FeedMyTorrents Closes In Face of Legal Threats

Written by enigmax on May 22, 2009 

FeedMyTorrents, a site which published handy RSS feeds for downloading TV-shows using BitTorrent, has closed its doors for the last time. The site went down earlier this year due to financial difficulties but following legal threats, has now closed down for good.

FeedMyTorrents (FMT) was a relatively new site that achieved an impressive level of popularity in a relatively short space of time. The site published RSS feeds for most popular TV show torrents – subscribing to these with a compatible client allowed those shows to be downloaded automatically as soon as they became available. The feeds were moderated by FMT staff to ensure a quality download.

Due to the site’s growing popularity, FMT started to hit problems in early 2009 – specifically those relating to capacity. According to staff on the site, every day there was a 5% increase in pageviews and registrations. More and more users meant the site consumed more and more bandwidth, which affected both the server performance and stability. This was a problem since the site was already running on a server labeled as “a piece of old junk” by staff.

In February 2009, it all started to get too much. The site needed funds to continue. Staff explained that if every visitor to the site on a single day donated $1, the site could survive for another 6 months. In the end the site raised less than half of this money, raising the possibility that another donation drive would be needed sooner rather than later, if the site was to survive.

Copyrighted RSS feeds?

feedmytorrents

Then last week the site completely disappeared. The DNS for the domain was updated on May 12th and no longer points to the old IP address. However, the old IP address is currently still functional and shows this message;

It’s over. We’ve received several take down requests, and have decided not to test the extents of the law. We’d like to thank everyone who contributed, and for the fun times we’ve had.

That message seems fairly final, which is quite a shame. However, BitTorrent fans looking for an RSS fix still have plenty of other options, some of which are outlined in our earlier article, Top 10 BitTorrent and RSS tips.

Previously: German Pirate Party Sets Course For European Parliament

Next: Pro-Copyright Propaganda Enters US Classrooms

39 Responses

1 May 22, 2009 at 19:48 by Mr.Afghanistan

One Down.
second Down.
Third Down.

Over 6k trackers, which tracker will they shut down ?

They should stop their stupid tactics and find a new algorithm.

Grow up kids.

2 May 22, 2009 at 19:51 by randò_óm

Second!

3 May 22, 2009 at 19:58 by MPAA

lol whos next?

4 May 22, 2009 at 20:01 by Mr.Afghanistan

MPAA, your mama is NEXT =)))

Grow up SUKA !

5 May 22, 2009 at 20:02 by Anonymous

“lol whos next?”

Retroshare?

6 May 22, 2009 at 20:04 by Anonymous

Well TOR Hidden Services don’t work?

7 May 22, 2009 at 20:05 by Anonymous

http://sigfrid.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/decriminalize-file-sharing/

Follow Sigfrid suggestion and decriminalize filesharing LoL

8 May 22, 2009 at 20:07 by UltraleetJ

how is an rss feed illegal. Put lawsuits to cars and recorders and dvd burners already!!!!!

9 May 22, 2009 at 20:14 by Anonymous

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Against Intellectual Monopoly

10 May 22, 2009 at 20:34 by lefty

I used FMT’s custom feed via my G1 cell phone to add new torrents for downloading at home, but since they are gone I made my own little rss feed generator at http://feedz.newagekllrz.com

It’s not as great for “subscribing” to a show, but it works great for downloading while on the go. (hey thats a good tagline)

11 May 22, 2009 at 21:16 by Anonymous

So what is this, links to feeds, which links to torrents, which link to trackers, which link computers where packets of data are transfered are illegal?

Is this torrentfreak article illegal if it linked to FMT?

12 May 22, 2009 at 21:59 by Me

Twelfth

13 May 22, 2009 at 22:05 by Anonymous

better be leaving retroshare alone and this whole “ah i got a legal threat lets close down” stuff has to stop stand up for what you believe in.

14 May 22, 2009 at 22:10 by CopyrightMachines.org

Are they idiots? Do they really think they can be guilty in c.r. infrigements because of providing XML feeds via HTTP? O_O

15 May 22, 2009 at 22:12 by CopyrightMachines.org

P.S. Make me unborn.

16 May 22, 2009 at 22:26 by Anonymous

If you’re french the loppsi 2 law is comming and basically allows law enforcement to install a keylogger on the PC of anyone LoL

17 May 22, 2009 at 22:37 by baby buggy boogie

gaga googoo loppsi 2 … i make a poopoo. :/

18 May 22, 2009 at 22:42 by Wolfy

@16

could you point me towards a source to back up your statement? such a thing sounds terrifying to me.

19 May 22, 2009 at 23:23 by Torrentino

FMT was pretty cool but seriously, how can they take action on people that serve XML feeds?

BTW, where was FMT located?
http://torrentino.net

20 May 22, 2009 at 23:29 by Rabbit80

So by linking to a page that contain torrents whick link to trackers that link to PC’s you are breaking the law now? So google is next to have to shut down then?

21 May 22, 2009 at 23:31 by Henk vd Tillaart

@18,
It is stated on various sites, including, but not limited to security.nl, jmp.net, astalavista.com.

Regards,

Henk van de Tillaart,
Mengvoeders United

22 May 22, 2009 at 23:45 by Anonymous

good job they are down the more and more sites that are out in the open means more and more time for anti piracy groups to close in on people dealing with downloaded material was way better when it was a lot more secret public sites public shite like rlslog or whatever are crap they bring way to much unwanted publicity to the eyes of riaa mpaa and such

23 May 22, 2009 at 23:51 by Rabbit80

The loppsi 2 law is more scary than even I thought… not only will the French have to endure keyloggers, ISP monitoring, government spyware etc, the loppsi 2 also paves the way for automated cameras on motorways etc to record car license plates… This is shocking – 1984!

24 May 22, 2009 at 23:58 by Anonymous

Go Karl Sigfrid!!

25 May 23, 2009 at 00:02 by Rabbit80

Guess where I am not going for my hols?

26 May 23, 2009 at 01:43 by Loppsi 2

@18:

I tried to post the links but they don’t appear so what is left to do is tell you where I found the news.

Zeropaid and Arstechnica both have articles and the “lemonde.fr” also on the link of the arstechnica there is another link showing the U.S. version called “Computer & Internet Protocol Address Verifier” (CIPAV) that is already in use.

27 May 23, 2009 at 08:26 by Brian

@11 Very, very good point!!!

28 May 23, 2009 at 08:44 by neostyles

RSS feeds by themselves aren’t illegal, but their usage in this particular case is. They were feeding the piracy machine.

29 May 23, 2009 at 08:47 by Damn

Good I m stick To bitmetv

30 May 23, 2009 at 11:23 by 6av1n

It went down same time as mininova started filtering torrents. Last thing I got from FeedMyTorrents was the TXT files that EZTV post on mininova. IT’s a shame really. I had a great setup for a couple of months there..

31 May 23, 2009 at 13:34 by horst

so they did a money drive, and closed shortly after that… i wonder if they refund the donations that where not needed. oh wait, i don’t.

32 May 23, 2009 at 21:00 by bill

all of the torrent trackers are shutting down really fast without notice now that the guys from the pirate bay have lost their case. I guess no one wants to go through all of the hell and expenses of federal court. The Pirate Bay drew way too much negative attention to bittorrent so now bittorrent is getting a bad name.

Thats what happens when you try to take these underground downloading applications mainstream without securing rights or permission from copyright holders. It will be way too expensive and risky for anyone to run trackers or bitt sites.

33 May 23, 2009 at 23:53 by Anonymous

“so they did a money drive, and closed shortly after that… i wonder if they refund the donations that where not needed. oh wait, i don’t.”
—————

you mean, like how the pirate bay took a bunch of donations for that island they were going to buy and then (surprise!) never did, and then (surprise!) never returned a dime?

kinda like that?

34 May 24, 2009 at 03:26 by annoyance

Thieves stealing from thieves.

LOL.

35 May 24, 2009 at 06:30 by CORPORATION = NAZI

Losing Rights isn’t Fun. Tell your legislators to stop sucking the CORPS off…

wow that sucks….Internet getting patrolled and shit…
guess its time to get back
secure Internet :D
can’t even trust ISP’s…gonna have to run a Private Wireless Network (MESH network) to get back common freedoms of the Internet.

Who’s in ?

36 May 24, 2009 at 11:00 by Knusper

Mh… I loved this site, since I could watch series way before they were aired in germany…
Now, I have to read your article.

37 May 24, 2009 at 22:59 by Adrián

There’s already a replacement :-) : showRSS

hope you enjoy it! :D

38 May 25, 2009 at 01:15 by neostyles

I don’t understand why people think that idea that an artist wants money for their work somehow makes them evil. You would too, if it was your work.

39 May 25, 2009 at 10:41 by Anonymous

If you wanted to, you could easily set up a torrent site, then ask for donations to keep it running, then bugger off when you get your donations.

Responses are closed

All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.