Abelhas.pt, Lolabits.es, and Partageurs.com are popular file-sharing sites in Brazil/Portugal, France and Spain that have recently announced they will stop operation at the end of the month.
According to the three websites, the shutdown is due to “reasons beyond their control”. They are urging users to back up all their important files before they are closing the service by the end of the month and it will no longer be available. Lolabits operator informed TorrentFreak that the sites have problems monetizing the services of the sites. Lolabits notes, “We regret that LOLABITS.es closes on March 31, 2016 for reasons beyond our control. Download your important files this month, because from that date they will no longer be available.”
To prevent piracy, copyright holders asked to remove over a million links that point to the three sites, which were targets for several takedown requests as shown in Google’s transparency report. However, Chomikuj.pl shows no notification of shutting down. The original Polish version lives on for now and has been in operation for over a decade.