The mysterious attempts to block the popular Zippyshare file hosting service continue to expand. Users in the United Kingdom and Germany are already barred from accessing 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 have chosen not to display the site in the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. TorrentFreak tried to contact the administrators, but received no 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.
We do not know at this time if there are any legal issues, although the RIAA said Zippyshare was a pirated website late last year. However, the service works just 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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