Mysterious attempts to block popular file hosting service Zippyshare continue to expand. Already UK and German users are banned from having access on the site. Lately, Spanish visitors are facing exactly the same problem.
For the story the website Zippyshare was founded in 2006, and has been operating as a file hosting service for over a decade.
The service receives visits from about 100 million users per month, and is included in the 500 most visited websites on the Internet.
In recent months, however, Zippyshare has begun selectively closing its doors in various countries. Visitors to the United Kingdom were excluded in March, and a few weeks later the Germans faced the same problem.
Instead of being greeted by the normal homepage, they see a "forbidden" in their browser.
This month, Zippyshare's mysterious blockade efforts extended to Spain. Visitors to the site with a Spanish IP address can no longer access the service.
"Forbidden" does not explain what is happening and so we can only make assumptions about what really happened.
Many believe that Zippyshare is blocked or banned in Spain, as it is still accessible through a French VPN server.
The site does not appear to be blocked by ISPs. This means that the administrators themselves chose not to display the webpage on United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. TorrentFreak has tried to contact the administrators, but has not received a response.
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Another possible explanation is that Zippyshare took the above steps after some legal pressure. This is not the first time a website has worked this way. We have just seen too many content distributors shutting down their services, probably out of similar concerns.
At the moment we don't know if they exist legally problems, although the RIAA listed Zippyshare as a piracy website late last year. However, the service works fine in the US.
Whatever the cause there is always a solution, as long as the servers are running. The site is still accessible via a VPN, as long as it is not from the VPN server it is not in one of the blocked countries.
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