The law is an ass

At least that's the vociferous consensus of opinion emanating from camp Share Reactor. Whilst every incredulous explanation for the sudden departure of their beloved community has been bandied about the internet, the truth endorses the principle of Occam's Razor; Share Reactor was taken offline by the Swiss Judicial Inquiry Department of Thurgau.

The grounds for this are apparently the aiding and abetting of copyright infringement. Nevertheless securing a conviction based on the premise that sharing MD5 checksums amounts to distributing copyright protected material is quite a leap. If Simon Moon was indicted for such a crime this would mark a precedent in the crusade against file swappers, and undoubtedly the repercussions would be far-reaching for the peer to peer community in general.

Acting on complaints from a number of key players in the computer software industry, the Swiss authorities swooped on SR's base of operation, pulled the plug and confiscated the servers. Simon Moon has been detained for questioning and his residence is currently being ransacked for evidence of transgressions which may implicate him further, in an effort to strengthen the, quite frankly, flimsy case against him.

To quell the surge of rumours and badmouthing and to reassure Simon's supporters, a member of the SR crew today made an announcement. He asserts that the money donated to the cause was put towards boosting the performance of the connection, but the benefits were not immediately apparent because the service provided by their SDSL company wasn't up to scratch. What's more, it is claimed that the new server was almost ready for prime-time and would have gone online if it hadn't been for this setback.