The Share-Online.biz server has been shut down after raids in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, all to end piracy and the storing of copyrighted content on their servers.
An immense work of tracking between countries
Share-Online.biz, the largest hosting website in Germany, has an average of 10 million monthly users using its services, and in this case, the site did not seem to do anything to prevent them from uploading illegal content.
According to Torrent Freak, on October 16, the website disappeared completely, and just one day later, the GVU (the local anti-piracy team) confirmed that they were responsible for making the site cease its services.
The website that allowed users to upload files up to 2Gb (1Gb in the case of free accounts), was being investigated since 2017 – and finally, in an operation that involved the Cologne prosecutor’s office and the Aachen police, they managed to raid the origin of the service in order to put an end to it.
The search also involved an investigation into three people allegedly involved in the administration of the site.
The research process of the GVU involved the registration of different residential and commercial properties in Germany, while in France and the Netherlands the research was carried out on accommodation services and platforms connected to the site. Although it has not been specified how many servers were seized in the operations, the GVU indicated that Share-Online.biz worked with several hundred of them.
With a view on all users
In addition to closing Share-Online.biz, other forums and web portals that supported the dissemination of the hosting service to a greater or lesser extent are also in the sights of the GVU, among which stand out DDL-Warez (currently down), Movie-Blog, Boerse, and MyGully.
The start of the investigation operations occurred after one of the GVU anti-piracy partners sent more than eight million notices to Share-Online.biz to remove copyrighted content. The site allegedly removed them, but soon after, they reappeared online.
During the investigation, the GVU made multiple trial downloads to confirm that the content was protected by copyright and that the owners of the site encouraged their download.
