Bulgaria Torrent Websites: We Will Persist to Exist

Bulgaria's two major torrent sites Zamunda and Arena will continue to exist, the administrator of Arena, Eliyan Geshev, has announced.

Last week, the two sites were hacked and were inaccessible. Although the hacker remains unknown, administrators of the two sites believe that the attack came from the Specialized Unit for Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP).

Since Saturday, the opening page of Zamunda.net suggests that Yavor Kolev, Head of Computer Crimes sector at GDBOP, is responsible for the failure in the system. However, the unit has denied the accusations.

In Geshev's words, all interventions against the two major torrent-trackers in Bulgaria were due to pressure by the United States.

"If this was just a hacker attack, the site would have gone missing on the Internet. But an attack from 50 different IPs seems like a limited budget of some organization. The suggestions point at GDBOP," Geshev said.

He has explained that the Bulgarian users of torrent websites do not violate the law in any way.

"What is forbidden in the United States with a law is a right in Bulgarian and Europe. The state incriminates to people that if they have 1000 copies of a movie that you have not paid for, then you are a criminal, but this is not true," Geshev said.

In his words, people could either have 1000 copies of a movie or have a matrix for producing 100,000 copies.

"I do not know of a user who has 1000 copies of one movie at home. If there is such a user, then he is violating the law," Geshev said.

He expressed hope for the future existence of Arenabg.com and said he will fight for it until the end.

"Unless a court rules that the website is illegal, [Arena] will continue to exist. If it is terminated from the Netherlands, we will launch some of the spare web hosts that are ready and working," he said.

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