Pirates shed tears of illegal grief as Mininova goes legit and deletes infringing torrents

For five years, since the demise of Suprnova, Mininova has ruled the P2P roost. While Mininova itself didn't track torrents it did act as a great 'middle man', with links to almost every torrent out there. But as usual with such 'hiccups', all is not lost: with Mininova gone we will simply head to other torrent search sites for our illegal and grey-market fix. God bless the many-headed hydra that is peer-to-peer!
What this may represent is the beginning of the end for the humble Torrent -- if not, it is at least a strong shift towards decentralized 'magnet link' channels of distribution such as DHT and PEX.
[via TorrentFreak]












Comments
17
Subscribe to commentsMalteserrNov 26th 2009 10:25AM
Had you told me this a year ago, I would've been absolutely terrified. But as you said, with magnet links, DHT, and all sorts file sharing technologies popping up, it doesn't really matter. Besides, Mininova started banning people (including myself) who posted certain material quite a while ago, so this doesn't come as a shock.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 26th 2009 10:28AM
Dang, I didn't know they were banning users! I guess this is the way with almost everything... starts off free and open and easy... and slowly becomes bureaucratic and 'legit'. Ugh.
RollinsNov 26th 2009 10:31AM
Mininova was nice, but I never felt that it indexed as wide a variety of torrents as, err, a site whose name would rhyme with LysoBunt. You know, so I'm not directly posting the name of a site that's largely used for copyright infringement here.
I admittedly still miss Suprnova though.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 26th 2009 10:56AM
Yay for... LysoBunt...!
You will see it used by its real name later on -- keep an eye out :)
AmeenDec 20th 2009 5:18AM
No more Hunting for ISO's and stuff now ! :P
der_tuxmanNov 26th 2009 10:55AM
So you still think BitTorrent is better than eMule while every week a lot of torrent files die? Geez, have fun with that dying protocol then.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 26th 2009 10:57AM
I have this amazing mental image of you surrounded by old DEC-10 mainframe PCs, replacing burnt-out valves.
"IT IS THE ONLY TRUE COMPUTER!!!11"
der_tuxmanNov 26th 2009 10:58AM
Newer is not always better. Why should I want to replace a running system?
kriscolumbusNov 26th 2009 11:20AM
Right. Excuse me while I log onto Kazaa, Audiogalaxy, and Scour.
der_tuxmanNov 26th 2009 11:21AM
The point is: eMule is neither dead nor nearly dying. BitTorrent, obviously, is.
nikescarNov 26th 2009 1:05PM
Puh-lease. eMule? The only thing it's good for is finding the occasional piece of abandonware that got lost in the anals (yes I spelt that correctly) of eMule. But if you're going to trudge through that mess of things you might be better off searching in Rapidshare or MegaUpload. At least then you'll have a decent download speed.
der_tuxmanNov 26th 2009 1:15PM
1. eMule is an up-to-date software database, see contentdb.emule-project.net - not only "abandonware".
2. eMule has stuff Rapidshare doesn't.
3. To remove a file from Rapidshare, the industry needs only 1 e-mail. They can never take stuff out of eMule, however.
4. I don't care if eMule downloads with 100 or 400 KB/s, as long as it actually HAS the stuff I'm looking for.
Toby AdamsNov 27th 2009 6:26AM
Goodbye mininova... :(
Drew GreenNov 26th 2009 11:11AM
Farewell Mininova. You will be missed.
What's the point of legitimate torrent sites? The place for legit torrents is on a site mixed in with plenty of "questionable" torrents.
techpopsNov 28th 2009 4:44AM
I guess I'm in a minority here finding it odd that a site that actively avoids any naughty software itself, sings the praises of the whole idea.
I'll admit that I do download tv shows and movies but I buy software, games and music (well at least until spotifty came along i was) One isn't a defense for the other, just being transparent about how I'm not squeeky clean and probably have no right to take the stance I am here. So anyway, while I appreciate downloadsquad is all legal, I do find it odd how supportive the site and commenters are of the whole idea illegal torrenting.
Isn't it a bit like running a vegetarian restraunt but eating meat yourself and even stranger, the people visiting the restraunt eat meat too. Ho hum.
Sebastian AnthonyNov 28th 2009 5:20AM
I think your analogy is almost correct.
We own a restaurant, and we're vegetarians. But we serve both meat-eater and vegetarian dishes because a choice is good for the customers.
DushanDjNov 30th 2009 4:44AM
@ techpops
I really wish that I could pay for music, games and software but that's not going to happen any time soon. I live in Belgrade / Serbia, hope you know where is that, our monthly salary is not good enough to buy stuff of the net. The other problem is, for example, if I want to buy music over the iTunes, I couldn't, because our country is not listed in iTunes. So we are stuck.
I wonder what would everybody do if they found them self in our position. Trust me, you would go pirating. We do not have conscience to buy things of the net, more to download them for free. It's the hard life that led us to this point.
Goodbye Mininova, I'll miss you...