A large file sharing based website that deals with torrent files has been shut down after being popular for many years among illegal downloaders. The site has worked on an invitation only basis for many years to stop too many people becoming involved with the site and to keep things secure, but that has not been enough for the Ukraine Based site to now be shut down completely.

Ministry of Internal Affairs stormed the servers of the site and had it shut down within the country. Demonoid has been a popular choice for music/MP3 downloads, as well as movies and PC Games. These users are able to get the content for free without ever paying a penny by downloading the files from other users’ computers using bit torrent software.

Back in the day Mininova went down, as one of the first File Sharing websites to be hit hard by the law, but just recently there have been other big shut downs, including the Megaupload file sharing website which hosts the actual files for download rather than just the torrent files, and also Pirate Bay, which works in the same way as Demonoid with torrent files, however it is much more public and does not require an invitation to use the service.

Ukraine’s internal affairs only acted upon this raid after receiving the request from International Police, known as Interpol. Some comments and feedback on the story on various sites have said that perhaps the Internal Affairs knew for a long time about the site, but did nothing about it until it was ultimately required of them by the International Police.

This is another blow for this illegal downloaders as they are running out of places to go and download some files for free, and is a good move for the music industry who are already making millions from selling albums, with their biggest competitor actually being the paid solution, Spotify, not the illegal downloads, as stated in a lot of statistical data online.

The owners of Demonoid are currently under criminal investigation in Mexico after one of the owners of the site was arrested there last year.

More on this story can be found via BBC, and Torrent Freak.