When at the end of May, those in charge of the RARBG website published their farewell letter, thousands of people were surprised. It was very sudden. They talked about how one of their most important members victim had died of COVID and, in addition, they commented that some people on the team were fighting in the war in Ukraine and Russia. Not only that, but they confirmed that they were on different sides. The emotional and economic situation was bad, so they decided to close. Now a report is published with which something else is discovered.
There’s something that smelled funny
RARBG’s demise occurred at the end of May, at which point its traffic began to drop. But in the months of June and July, The visitors were still coming. to the web. It was logical, since the many links and all kinds of existing comments or publications, as well as previous word of mouth, had turned this website into one of the references. For many experts, that a portal like this had remained active stably and without suffering scandals for 15 years, had been difficult to believe.
Although the content of the website disappeared instantly, such as the links to the movies, the domain continued to receive visits. In the month of July, when traffic had been decreasing even more, there were almost 5 million impressions. Logic tells us that, with that amount of access, it was absurd that the former owners of the website were not trying to take advantage of it in some way. Did they have such a code of honor that they could refuse a guaranteed income without doing anything at all? They could have placed advertisements or even took advantage of that moment to sell the domain. But they did neither one thing nor the other.
There was a reason
What was not said at the time, and what now it has come to light, is that RARBG had become one of the main objectives of the anti-piracy operation initiated by Bulgaria. This operation is surely familiar to you, since there has been a lot of talk about it and how it has been used to put an end to IPTV platforms and other services that were giving the entertainment industry headaches.
The Bulgarian authorities collaborated with European and United States agents with the intention of stopping in their tracks any pirate organizations they could capture. However, previously, the country encountered some difficulties because they did not comply with the requests and demands made to them from North America. That led Bulgaria to a desperate situation that materialized in April when a draft law was published in which owners of pirate websites They would be recognized as criminals. This would have been the first threat or blow of reality for those responsible for RARBG.
Afterwards, the Bulgarian government launched several operations that included meeting with United States agents on official visits and even previously, they had met with President Joe Biden himself. Two weeks after the last visit of several senior Bulgarian officials working in the fight against piracy, RARBG announced its closure. The situation was getting complicated and it is possible that the website managers thought that they did not want any more problems and that it was not worth continuing to fight for their platform.
In June, tension increased. The other major objective of the Bulgarian agents, the Zamunda website, began to be constantly pursued. The same thing happened with The Pirate Bay. That same month, after a conference related to the fight against piracy, the mass raid took place against that illegal IPTV company that was providing service to millions of users. It may sound familiar to you because we told you about it at the time. And not much later, another network was wiped out, also in Bulgaria.
This has made it clear to pirates and those who do business without paying the proper copyrights to their owners, that Bulgaria is no longer the place where they could create their web pages freely and without fear. It is believed that pirate networks they could keep falling, although at the moment Zamunda continues to exist and has become, in the absence of RARBG, the 16th most visited website in Bulgaria. Other similar pages have also increased their volume of visits since their disappearance. All those responsible know that they are coming for them, but for now they have not stopped operating. This, however, could soon change.