BitTorrent Community After SuprNova Shutdown 377
prostoalex writes "Folks from MonkeyMethods.org have researched the BitTorrent world after many popular destinations (SuprNova among others) have been shut down. Since BitTorrent always relied on the presence of trackers and servers hosting them, MonkeyMethods decided to see whether the shutdown impacted the BitTorrent community. So has the shutdown of centralized SuprNova had any impact? "In this case, centralization is a feature, not a necessity. Just look at del.icio.us most popular and you'll see BitTorrent sites every couple days, as people uncover new places to find the files they're looking for.""
Finding things is harder... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's funny, though, that they would tear down SuprNova but somehow TorrentSearch slipped through the cracks, and so there is still some activity out there.
The big question now is whether or not exeem will be worth a damn.
Not really affected at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
One falls, others rise (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand that Loki was around while Suprnova was still up, but I never used it. Now I use it.
Re:first (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, who cares how this illegal copyright infringement community is affected? How about the members of that community? I'm sure there's TONS of people on /. who have used those sites, and this is VERY relevant to us, whether you agree with our ethics or not.
You know, I'd really like to see some sources for your complaint of terminology used for movie and music copyright infringement vs. that of software infringement, because frankly I can recall seeing EVERYBODY being called swindlers, thieves, pirates, etc. I mean, didn't the RIAA start that campaign?
And if you already own a copy of the work, then it is not illegal. I know I've downloaded a movie on more than one occasion when my DVD got scratched beyond repair.
Comparison to Napster (Score:5, Interesting)
But once all the other P2P apps came along, again we lost some of the consolidation of files. But people still adapted, and people began learning what networks were good for certain types of files.
Today with bit torrent, we are able to have entire trackers devoted to types of content, such as anime, tv shows, etc, and even before Suprnova and others went down, I still checked a few BT sites for all my files. However, I have to admit, it was pretty damn convenient to just go to Suprnova (which I think easily had the best interface and site mapping) and take a gander at what had been added that day.
I hope mininova takes off, because I enjoy it, but it really doesn't have the traffic or variety it needs yet to be a big competitor. Torrentreactor is still going strong, and so are several others. Frankly, I wish there was a markup language for bit torrent files that could include info such as what type of file it was (tv show, movie, song, album, etc), and possibly what season/episode, recording method, duration, etc. That way that info could be used with an RSS feed and I could REALLY tailor a personal site to all my needs without having to check each of the seperate sites.
Re:One falls, others rise (Score:3, Interesting)
With each iteration of P2P apps/networks/protocols, less and less involvement is on the party hosting it. With Napster, IIRC, their servers stored the specific information of where to get the songs. Then kazaa tried to distribute that amongst other servers/nodes. Others services did similar operations, but I don't know too much about them so I can't comment. Now we have bittorrent.
Bittorrent is similar to asking a guy on the street where you can find something. In some cases, you're asking the guy where the latest linux distro's ISO can be found. In other cases, you're asking the guy on the street where the dvd-rip of iRobot can be found. In the end though, you're simply asking something to point you in the right direction. These sites aren't doing anything illegal (as far as I know, which isn't a whole lot so please correct me if I'm wrong), but just telling people where they can find what in some cases are copyright infringements.
And if the MPAA is sucessful in shutting these sites down, then something new will come along. Eventually, it will be so abstract it won't be illegal. Hell, bittorrent may come out on top as lokitorrent fights it.
dont compare eXeem to Kaaza.... (Score:3, Interesting)
No more waiting as in eMule. And I dont think I have successfully downloaded any file from Shareaza recently.
Also the built in comments/rating system is the thing that will prevent the network from being MP**'s playground. If aint work work for you, let others know.
Personally, I am gonna implement a Java/.NET based client for this as soon as the protocol stabilizes (which should happen in a couple of months when we hit 1.0.)
~~~ 0wn3d
Re:Exeem! (Score:4, Interesting)
Except Empornium [empornium.us]. Empornium has a permanent user share ratio that when it fall below a certain amount, (like .2 or something) you can only upload data. Empornium has several problems, but leechers isn't really one of them.
Re:Finding things is harder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Go anonymous and shove it in their face! (Score:2, Interesting)
Technology that protects your privacy.
Now with three clients for all platforms.
Free, GNU, Open Source and a growing network.
http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php/MuteDownl
http://mute-net.sf.net/ [sf.net]
Why not a BitTorrent tracker worm/virus? (Score:1, Interesting)
Imagine a mass zombie network of illegal (or legal) content run by people who have no idea they're participating in it.
If they can create a worm/virus that turns thousands of computers into spam and DDOS zombies, why not one that turns them into BitTorrent trackers (or seeds, or link lists, etc...)? Most of us know how much fun it is to try and get thousands of zombies to stop doing anything, and if they do manage to get one or two shut down, then that's just one or two less insecure computers for the rest of us to deal with. Win/win.
Granted, there's no money in it, so it'll never happen, but it'd be fun to see viruses/worms used to distribute pirated (or hey, even legal) content.
Re:SUPPLY AND DEMAND (Score:2, Interesting)
If the filesharing doors were truly thrown open, then you could still make a big budget film and make money on it. How? By controlling the supply. Sell tickets in advance for 'jaws 5' and start filming when you have got $90,000,000.
Re:SUPPLY AND DEMAND (Score:5, Interesting)
You've already answered this. Supply and demand. If enough people really want to see $100 million plus movies, they'll pay to see them. They'll realise pretty quickly that if they don't pay to see spider man, there's not gonna be a spider man 2. And if they refuse to pay, then they didn't want to see it so badly in the first place. Most importantly: All the future unmade movies have no right to exist. If the movie industry ends, so be it. I like big some big budget flicks, and I pay to see them at the cinema, even tho I have a broadband connection and azureus and I don't have to.
Besides wich even if copyright were thrown out monday morning, the ??AA are still free to excercise whatever technological means they please to stop (most) people copying their garbage.
isoHunt's .torrent index stats (Score:5, Interesting)
From http://s3.isohunt.com/stats.php?mode=btSites [isohunt.com]
You can see smaller sites on the list relative to Suprnova (it had more than 30,000 torrents online at any one time), but total torrents available didn't change (60,000+ online). As I keep adding more sites, index size is getting bigger than before SN died actually, online torrent count is close to 70,000. Peers also remain at above the 1 million mark.
Best torrent sites... (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.mininova.org/
http://www.torrentreactor.to/
http://lokitorrent.com/
http://www.torrentspy.com/
http://www.thepiratebay.org/
http://torrentbox.com/
http://www.mybittorrent.com/
For every one site that shuts down, two more spring up to take its place.
Re:Finding things is harder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Shareaza has a BT client built-in, along with eDonkey, Gnutella and Gnutella 2. It's a great concept (a FOSS-based all-in-one P2P app) and it's a pretty slick looking app but unfortunately the performance is nowhere near any of the standalone apps for the various protocols it supports. (I have verified this in side by side testing.)
Azureus is what I use, although it's got some issues as well. It's clean and well-organized and gives you a lot of info on the files you're downloading, but it seems to have some sort of memory leak or something... it runs fine at first and transfer speed is never an issue, but after a few hours of running it will bring my entire system practically to a halt. It is impossible to just leave it running in the background, which is really what you're supposed to do with BT.
I've got a decent system, too - P4 2.4, 512MB, etc. so that's not the issue. It's either a problem with java (Azureus is java-based) or it's a leak in Azureus itself.