TorrentFreak

Soon The Pirate Bay will stop linking to .torrent files. Instead, the world’s largest BitTorrent site will only list so-called magnet links. One of the advantages of the switch is that The Pirate Bay will be much more portable, and easier to copy. A new torrent listing all titles and magnet links on The Pirate Bay proves this point, as the public can download a copy that fits easily on a small USB stick – or even a few dozen floppies.

News of raids, arrests, seizures, extraditions and jail time in the file-sharing world hasn’t gone unnoticed by the operators of major BitTorrent sites. Yesterday, the owners of BTjunkie decided to close their site because the stress became too much, and there are others who consider doing the same. While there are still plenty site owners who are determined to continue, doubt and uncertainty are more present than ever before.

BTjunkie, one of the largest BitTorrent indexes on the Internet, has decided to shut down voluntarily today. A combination of legal actions against fellow file-sharing sites and time-consuming projects have led to the drastic decision that takes out one the main players in the BitTorrent landscape.

Hollywood and the major music labels frequently describe The Pirate Bay as a piracy haven that ruins their businesses. On the other side, however, there are many independent artists who would like nothing more than to be featured prominently on the world’s largest torrent site. For the latter group The Pirate Bay team have just released a new platform where artists can have their content promoted on the site’s homepage, free of charge.

In a month The Pirate Bay will no longer offer downloads of .torrent files. Instead, the largest torrent site on the Internet will only provide so-called magnet links to its visitors. The first step in this direction was made today with The Pirate Bay replacing the current default torrent download links with magnets. Could this be the end of an era?

Continuing a long-standing New Year’s tradition, we present an up-to-date list of the world’s most visited BitTorrent sites. At the start of 2012 The Pirate Bay continues to pull in the most visitors, followed by Torrentz and KickassTorrents. The six-year-old TV-torrent distribution group EZTV appears in the list for the first time, ranked 8th.

A new plugin for WordPress allows anyone to set up a fully functioning BitTorrent site in just a few minutes. Whether it’s a totally public torrent index or a private torrent tracker with strict ratio enforcement, WP-Trader supports it. The project was born when the developers recognized a huge demand for a simple script that even relative tech novices can set up.