With millions of regular visitors, Zone-Telechargement was ranked the 11th most-visited website in the entirety of France.
Telechargement is French for “download,” and the site offered direct downloads of a wide variety of pirated content, including films, series, games, and music. However, yesterday afternoon the site suddenly became inaccessible.
After some confusion, the French Gendarmerie took credit on Twitter, stating that an investigation had concluded that the download portal caused rightsholders 75 million euros in losses.
Founded in 2011, Zone-Telechargement’s popularity soared after the shutdown of Megaupload, which was also hugely popular in France until its shutdown early 2012.
Interestingly, it appears that the site wasn’t the only target yesterday. DL-Protect, another large direct-download site and the 19th most popular website in France according to Alexa, also went down.
While the police only mentioned one site, Zataz reports that this direct download site was targeted by the police as well. In common with the action against What.cd, French music industry group SACEM also played a role in yesterday’s actions.
The police have yet to issue a full press statement on their investigation, but thus far no arrests have been announced. SACEM informs TorrentFreak that they will issue a comment later today.
With two prominent shutdowns in one month, it’s quite clear that the Gendarmerie’s cybercrime division and SACAM have online piracy high on their agenda.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
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