What.CD was just shut down
What.CD is the premiere private tracker for music. Even their splash page is mysterious and makes you join up. Like PTP, What.CD has been going strong forever. The site hasn’t changed much over the years, and that’s a good thing.
The website was founded in 2007 with an estimated database of 3 million torrents. It was more than a music piracy portal but also a recommendation engine. It was a place where you could find some of the most unknown and underground records ever made, not available anywhere else.
The site’s operators took down their site, which was replaced by a blank screen (pictured above) with a message that read:
The only information we do have is the short statement that the site posted on social media channels: “Due to some recent events, What.CD is shutting down. We are not likely to return anytime soon in our current form. All site and user data have been destroyed. So long, and thanks for all the fish”.
The same message was also echoed via it’s Twitter account.
Report: Police seizes 12 What.cd servers
According to a French news site ZATAZ, “recent events” refer to a series of raids carried out by C3N. C3N is the cyber-crime unit of the French Gendarmerie. The raids are the result of a two-year investigation by authorities at the behest of French music industry rights group SACEM.
It said that French police confiscated 12 servers hosted by French ISP OVH in three cities across France: Lille, Free, and Gravelines. None of the What.cd employee was arrested in the raids. What.CD’s leadership is based in the UK. Many have said that this was forced to shut down since they’ve lost access to their data that was seized in the raid.
On Twitter, What.CD‘s team said the reports on their database being seized are “not factual.” They gave a hint that they might still have access to their data, but they chose to shut down on their own accord.
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