It is pointed out that a large-scale pirated site that attracts millions of accesses every month is closed, and an archive appears immediately, but the impact is large

The management team of RARBG , one of the world's largest torrent sites, announced on May 31, 2023 that the site will be closed. This is the first large-scale closure since 2015-2016, when several famous torrent sites withdrew at the same time, and it is expected to have a major impact on many other torrent sites.

Iconic Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down, All Content Releases Stop * TorrentFreak
https://torrentfreak.com/iconic-torrent-site-rarbg-shuts-down-all-content-releases-stop-230531/

RARBG: Over 267,000 Movie & TV Show Magnet Links Appear Online * TorrentFreak
https://torrentfreak.com/rarbg-over-267000-movie-tv-show-magnet-links-appear-online-230601/

Founded in 2008, RARBG was originally conceived as a Bulgarian BitTorrent tracker . Since then, RARBG has grown as a pirate torrent site with content such as TV shows, movies, music, games and software, and also serves as an ecosystem for many torrent sites to function.

On May 31, 2023, a message suddenly appeared on the top page of RARBG , announcing that the site would be closed. The following English text is the full text posted on the site. According to the contents of the message, some members of the management team have died or are suffering from side effects due to complications from the new coronavirus, and are unable to work at all. Some people are fighting as their respective camps in the invasion, making it difficult to continue operating. In addition to the increased expenditure due to inflation, the closure was also caused by the fact that the cost of operating the site could not be covered due to the large increase in the price of data centers in Europe. The statement reads, ``As a result of a unanimous verdict by the management team, the closure was decided.''

Hello guys,
We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site.
The past two years have been very difficult for us - some of the people in our team died due to covid complications,
others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all.
Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES.
Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard.
Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare.
Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket.
After an unanimous vote we've decided that we can no longer do it.
We are sorry :(
Bye

According to TorrentFreak , which mainly deals with news such as copyright infringement and piracy, there were many cases where the pirated content provided by RARBG was provided as it was on another pirated site, so it had a big impact on the entire torrent site. It is possible. TorrentFreak said, ``Obviously there will be a lot of imitators trying to take over the RARBG brand. It's not easy to close closed gaps on a large scale.'

The closure of RARBG was announced without notice, and all content was suddenly unavailable, but a day after the closure was announced, a magnet link archive containing over 260,000 movies and TV shows appeared. Magnet links allow you to share content without trackers, so your content won't be unavailable for download even if your site dies.

A few hours after RARBG announced its closure, GitHub added an empty repository labeled 'rarbg'. The other repository shared at the same time contained three text files that, when opened with some text editors, contained magnet links related to RARBG movies and TV shows. According to TorrentFreak, the first file had 117,233 links, the second had 12,949, and the third had 137,669 links.

TorrentFreak says, ``Downloading and sharing content using magnet links is illegal in most cases.Therefore, you can't be sure if a magnet link is genuine, but you can use professional tools. It is also possible to obtain metadata from links without infringing on the content.Some of the links were found to refer to RARBG's collection of movies and TV shows, which is why RARBG's index is so large. It may contain parts.'

Hacker News asks , ``How could RARBG, which has been a major player in torrent sites for many years, run until it voluntarily shuts down without being caught or arrested?'' increase. Another user responded, 'It's easier than you think. It can take years to track down and identify a domain or web host. Even the information identified is fake. Or they may have changed hands along the way, or they may be inaccurate, but if no one says anything or reacts to anything, the illegal activity can go on for years and decades. ' he says . Also, since RARBG does not directly upload content but provides links as a tracker, ``What they are doing is like a search engine, and it is difficult to pursue it as a completely illegal act. There is also an opinion pointing out that it is from.