German eDonkey servers stop braying

Found on Ars Technica on Sunday, 23 September 2007
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The music industry has launched a new crackdown on the servers that run the P2P network eDonkey. Seven major eDonkey servers were taken offline this last week after German courts gave the go-ahead by issuing injunctions against the server operators.

Jeremy Banks, who heads the IFPI's global Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, said in a statement, "These actions show the reach of the recording industry's internet anti-piracy operation. IFPI has an expert team which traces the origin of illegal content on the internet and works with law enforcement agencies to get copyright-infringing content off the internet."

Shutting down important servers can certainly degrade P2P networks, but only time can tell if the eDonkey shutdowns are part of the endgame or whether the IFPI and its affiliates are simply playing Whack-A-Mole.

It should be safe to assume that this won't harm P2P too much in the longrun. After all, there's already KAD build into the clients, and that's supposed to be serverless.