A History of P2P Sites Being Shut Down

Megaupload wasn't the first peer-to-peer service forced to closed shop. See which other sites have bitten the dust in the past.

ByAlex Bracetti

January 28, 2012

Not Available Lead — Image via Complex Original

Intro

Scour Inc.

Napster

Soribada

ShareReactor

Suprnova.org

LokiTorrent

Oink’s Pink Palace

TorrentSpy

The Pirate Bay

LimeWire

Megaupload

Shut down: Jan. 19, 2012

In the midst of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) fiasco, Megaupload was seized by the feds, which brought about the indictment and arrests of the site’s owners including founder and CEO Kim Dotcom. Founded back in 2005, the file-sharing service was accused of causing over $500 million in lost revenue for copyright holders via pirated content hosted on its servers. Anonymous repaid the favor by taking down the U.S. Department of Justice and Universal Music’s website with a set of DOS attacks, while deleting CBS.com. Mega Payback.