Department K shuts down Russian torrent trackers?

Several torrent trackers have simultaneously stopped working in Tomsk. The forum community in Tomsk has attributed the closures to a possible operation to combat distribution of pirated software and multimedia content. The Interior Department in Tomsk region has denied there is an operation underway and refused to comment on whether it may have anything to do with the closures. Meanwhile, it has become known that usage of p2p channels among Tomsk ISPs has dropped 4 to 5 times. This leads one to believe that the possible reason behind the closures may be attempts to curb excessive traffic. Vadim Andrianov, creator of the Already in Tomsk website, believes that since the website torrents.tomsk.ru continues to respond to ping requests and serves existing downloads, this rules out the possibility of its hardware having been seized by the Department K. In a similar incident with the website EliteTorrents.org, the site administrator was sentenced to 5 months behind bars and 5 months of house arrest along with a $3,000 fine for illegally distributing movies, music, and software.