Last night, popular file sharing site BTJunkie was shut down. Unlike the closure of MegaUpload 3 weeks ago, which was forcefully shut down by the FBI, the administrators of BTJunkie voluntarily took the site down.For years, movie and music piracy was considered a victimless crime. Now though, radical legislation being contested in the US has shocked authorities into action, scaring sites such as BTJunkie into shutting shop.

Users looking to ‘share’ movies, videos and songs are confronted with a farewell message. Some will feel nostalgic, while others will consider it virtual suicide, complete with a note. 

The message reads:

“btjunkie
2005-2012″.

“This is the end of the line my friends,”
“The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down.
“We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on.
“It’s been an experience of a life time, we wish you all the best!”

BTJunkie was a search engine that would browse the web for Bit Torrent files. It was amongst the top five torrent sites used and, according to TorrentFreak, had traffic in the “dozens of millions of users a month.”