14 DAY TRIAL // Last Friday, following numerous complaints from RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the US Department of Justice together with the FBI seized the ShareBeast.com domain.
The site was famous around the US and Europe, being the go-to place when it came to illegally downloading music files.
In recent months, ShareBeast has come to be the place where, besides music, users could also download TV shows and even watch online streams.
Last year, the site saw itself in the limelight for the first time following FIFA’s complaint to authorities after ShareBeast started offering streams for 2014 World Cup games.
Additionally, the site was also famous in the music underground, being the place where album leaks were published before their official releases.
The biggest name on this list is Kanye West, who saw his upcoming SWISH album leak on ShareBeast, before being spread on YouTube and other online music services.
The classic FBI seizure notice appears when accessing the site, and besides ShareBeast, authorities also shut down albumjams.com, one of ShareBeast's sister sites, where most of the music songs were also mirrored.
The US Department of Justice said more than 100,000 copyrighted files were hosted on ShareBeast, and before it was taken offline, the site had managed to become the US' biggest file-sharing website.
As with many similar cases in the past, their own success is usually what dooms these websites in the first place.