BitTorrent Site Goes Offline Due to Anti-Piracy Gaffe

MVGroup, a torrent tracker that has nothing to do with illegal material or copyrighted content, has gone offline due to what seems to be the error of the anti-piracy group that requested the host to shut down the servers. According to TorrentFreak, the BitTorrent website went offline a few days ago and it's still unavailable due to the fact that the administrators are now preparing to launch the page with a brand new host.

MVGroup is an educational material website which lets visitors download videos for free without the need of an account. Although the administrators have always tried to avoid copyrighted material, their website was shut down due to an error of the anti-piracy group which analyzed its content. The folks at TorrentFreak had an interview with one of the administrators, so here's what happened with the service:

"OK, the simple fact is that the whole thing is a cockup - by both a movie studio and our host/datacenter. The studio said (I suspect a bot trawling torrent dumpsites) that we were tracking a movie called "The Eye" - we obviously don't carry that kind of thing. Never have done. What we did have however was a documentary series also called The Eye.

The sudden shutdown is down to our host, who panicked, so basically we were taken down for the wrong reasons. Not very fair, but the host got paranoid, so we have had to move anyway. We have now found a new host and have more powerful server, for the same outlay financially."

At the time, the owners of the service are still seeking for a new host, but the tracker should go online anytime soon. And even if there were cases of BitTorrent trackers which encourage piracy, it seems like there are service which may be really useful even if they stay on the legal side...