Anti-Piracy Blunder Shuts Down BitTorrent Tracker
Written by enigmax on April 22, 2008A large BitTorrent tracker dealing only in documentaries has been shutdown after an anti-piracy company wrongfully identified content being tracked by the site. The 150,000 member site, which has had just “one mildly upset” copyright-related email in 4 years of operation, is moving to a new host.
During the last few days, TorrentFreak has been getting emails asking why the MVGroup tracker is down. It’s fairly normal to get lots of emails when when any of the high profile trackers goes down but the number of worried people around our inbox and on various forums seemed surprisingly high for a small tracker dealing only in documentaries. Well, I thought it was fairly small - turns out MVGroup has an amazing 150,000 members. So where has it gone?
The tagline for MVGroup is “An Education in P2P”, so TorrentFreak caught up with the tracker admin Merrin for a quick history lesson. Turns out that some anti-piracy company got it wrong - again. Who needs an education now?
TF: Please give us a little background on MVGroup before we find out why you were shutdown.
Merrin: MVGroup started with one aim in mind, an aim to fill a gap that I noticed 5 or 6 years ago on the Internet. A lack of availability of good quality educational material. We are here to give those that can’t get it, access to all the knowledge they need. A sort of video wiki of documentaries I suppose. Starting on ed2k we branched into torrents as they became popular and now I suspect that thanks to the wonderful staff and members over the years, we are getting close to being the biggest - and we hope best - free, no ratio, documentary site on the web.
TF: No ratios is great! How does this operate? Do you have seeding issues?
Merrin: We have torrents that are over 4 years old still going due to an adoption scheme where members choose a series and the seed upon request, the rest is on trust.
TF: Lots of fans have been emailing and starting forum threads, all worried about your sudden disappearance. What happened?
Merrin: Ok, the simple fact is that the whole thing is a cockup - by both a movie studio and our host/datacenter. The studio said (I suspect a bot trawling torrent dumpsites) that we were tracking a movie called “The Eye” - we obviously don’t carry that kind of thing. Never have done.
TF: So why the confusion?
Merrin: What we did have however was a documentary series also called The Eye.
TF: If it was case of mistaken identity, why is the site still down?
Merrin: The sudden shutdown is down to our host, who panicked, so basically we were taken down for the wrong reasons. Not very fair, but the host got paranoid, so we have had to move anyway. We have now found a new host and have more powerful server, for the same outlay financially.
TF: MVGroup has a good reputation and is known for being careful and considered with the material indexed by the tracker, with no mainstream movies, music or any type of warez. Do you get any takedown requests?
Merrin: As the modern MVGroup of 4+ years operation, we haven’t had more than one mildly upset email, and in fact have had a producer and writer of a series we torrented actually linking to us from his homepage.
TF: Do you have a message for the worried fans, currently hanging out in TorrentFreak’s inbox waiting for news?
Merrin: The main thing here is that we will be back, we have all our data, and nothing has been lost, the donations are safe, we’re safe and we’ll hopefully be up again in a day or two. We’re doing basic installs on the new server as we speak.
TF: Thanks for talking to us today, we’ll be over to MVGroup for our next lesson in a day or two.
For those interested in checking the site out, signups will be open with no invite needed.
Previously: BitTorrent Tracker Software “Gazelle” Debuts on What.cd
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At least, this story made me aware of MVGroup! :D
I’m definately signing up there when it gets back, even though I don’t like the ‘no ratio’ thing. What’s the average speed there? 50 kb/s?
Hmmm….concerned about the no ratio business…but this sounds interesting!!!
so how does this site compare to bitme?
mvgroup has the best documentary selections on the internet. Good to see they’re still going strong, I’ll have to get some more! :)
What makes things interesting, is that in many cases (including the DMCA) anyone making the sort of assertion about copyright that these people did, make it under ‘penalty of perjury’ that the information is accurate, and they are authorised representatives. Depending on the notification sent to the host, either the anti-p2p org, or the host may be liable in court.
So the place is complaining after it was shut down because a letter said it was tracking a specific piece of pirated content when it’s actually just tracking lots of other pirated content…..?
“No ratio” is great (TPB FTW!) - BT protocol was optimized for fast downloads, NOT for best ratios. So, uploaders are usually those who have a bigger pipe, not those who have the lowest ratio.
thanks for the info, i was always wondering if there was a documentaries only site
great success!
wow, cool site, can’t to check it out.
It is a very cool site. Not flashy cool but just a hell of a lot content. Speeds were pretty quick too.
MVG is a cool site, glad it will hbe back.
I’ve been using MVGroup for about 1 year now and i can say that it’s the best place to find documentaries. Great job guys!
Get well soon MVGROUP!
Thanks for the good wishes folks, hope to see you all soon :)
Thanks to our supporters, members and of course the dedicated staff who make MVG possible.
Merrin
Of course the carry copyrighted material. Virtually every BBC DVD is ripped and on that site, how is that not breaking copyright. there are also rips of the BBC Connections series from james Burke. That is definitely available commercially at the tune of about $60 per DVD box set. To pretend that there are no copyright violations is simply BS. I’m speaking from someone who has an account at MVGROUP.ORG
Never said we didn’t break it, just making the point that most of it is free to air and/or free to those in the relevent countries. Education and knowledge should be free, Jack Bauer may be entertaining but he ain’t gonna teach you much. How many teachers we have educating their classes with our stuff is heart warming to say the least.
Should sue the movie studio and MPAA for their infringement on your site by spreading lies and unsubstantiated allegations and the harm your reputations.
I think we’d love to but laying low may be better ;)
cock observed and asked
Virtually every BBC DVD is ripped and on that site, how is that not breaking copyright.
if they are not under that rediculous british IP law that even made tranfering your own CD illegal …
.. american copyrightlaw exception “teaching” for example!
“Virtually every BBC DVD is ripped and on that site, how is that not breaking copyright.”
Because everything produced by the BBC is public domain by British law.
anonymous has it right. we all pay a licence fee, if you pay a licence fee for the bbc. it is publically run.
MVGroup is a great site for documentaries of any sort. I hope they get back quick, I need to feed my brain with the good stuff.
[quote comment="355787"]“No ratio” is great (TPB FTW!) - BT protocol was optimized for fast downloads, NOT for best ratios. So, uploaders are usually those who have a bigger pipe, not those who have the lowest ratio.[/quote]
Unfortunately, especially in large open communities like TBP, quite the opposite happens. No ratios means no incentive for extended seeding, which means small swarms, which means slow downloads. Ratio systems are there for 1 purpose, to provide the motivation needed to keep swarms large enough to max out your downstream.
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