TorrentFreak

Part of The Pirate Bay’s decision to go torrent-less was to make the site more resistant to outside attacks, but it also has quite an impact on bandwidth bills. The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak today that after the switch the site now consumes 30 percent less bandwidth, while the number of visitors remains stable. Despite some annoyances most users appear to be fine with the new magnet-only site.

Sweden’s second largest torrent site has shut down its operations with immediate effect following threats from Antipiratbyrån. In closing, the site – which appeared in Google’s 2010 Zeitgeist report – bemoaned the “fascist tendencies” of the entertainment industries. Meanwhile, Sweden’s Pirate Party is celebrating the influx of hundreds of new members as a direct result of the closure.

The Pirate Bay has confirmed that all torrent files being shared by more than 10 people will be deleted on February 29. The decision is causing a small panic among the site’s users, but in reality little will change as all files will remain available through magnet links. The Pirate Bay crew told TorrentFreak that this is merely a “step forward in technology” and confirmed that the site is here to stay.

FilePorn, one of the longest standing adult BitTorrent trackers, has called it quits. After more than 6 years online, the site’s operators say they were forced to shut down due to the threat of legal action. “Unfortunately we have to terminate our tracker services due to a ‘copyright infringements’ lawsuit,” the site said in an [...]

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.