Why the new Ukranian Demonoid is safe

So it’s been just over a week since TorrentFreak announced that Demonoid was back from the dead. A lot of us former users have probably received the announcement email by now. At first, there was a lot of concern that it might be a trap. And why not? When I first heard the news, I was certainly skeptical. The mysterious reemergence of one of the world’s most embattled torrent trackers, under a new admin? Seems a little too good to be true…

But after spending some time looking into it, I’m not worried any more. And here’s why you don’t need to be, either…

Of course, plenty of people on the internet, who claim to be lawyers “in real life,” have already educated us all on the laws surrounding entrapment, and how a honeypot would be illegal. While I really do want to believe the poorly spelled forum messages from “real life” IP lawyers, somehow I’m hesitant to trust them absolutely.

And so, here’s where my own investigation comes in.

Running a traceroute on demonoid.com, it looks like front end of the site is now located in the Ukraine. This is in line with the news that TorrentFreak posted back in March, when the tracker started responding again, also from the Ukraine.

Why would the fact that the tracker and front end are being hosted in the Ukraine set my mind at ease? Well, Ukraine has a long history of being a piracy-friendly nation. Back in the old days, a large quantity of counterfeit CDs in Western Europe were Ukranian and Russian in origin.

In 2005, Ukraine was added to the Office of US Trade Represntative’s “watch list” for nations that weren’t complying with US copyright and IP laws.

The 2007 BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study rated Ukraine as the #9 “worst offender” when it came to global piracy rates. Our Eastern European friends rocked an 84% “piracy rate”, whatever that means. And while they’re down from their all-time high of 91% in 2004, it’s still an impressive number. The highest rate was 95%, in Armenia. The Ukraine is even ahead of China, who had a measly 82%.

One thing that gave me pause was the discovery of the Ukraine Alliance Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, which is actually located in the same city as the servers that Demonoid runs on. But since their website hasn’t been updated since 2007, and it looks like some of their links are broken, I don’t think they’re really up on this whole “internet thing.”

So it looks like the Ukraine is going to make a nice home for Demonoid. With their rich history of intellectual property violation, it’ll be a while before government bureaucrats and foreign trade groups can mobilize themselves and start harassing the new site admin. I think it’s time to jump back in, at least until someone comes up with a good reason not to.

And, of course, what story about the Ukraine would be complete without a reference to their totally hot, sci-fi inspired Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Seriously, she looks like she’s the Prime Minister of an Intergalactic Federation, not some random country in Eastern Europe.