User:Shaxoo/Zone Téléchargement

Translation and adaption from french article completed. Please move to main namespace. I don't think i have a conflict of interest. There seems to be no better-fitting way to request my change.--Shaxoo (talk) 13:54, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Zone Téléchargement (french, "Download Zone") was a website that referenced direct download link, created in 2011. It was the 15th most visited website in France on May 8, 2016, and the first in its category. The site was closed on November 28, 2016 by the police. The domain name of the site is registered in Nassau, Bahamas.

History
The domain name of the site, zone-telechargement.com, was registered in March 2010. Previously it was registered over a period of five years from December 2004 to December 2009, but not in connection to file sharing. It was rented to a british enterprise that offered legal downloads of freeware.

In the month of may 2015, the site counted 3,5 millions unique visitors. According to a study of the Association de lutte contre la piraterie audiovisuelle (ALPA, "association to battle multimedia piracy"), 55 % of the visitors were male and 70 % were between 15 and 49 years of age.

Between the 21st and 22 March 2016, following a malfunction of the web service DL-Protect (used to protect links from automated copyright takedown notices ), the download links were inaccessible which rendered the service unusable for some hours.

On 28 November 2016, two servers were seized and two persons arrested, which interrupted service for less than 24 hours.

On 29 November 2016, the website came online again. At that time, DL-Protect was not available, though, and the links to the files were not accessible. A cat-and-mouse game according to numerous users.

The site was reopened, although using a different address, ".com" was replaced by ".ws".