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The RCMP Cracked Down On A Torrent Site

A new RCMP crackdown and upcoming legislation threatens illegal file-sharing north of the border.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In a rare move targeting online piracy, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police allegedly seized data from a Canadian hosted torrent site on behalf of Swedish authorities.

Sparvar, a mostly Swedish file-sharing tracker providing p2p hosting to 10,000 BitTorrent users, was the target of the data collection. When the site went offline, reports quickly circulated online that an unnamed Canadian law enforcement agency confiscated Sparvar's servers during a raid.

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Montreal-based hosting server Netelligent hosts Sparvar's site. According to chief information officer Mohamed Salamé, reports of an RCMP "raid" on their servers in Quebec were exaggerated. Instead the RCMP served the company with a legal document asking for a copy of Sparvar's data.

“We made a copy of the data with the client’s consent,” said Salamé, then gave it to the Mounties cooperatively. According to Salamé the RCMP acted in conjunction with Swedish law enforcement through an international mutual legal assistance treaty.

When I reached out to the RCMP by phone to confirm the data seizure, a spokesperson said the agency does not comment publicly on ongoing investigations, especially since the Mounties didn't issue a press release about the case. Salamé told me this is one of the first times he’s ever seen the RCMP act on an illegal torrenting case involving one of Netelligent’s hosted sites. He said most law enforcement requests he receives involve more “serious matters… like hacking.”

Torrent Freak reported the seizure took place after anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, an organization defending the rights of Hollywood filmmakers, filed complaints against Sparvar in Sweden. Using the same kind of tactics two years ago, Rights Alliance took down Swepiracy, another popular Swedish BitTorrent site. I asked Rights Alliance for comment on the Sparvar case, but the group didn’t respond.

While the Copyright Modernization Act passed by Canadian Parliament in 2012 aimed to curb illegal online piracy—Canada is still a known haven for Torrent sites. In their 2014 submission to the US government the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) names Canada as “a magnet for sites” that “facilitate and enable massive unauthorized downloading of pirated versions of feature films, TV shows, recorded music, entertainment software, and other copyright materials.” This isn’t anything new: file-sharing site isoHunt.com was based in Canada before it was forced to shut down in 2013.

Under the latest Copyright Act legislation, there’s a limit of $5,000 for non-commercial copyright infringement applying to regular people downloading movies. That legislation makes legal recourse on Canadians less attractive financially to pursue.

Though the going seems good right now, the Sparvar seizure might signal police crackdowns and further legislative measures on the horizon for Canadians using BitTorrent. Recent news involving digital piracy confirms the ominous turn of the tide.

In March, Teksavvy, a smaller ISP in Canada, was forced to hand over the user data of suspected customers downloading Hollywood films like Hurt Locker and Dallas Buyer's Club.Meanwhile, the upcoming Digital Privacy Act allows media companies to request the user data of BitTorrent users from ISPs without a warrant. In other words, the lowly Swedish torrenting site called Sparvar, might just be the canary in the coal mine for Canadian torrent sites.