Type of site | Torrent index, magnet links provider |
---|---|
Available in | English Azerbaijani Bengali Bulgarian Catalan German Persian Bahasa Indonesia Hebrew |
Dissolved | May 31, 2023 |
Headquarters | |
Area served | Worldwide (except for blocked countries) |
URL | rarbg |
Registration | Closed |
Launched | 2008 |
Current status | Offline |
Part of a series on |
File sharing |
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RARBG was a website that provided torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. From 2014 to 2023, RARBG repeatedly appeared in TorrentFreak's yearly list of most visited torrent websites. [1] It was ranked 4th as of January 2023. [2] The website did not allow users to upload their own torrents. [1]
RARBG was founded in 2008. [3] Originally conceived as a Bulgarian BitTorrent tracker (BG stands for "Bulgaria" in the name), the website had been serving an international audience since then. According to TorrentFreak, RARBG specialized in English-language "high quality video releases", but lists other content as well, including "games, software and music." [1]
The website has been described in 2019 as a "notorious market" by the US trade representative. [4] In 2020, the website was listed as a target of Bulgarian law enforcement. [5]
On 31 May 2023, the site announced its shutdown, citing multiple reasons, including inflation, side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine preventing it from covering the costs to keep the site running. [6] The full shutdown statement released by the site reads as follows:
Hello guys,
We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site.
The past 2 years have been very difficult for us - some of the people in our team died due to covid [ sic ] complications,
others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all.
Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES.
Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard.
Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare[ sic ].
Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket.
After an[ sic ] unanimous vote we've decided that we can no longer do it.
We are sorry :(
Bye
RARBG was blocked in several countries around the world for legal reasons, generally due to its facilitation of copyright infringement. [1] In December 2008, the site remained closed for one week due to legal pressure from BREIN. [7] In 2017, RARBG was filtered out of Google search results following a controversy wherein links to torrent sites were highlighted in Google's "carousel" search results. [8] [9] Due to a lawsuit brought forth against ISP Hurricane Electric by film studios demanding the personal information of pirates, Sophidea VPN, a VPN service operated through Hurricane Electric, blocked access to several torrent sites as of December 2020, including RARBG. [10]
Country | Date of block |
---|---|
Saudi Arabia | 2 April 2014 [11] [12] |
United Kingdom | 27 November 2014 [13] |
Denmark | 27 March 2015 [14] |
Turkey | 12 August 2015 [15] |
Portugal | 26 October 2015 [16] |
Italy | 6 March 2017 [17] [18] |
Australia | 18 August 2017 [19] [20] |
Indonesia | 10 October 2017[ citation needed ] |
Finland | 8 June 2018 [21] |
Ireland | 18 January 2018 [22] [23] |
Belgium | 3 January 2019[ citation needed ] |
India | 12 April 2019 [24] [25] [26] |
Greece | 15 May 2019 [27] |
Netherlands | 31 March 2022 [28] |
Iran | Unknown |
Bulgaria | Unknown |
Oman | Unknown |
China | Unknown |
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