Archive for the ‘Tolkun Umaraliev’ tag
Torrent.kg Shut Down by Authorities
The largest torrent site in the Asian country, Kyrgyzstan, Torrent.kg, was shut down on allegations of copyright infringement. The site’s servers were seized pending the investigation; however, the country now has a version of OpenBitTorrent so that torrents are able to keep flowing.
Although Kyrgyzstan is a rather small country of 5.5 million, it does have a flourishing torrent community, mostly smaller sites which in turn use the Torrent.kg. Last week, however, the inhabitants were discouraged to read a message in Russian which read on the site, “For reason beyond our control the site is temporarily suspended. The administration hopes for a speedy solution to all problems. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.” Later it was confirmed that the site was shut down by the authorities. A temporary forum is currently available for concerned users.
Tolkun Umaraliev, a blogger from Kyrgystan, said that the suspension of Torrent.kg would have little impact on the availability of pirated material. He explaind, “Piracy cannot be stopped in Kyrgyzstan, because people – consumers – do not really know what piracy is, and that it is illegal. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, our market has been filled with underground VHS cassettes of Hollywood movies poorly translated into Russian and underground audio cassettes of western singers. And their prices were reasonable – consumers could afford them,”