It is this Thursday, November 17th that the Gendarmerie Nationale, and more specifically the military of the center of fight against the digital criminals (C3N), has seized the servers mails, irc and trackers of the tracker torrent private What.cd. In short, a nice nest of data that the investigators are analyzing. A first phase is not negligible. Even if the site is still active, it does not work anymore.

The users who used this private tracker found themselves without any connection to the three million proposed torrents (if I quickly calculate, it gives 3 million X 15 X 13 x 0,07 €, or 41 million euros of damage for the Assignees, NDR). The machines were seized in majorities in the North of France (Lille, Roubaix, Graveline ...) because hosted at OVH.

According to my information, this is a first sentence in this investigation, which began two years ago. It appears that the gendarmes were seized by SACEM. The investigation continues. The data seem to make it possible to go back to many French people and administrators, but also to the "boss" of What.cd, based in the United Kingdoms.

History

What.CD was founded on the day of Oink's Pink Palace's closure in October 2007. In November 2007 many site users received a hoax email purporting to be from the RIAA threatening to press charges for illegal downloads.

In 2008 the Canadian Recording Industry Association asked now-defunct Moxie Colo, then What.CD's host, to take down a number of tracker sites including What.CD. The company refused, saying "We will not be following the request and will be fighting for the rights of our clients as--to date--laws in Canada protect them. In October the site released "The What CD Volume 2", a compilation album of artists that contribute to the site. Earlier in the year they released Volume One.

In December 2008, What.CD and Open Your Eyes records formed a partnership in which the record label will exclusively distribute new releases on the tracker.

In 2010 CNET.com reported that a teenage boy had gained access to playMPE.com (an industry website used by music labels to share music with radio stations) by posing as an Australian music critic. He subsequently uploaded a number of unreleased albums to the What.CD tracker.

In September 2010, What.CD debuted the new lightweight and highly efficient tracker called "Ocelot". The lightweight tracker used only 3GB of RAM to power over five million peers.

In December 2010, What.CD's collection was reported to have reached one million torrents, a record for a private BitTorrent tracker.

Throughout early 2014, the site was subject to a severe and prolonged DDoS attack, causing intermittent tracker downtime and the limitation of many of the site's services.

Shutdown

On November 17, 2016, 12 servers were seized from OVH in the north of France. Shortly afterwards, the site announced their closure on both the index page and Twitter, saying "Due to some recent events, What.CD is shutting down. We are not likely to return any time soon in our current form. All site and user data has been destroyed. So long, and thanks for all the fish.", the last line being a quote from the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The site's Twitter account later posted the tweet "Reports of our database being seized are not factual".

On 18th November 2016, What.CD issued a statement regarding its shutdown.