The private musician torrent Tracker What.cd went offline a few hours ago, as a police raid on the servers used by the site in France has been reported.
A message posted to the tracker indicates that the site closes, although there is no confirmation that a police raid has taken place.
"Due to some recent events, What.cd is shutting down. We will not be back soon. All data of our site and users have been destroyed. "States the announcement.
The message suggests that closing the site could be permanent, but it also gives assurances that all data was destroyed before the police accessed the servers.
Citing French media informations, TorrentFreak reports that French authorities have raided a total of 12 OVH servers. No arrests have apparently been made, and it's still unclear if the data is still on the servers, or has been deleted as administrators said in the announcement.
Η service The Gerdarmerie's cybercrime prosecution unit (C3N) confirmed the police operations, but did not name What.cd as a target. French music industry group SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique) reportedly worked closely with authorities to raid the site.
Right now, even the channel IRC used by site members is offline. Let's mention that What.cd was one of the biggest private trackers. The site's administrators announced that its page had one million unique music releases.
The community grew very fast from 2007, mainly due to the shutdown of the big oink.
