Spanish Pirate Site ‘Movidy’ Announces Immediate Shutdown
Published on December 9, 2020
- Movidy operator takes the website down and announces immediate cease of operations.
- The person claims that serious health problems have made it practically impossible to continue.
- Those who declared interest in taking over the project were in total ignorance of the involved risks.
Not all pirate websites go down gracefully, and not all of them are pushed to the abyss of non-existence from copyright holder action. The popular Spanish pirate site ‘Movidy.co’ is added to that small list after its operator suddenly shut the website down and left a moving message to explain her situation.
Identifying as Gabriela Algara, the operator of Movidy disclosed a deteriorating health problem that started four months ago, leading to costly operations and the sudden creation of a massive debt. As she proceeds to explain, about 70% of Movidy’s income goes directly to non-profit organizations, so the site isn’t making much money beyond what’s needed to cover the operational expenses.
Algara also mentions numerous attacks from admins of other pirate websites, as well as from large institutions, but she has never given up due to this. In November 2020, the DMCA complaints against her culminated, and the authorities got to learn who she is, but again, this is not the reason she’s giving up. Unfortunately, she is too weak and unwell to continue supporting the website.
The operator tried to sell or pass the Movidy project to someone else, but those who showed interest and contacted her didn’t understand the risk involved in running a big pirate site today. So, with no valid buyer in sight, the only thing left is to donate the final amount in the project’s drawers, which is $28,000.
The website’s database will be wiped clean, so the authorities won’t have access to information about the registered users. All servers, content, and storage data will be securely erased and taken offline, so if a website that claims to be the “new Movidy” comes up, it will be a clone and possibly not to be trusted.
The chances of this being a fake message signed under a false name to try and trick the law enforcement authorities are slim, but we can’t rule that out. Whatever the real reason behind the closure of Movidy is, the takeaway is that the Spanish piracy scene has just taken another major blow, with the previous one being the shutdown of the ‘Megadede’ platform in September 2020.
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