no longer available as a public site, according to a report from TorrentFreak.
The move comes in response to new lockdown measures implemented in France.
Additionally, the site is now available only to registered users. Those users who are not registered on the site are now greeted with a login screen (which normally appears for registered users) instead of the standard torrent site home page.
Currently, YggTorrent registrations are closed.
For those who don't know, YggTorrent (sometimes abbreviated to Ygg) was founded in July 2017, following the closure of T411 on June 26, 2017.
It allows visitors to search, download and contribute by adding torrent files, thus allowing file sharing between users of the BitTorrent protocol.
The file-sharing site, which receives more than a million visitors per month, was ranked 35th among the most visited websites in France, according to Alexa statistics in 2020.
It is also the largest French-language sharing platform that operates its own torrent tracker, which is quite rare these days.
As a file-sharing site with copyrighted material, YggTorrent ran into legal problems, so several of the site's domain names were blocked by French Internet providers in response to a court order.
The aggressive blocking action in France is the main reason why YggTorrent is making its site private, the company said. TorrentFreak.
By doing this, in addition to a responsive takedown policy based on legitimate claims, it seeks to reduce some of the pressure it faces from anti-piracy bodies and appease rights holders.
"We decided to make the site private for the time being and have a DMCA department that is more responsive than before," says YggTorrent.
The site operators believe that the aggressive blocking measures, including administrative blocking orders, adopted in France by anti-piracy agencies will not significantly increase the income of copyright holders.
YggTorrent says the main reason people visit a public site to download content is because they can't afford it. By blocking a website, anti-piracy agencies cannot expect people to pay for it, he adds.
“We don't understand the madness behind these blockades. Access to culture comes at a price: if people don't download it, they simply won't see most of it,” notes YggTorrent.
Arcom, a French anti-piracy agency, conducted a survey earlier this month, which indicated that several people are already aware of circumvention tools such as DNS modification and VPNs (virtual private networks), and awareness is expected to rise. grow if blocking actions continue. , adds YggTorrent.
“If they continue to abuse their blocking power, people will implement solutions to overcome blockages, and these solutions will become more widespread over time, a bit like decentralized finance that is gaining more and more traction. As we say in French 'action, reaction'”, concludes YggTorrent.
