Back in November of last year, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) pressured Demonoid, a popular BitTorrent tracker site, into shutting down. Now, just as suddenly as they disappeared, they've returned with all of their data seemingly intact, and with a new administrator in place.
This is but another chapter in what has been a highly volatile 10-months for the tracker. In June of 2007, they were asked to leave their host in Amsterdam, LeaseWeb, after being pressured by the BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group. After staying at a temporary home, they went down in September, 2007 for a few days, suddenly reappearing in Canada. On November 9th, 2007, their front page was removed informing users to use the forums, but not to trade torrents. November 11th found the trackers stopped responding.
There were a couple of times over the following 6-months where the trackers would suddenly reappear in some far-flung country, only to disappear again. Now Ernersto of TorrentFreak is reporting that they seem to be back up to full speed, but they are under new management, and the founder, Deimos, is no longer working with them. The new admin, Umlauf, was chosen by Deimos to take over, and the old moderator team is in place to help continue running the site.