November 28, 2009 by sharky
After 4½ years of domination, SceneTorrents has officially announced that they are shutting down for good. In addition to a message posted by ScT staff on their homepage which states that, indeed, ScT will be gone forever as of tomorrow night at 10PM GMT - The latest news/MOTD on their IRC channel confirms this, as well as a mass PM sent out to all 20,000 ScT members. After a short chat with the owner of ScT - Feeling has confirmed that this is not a hoax.
Update: TorrentLeech is now offering all ScT members a new home - check it out: TorrentLeech Opens Registration for ScT Members
Update 2: ScT has released an internal torrent entitled "The Final Notice".
[ScT IRC] News : The End Is Here. (No, it’s not a joke) - Don’t ask why!
[ScT IRC] News : Site Closing - Sunday 29th Nov 2009 10PM GMT. RIP SCT - 25/08/05 - 29/11/09.
What happened? Not many know for sure, but there’s been a lot of speculation that it involved their topsite "Loop" which had recently been raided by BREIN on November 27th. Also, ScT’s donation page has also been removed. Courtesy of Tweakers.net, here’s a translated snippet of their recent article involving "Loop":
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/64021/brein-haalt-amsterdamse-topsite-offline.html
Brein cites Amsterdam topsite offline
Brein collecting society has the “topsite” ranked ‘Loop’ to get offline. The topsite, that many groups would provide content to release, was hosted in Amsterdam. A judge has requested from the servers seized Brein withdrawn.
Brein-director Tim Kuik says to Tweakers.net that Brein is now no longer will focus primarily on torrent sites. We have first focused on torrent sites, because they were important in the dissemination of films, music, software and games. Speaking through the U.S. court case have been over, it’s time for us to focus on other places where illegal sharing of file occurs".
The site where the servers have been seized, is called a ranked topsite. This site was content to P2P sites and usenet correctly. It was difficult to access a site, because you a member of the staff should be invited. I hope that this seizure is a shock through the scene".
Brein, the right one "ex-parte leave" requested. This means that the court takes a decision without hearing the other party. Based on the evidence of Brein, the court decided that the servers Loop seizure could be taken. The administrators can then do ask the court to reverse the seizure.
The servers, who were in Amsterdam, was (home) to 40TB of files present. Kuik could not say whether Dutch managers were involved in the site. It is possible that the administrators will be legally prosecuted.
FileShareFreak was lucky enough just catch up with Feeling, the owner of ScT - on IRC:
[13:52] <Sharky> Feeling… WTF happened?
[13:53] <feeling> nothing
[13:53] <feeling> :o
[13:53] <feeling> just closing
[13:53] <feeling> :]
[13:53] <Sharky> wow that was a sudden decision
[13:54] <Sharky> will there be a new tracker, or are you out for good?
[13:54] <feeling> out for good
[13:54] <Sharky> wow, that’s much larger news than mininova. This is for real
[13:55] <Sharky> I notice the site/tracker are still up. When’s the site going offline?
[13:55] <feeling> [ScT] News : Site Closing - Sunday 29th Nov 2009 10PM GMT. RIP SCT - 25/08/05 - 29/11/09
[13:56] <Sharky> thanks for the info. Good luck on your future endeavours. I really mean that, and hope you’ll resurface somewhere down the road.
[13:56] <Sharky> your knowledge is too great to be just wasted :]
[14:00] <feeling> hmm
[14:00] <feeling> :]
[14:05] <Sharky> what do you plan to do with the members?
[14:05] <feeling> nothing
Below is the most recent PM sent to all members on ScT. Subject: ScT is closing.
As the subject says, the site Scenetorrents will be closing at 10pm on the 29th November 2009.
IRC has been set so no invite is needed for people to talk and ofc there is the forums which will close tomorrow.
Take care,
//ScT Staff
ScT on IRC
Feel free to join in the discussion, ScT’s main IRC channel has now been opened to both members and non-members. You’ll need to register your nick first.
SceneTorrents IRC server: irc.scenetorrents.org
Channel: #SceneTorrents
Hotlink: irc.scenetorrents.org/scenetorrents
Were we saddened to learn about the recent story of Mininova evolving over to a "content distribution" model? Not really, no - Mininova is simply a torrent indexer. But when a true scene juggernaut like SceneTorrents goes offline, this is certainly big news. 20,000 members are now stranded - but we may have found an alternative (or two) … stay tuned!
RIP ScT. One of the best trackers that ever lived. It is indeed a black day.
Edit: Comments posted in the name of ‘Feeling’ will be deleted, as well as inappropriate comments. Keep it clean, please. No need to throw gas on the fire out of speculation - we’ll update the article to reflect more info as it comes in.
Also be sure to check out TorrentFreak’s article on ScT.
ScT - Final Notice
(Excerpt below taken from ScT’s last torrent)
By now most of you already know that ScT will be going offline permanently.
However, due to pending legal issues, we are not at liberty to speak freely about why we’ve chosen to take down the site. Members of our staff were arrested and will be undergoing the entire length of the judicial process. Obviously, in the case of criminal proceedings, it would be downright foolish to comment any further on the situation;
Please bear this in mind and wish them the best of luck.
There have been several theories as to where the donation money (of the recent months) has gone. We’d like to take this opportunity to put all skepticism to rest.
The money was used to purchase new hardware that would ensure our spot as the fastest tracker on the net.
You are free to perform whatever calculations you feel necessary, but in doing so it should become very clear that running a site of this stature costs money. We feel the overwhelming cynicism is just a product of bad timing compounded with general frustration caused by the current situation.
We sincerely hope that you’ve enjoyed being a part of our wonderful community over the past 4 1/2 years. We’ve certainly enjoyed our members letting us be of service. We’ve always felt our user base played an equally important role in making SceneTorrents.org a model environment in the torrent world.
The staff would also like to express their gratitude to fellow trackers for their support in such a chaotic time. Several well known communities have voluntarily opened their doors, and have offered our former users a new home. We appreciate the courtesy and acknowledge the steps being taken to move forward collectively as a community. Your assistance does not go unrecognized.
//ScT Staff
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