San Francisco - Demonoid, a popular site that offered links to media downloads on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing network, has been taken offline, with its operators citing legal threats from the Canadian Record Industry Association (CRIA), Wired reported.

A note on Demonoid.com reads: "The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding."

The CRIA -- Canada's version of the RIAA -- targeted Demonoid earlier this year, and succeeded in briefly knocking the site offline.

However, TorrentFreak.com reports that, while the website may be down again, the actual BitTorrent tracker is still active, and facilitating downloads.

"Site is down, tracker is up. Expect the site to return, unless we hear otherwise from Deimos," reads a message on the Demonoid IRC channel.

The tracker was purportedly originally created by an anonymous Serbian called "Deimos."

Related Links:
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/11/demonoid-torren.html

http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-shuts-down-again-071109

http://www.cria.ca

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonoid

http://www.demonoid.com