Huge torrent site RuTracker is one of more than a dozen sites permanently blocked by Russian ISPs in the past week after complaints from rightsholders. However, it now appears that the action will have unexpected consequences. In addition to opening up what was a partially closed site, RuTracker has ended all cooperation with rightsholders.

In common with many countries around Europe, Russia believes that the way to bring Internet piracy to its knees is to block pirate sites at the ISP level. The theory is that Internet users will get tired of trying to circumvent blockades and will begin to spend money on movies and music instead.

In addition to targeting individual URLs indexing specific content, Russia is now engaged in so-called “eternal blockades”, the blocking of allegedly infringing websites at the ISP level on a permanent basis. Last week telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor announced the blocking of 13 sites (listed below), including the popular RuTor.org tracker.

But yesterday came the big one, with authorities confirming the permanent blockade of torrent site giant RuTracker. The huge site has experienced problems with rightsholders for many years, but during the past few months things have been slowly coming to a head.

Last October, with a permanent ban looming on the horizon, the site mulled the deletion of several hundred thousand torrents to pacify rightsholders. However, after polling its members the site decided to leave the torrents in place and accept the blockade.

Following separate action from book publishers and music labels including a subsidiary of Warner, a Moscow City Court order to permanently block the site came into force on January 12 and was carried out yesterday. But rather than the effect rightsholders had hoped for, the action signals the start of a new era for the site.

While undoubtedly a huge index of infringing content, RuTracker has long-standing agreements in place with many copyright holders to keep certain content off the site. This kept the content creators happy while easing some of the legal pressure from the tracker. However, RuTracker says that since they are now being completely blocked, the gloves are coming off.

“For many years our tracker has worked with rightsholders, in this respect many of their representatives were present on the site. They were free to cover all distribution protected under copyright law. In this regard, many releases were either banned or not recommended for distribution,” a staff member explained yesterday.

“But today we put an end to these agreements, as users of the Russian Federation are now blocked from accessing our tracker. Therefore rights holders did not want to continue their cooperation, which allows us to do more and not adhere to it.”

As a result, special accounts given to rightsholders to enable them to swiftly remove content have been downgraded to standard user status and members are now being informed to share whatever they like.

In the past this would’ve meant that only Russians would have greater access to content, but RuTracker has also opened up its previously members-only site to the general public. While English speakers still need Google translate to navigate the site, ominously it is also testing an English language version.

Only making matters worse is that RuTracker has removed the so-called ‘private flag’ from its torrents. This means that the site’s hundreds of thousands of active torrents should now be accessible via BitTorrent’s Distributed Hash Table (DHT), which opens up the content to a worldwide audience.

Of course, all of this is of limited use if people can’t access the site. As expected, however, people are already working hard to circumvent the blockades. While VPNs and proxies do the trick, a new site called Dostup-rutracker.org now provides free plugins for all major browsers which transparently bypass the ISP bans.

And so far things are looking promising for the site. According to the owner of the site’s former domain, who says that he’s now just a regular user on RuTracker, as of yesterday more than half of the site’s users had already circumvented the blocks.

Only time will tell whether RuTracker will grow into an international giant, but it’s fair to say that thus far the ISP blockade has had very little success, quite the opposite in fact.

Sites permanently blocked during the past week

http://www.rutracker.org

http://www.bobfilm.net

http://www.dream-film.net

http://www.kinokubik.com

http://www.kinozal.tv

http://www.kinobolt.ru

http://www.rutor.org

http://www.seedoff.net

http://www.torrentor.net

http://www.tushkan.net

http://www.tvserial-online.net

http://www.wood-film.ru

http://www.kinovo.tv

http://bigcinema.tv