Last night I sat in front of my computer, fired up eMule as usual. However, something wasn’t right, where was Razorback2 server went, the one I connected to all the time, the one had largest number of users connected to every hour. It wasn’t there….

Then the sad news came in…

MPAA Rejoices Over eDonkey Shutdown – BetaNews

The
Motion Picture Association of America is claiming a major victory in
the battle against illicit file sharing with the shutdown of a key
server used to index content on the eDonkey2000 network. Razorback2 was
the largest centralized server and was used by over 1 million file
swappers.

The server’s operator was arrested in Switzerland while
the computers were seized from a hosting facility near Brussels. The
MPAA heralded the arrest in a statement, saying the man’s home was also
searched for more information on those keeping eDonkey’s 3.5
million-user P2P network running.

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Even with the shutdown of Razorback2, however,
eDonkey isn’t likely to disappear any time soon. A decentralized method
of indexing files on the network called Kademila, or KAD, has begun to
pick up steam. The technology has been shown to outperform
eDonkey2000’s basic system for transferring large files.

In addition,
eDonkey has proven resilient to legal attacks in the past. The
network’s creator, MetaMachine, is facing an RIAA lawsuit and said it was “throwing in the towel”
last September. But an open source iteration of the software, known as
eMule, continues to be developed and is now in use by the vast majority
of eDonkey downloaders.

In testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Committee in September, MetaMachine president Sam Yagan warned that,
“The next generation of open P2P applications will travel even further
down the road of anonymity and secrecy.

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