RARBG

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. It was ranked 4th as of January 2023. The website did not allow users to upload their own torrents.

History
RARBG was founded in 2008. 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 specialized in English-language "high quality video releases", but lists other content as well, including "games, software and music."

The website has been described in 2019 as a "notorious market" by the US trade representative. In 2020, the website was listed as a target of Bulgarian law enforcement.

Shutdown
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. The full shutdown statement released by the site reads as follows:

Blocking and censorship
RARBG was blocked in several countries around the world for legal reasons, generally due to its facilitation of copyright infringement. In December 2008, the site remained closed for one week due to legal pressure from BREIN. 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. 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.