![]() | |
![]() RARBG Homepage as of July 2019 | |
Type of site | Torrent index, magnet links provider |
---|---|
Available in | English Azerbaijani Bengali Bulgarian Catalan German Farsi Bahasa Indonesia Hebrew |
Dissolved | May 31, 2023 |
Area served | Worldwide (except for blocked countries) |
URL | rarbg |
Registration | Closed |
Launched | 2008 |
Current status | Offline |
Part of a series on |
File sharing |
---|
![]() |
File hosts |
Video sharing sites |
BitTorrent sites |
Media servers |
Technologies |
File sharing networks |
Academic |
P2P clients |
Anonymous file sharing |
History and societal aspects |
By country or region |
Comparisons |
RARBG was a website that provided torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. From 2014 to 2023, RARBG repeatedly appeared in TorrentFreak's yearly list of most visited torrent websites.[1] It was ranked 4th as of January 2023.[2] The website did not allow users to upload their own torrents.[1]
RARBG was founded in 2008.[3] Originally conceived as a Bulgarian BitTorrent tracker (BG stands for "Bulgaria" in the name), the website had been serving an international audience since then. According to TorrentFreak, RARBG specializes in English-language "high quality video releases, but lists other content as well, including games, software and music."[1]
The website has been described in 2019 as a "notorious market" by the US trade representative.[4] In 2020, the website was listed as a target of Bulgarian law enforcement.[5]
On 31 May 2023, the site announced its shutdown, citing multiple reasons, including inflation, side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine preventing it from covering the costs to keep the site running.[6] The full shutdown statement released by the site reads as follows:
Hello guys,
We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site.
The past 2 years have been very difficult for us - some of the people in our team died due to covid complications,
others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all.
Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES.
Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard.
Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare [sic].
Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket.
After an [sic] unanimous vote we've decided that we can no longer do it.
We are sorry :(
Bye
RARBG was blocked in several countries around the world for legal reasons, generally due to its facilitation of copyright infringement.[1] In December 2008, the site remained closed for one week due to legal pressure from BREIN.[7] In 2017, RARBG was filtered out of Google search results following a controversy wherein links to torrent sites were highlighted in Google's "carousel" search results.[8][9] Due to a lawsuit brought forth against ISP Hurricane Electric by film studios demanding the personal information of pirates, Sophidea VPN, a VPN service operated through Hurricane Electric, blocked access to several torrent sites as of December 2020, including RARBG.[10]
Country | Date of block |
---|---|
Saudi Arabia | 2 April 2014[11][12] |
United Kingdom | 27 November 2014[13] |
Denmark | 27 March 2015[14] |
Turkey | 12 August 2015[15] |
Portugal | 26 October 2015[16] |
Italy | 6 March 2017[17][18] |
Australia | 18 August 2017[19][20] |
Indonesia | 10 October 2017[citation needed] |
Finland | 8 June 2018[21] |
Ireland | 18 January 2018[22][23] |
Belgium | 3 January 2019[citation needed] |
India | 12 April 2019[24][25][26] |
Greece | 15 May 2019[27] |
Netherlands | 31 March 2022[28] |
Iran | Unknown |
Bulgaria | Unknown |
Oman | Unknown |
China | Unknown |