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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No ratio works on mvgroup because our members don’t need to max out their downstream on years old torrents.
And the adoption scheme makes sure there’s always someone seeding or able to seed after a pm.
If something is important enough to you, you care about it, and We Care about Documentaries.
It Just Works.
ill sign up if they introduce ratio=) meh ok lies iwill check this site anyway, thanks tf for bringing the news about this page=)
I think everyone here would gladly take 20kBps over no seeders, and that’s what the “Adoption” scheme does on MVGroup. People have no patience these days.
The main difference between MVG and any a ratio site is that once the initial swarm has died down on a ratio’d site the release dies. At MVG the initial swarm provides the speeds expected from any ratio’d site but you can still find 20+ seeders and 20+ peers on a torrent started 2+ years ago. Releases aren’t dependant on some member re-releasing a file in the hope of boosting their ratio.
I’d rather get something slowly than not at all.
=))
MVGroup is a really good tracker, cant wait to see it back online. :)
Had some really interesting docus from MVG over the years.
Best wishes for the move & with the new location, guys. =]
STUMBLED!
Heres to a quick return.
VOTED for this post at:
http://www.newsdots.com/industrynews/piracy-blunder-shuts-down-bittorrent-tracker-torrentfreak/
great site!! hope it will be back soon. great docs there. nuclear stuff, WW2, all great ones! long live MVgroup!!
MVGroup sounds like you guys have something good going on there as an avid fan of documentaries (despite what most may think some are actually very useful in everyday life) i may have to come have a look also more on topic sounds like your better off coming out of this if your getting a better server
Never heard of it until now but there are several documentaries I would like to see. Thanks for making me aware of this and I hope MVGroup gets well soon!
That’s not the whole story. That’s not the true story. That’s not even a story.
Who cares? As long as Torrentfreak, the BT fan blog posing as news service, plugs another big one.
That’s called marketing, enigmatix style. Or call it cheap Telemarketing.
Why not change change your url to Telemarketingfreak.com? It would be the only truth to ever come off these pages.
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MVGroup is THE BEST site for great documentaries of any sort. I hope they get back soon. We love you
Sorry to hear that MVGroup and I hope you are back soon. Many thanks to the content you have helped make accesible in the past and also many thanks to letting us (anon site here) host your content from time to time (keeping the mv tag of course). Good luck and see you again soon :)
regards
A tracker admin.
[quote comment="355768"]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…..?[/quote]
Ignorance is bliss, hey?
[quote comment="355943"]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[/quote]
I believe material provided for educational purposes is not subject to copyright issues. What’s your problem?
love mvgroup glad to her shes still all good, was worried for a few days
I see Americans posting comments here.
Yet another example of the kinds of collateral damage that will become ever more common as the legacy copyright monopolies get ever more desperate. The same pattern occurred during alcohol prohibition, and was arguably one of the primary reasons it was repealed. The costs to society of both the enforcement efforts and the market corruption it caused far exceeded any benefit claimed by the prohibitionists.
The legacy duplication and distribution industries are fighting a dooms-day end of *their* world campaign where any and all means are justified in the defense of *their* interests. From their perspective this may be valid since losing will mean the end of those parts of the legacy industry that fail to adapt to the digital marketplace. Worst of all is that this aggressive no-holds-barred defense is doomed to failure since it seeks to hold back the irresistible tide of technological change.
The legacy duplication and distribution industries are intent on repeating the insanity of “we had to destroy the village in order to save it”. Only this time the “village” being destroyed is our free society, and the cause we are being “saved” from is technological progress.
Seems to me this issue is far larger than music and movies.
Great site for documentaries, particularly BBC. A definite bookmark. Thanks for the update.
Thanks MPAA for making us aware of this site. I love documentaries, and a torrent site dedicated to them sounds awesome.
I was worried. MVGroup is the best tracker around. But it’s totally awesome to hear that it’s going tobe up again.
Actually login page seems to be “working” already but login fails.
So server is up and running. Just site needs some tuning. ;)
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