Meta-search engine Torrentz.eu quitely shuts down

Within a month after popular piracy website KickassTorrents was shut down following the arrest of its alleged owner Artem Vaulin in Poland, meta-search engineTorrentz.eu has silently shut down with the message "Torrentz will always love you. Farewell" to its visitors. The owner of the website reportedly refused to comment.

Founded in 2003, Torrentz was among the oldest and popular platform to look out for torrent files. The torrent hosting site later expanded to become a meta-search engine. Torrentz also provided an option to allow people with copyright to certain content to file a cease and desist complain.

It seems that the decision to shut down was mainly taken due to legal pressure on piracy websites after the KickassTorrents crackdown. Another website, Solarmovie, also gave up fearing legal action.

KickassTorrents is accused of distributing over $1 billion worth of illegally copied films, music and other content. Vaulin is alleged to own KickassTorrents or KAT, which in recent years has eclipsed Pirate Bay and others to become the world's biggest source of pirated media.