A online letter to Russia's ruling tandem of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin protesting the closure of the torrent.ru file-sharing website continued to attract signatures on Saturday.
The website, which has some 4 million users, had its domain name suspended on February 18 by the ru.center web-hosting site by request of Moscow prosecutors over a breach of intellectual property rights.
A statement later said that the decision to close the site while investigators carried out a "preliminary investigation" was due to the 26 January online illegal sale of the Autodesk AutoCAD program by a Moscow resident for 1,500 rubles (some $50).
The online letter claims that investigators acted in excess of their powers. It also denied that the site's owners were responsible for copyright breach, as files, both legal and illegal, are not actually located at torrent.ru.
Andrei Vorobyov, a spokesman for ru.center, said the case was the first example in Russia of a website being shut down over copyright infringement. He noted that sites had been closed in the past over the distribution of pornographic or extremist material.
The torrent.ru site has now switched to the rutracker.org, where it continues to operate as usual.
Torrents allow the quick transfer of large files by "seeding" the data among users.
Sweden's Pirate Bay, possibly the world's most famous file-sharing site, has been the subject of lawsuits across Europe.
MOSCOW, February 20 (RIA Novosti)
