Mininova: Serving Billions of Torrents and Buying Bugattis
Mininova has evolved quite a bit since it has started three years ago. Within a year it was one of the most visited torrent sites on the Internet, and the ever increasing number of users resulted in the 4 billionth torrent download recently. Time to ask some questions.
The Mininova team has always been on top of the latest p2p developments. They recently launched a content distribution platform for independent publishers, a music streaming feature, and in the meanwhile they served billions of torrents. In fact, Mininova celebrated the 4 billionth .torrent download earlier this week.
Contrary to the Pirate Bay guys, however, the people behind Mininova prefer to lay low, and don’t speak out in public very often. We had the chance to do a short Q&A with Niek, one of the co-founders and the CEO of Mininova (yes, it’s a company).
TorrentFreak: Recently you have started to focus more on legal content, that is .torrent files uploaded by approved publishers. What are your plans with the Mininova publisher platform for the future, and will this affect the other .torrent files hosted on Mininova?
Niek: We focus on extending and improving our Content Distribution service. Publishers will see more distribution options (e.g. extensive statistics) in the near future, and users will be able to find featured content easier. Our plan is to offer the most sophisticated and scalable distribution service of the future. Functionality of “regular” torrent files will of course be kept as it is now.
TorrentFreak: The Mininova CD launched in December 2007, how many publishers are releasing their content on Mininova now?
Niek: Over 330 premium publishers are now actively using Mininova to share their content. We receive functionality requests from time to time, but overall they’re very pleased with the CD service.
TorrentFreak: Like any other BitTorrent site, Mininova has to deal with a huge number to DMCA takedown requests from copyright holders. How is your relationship with the people who want you to remove .torrent files from your index?
Niek: I would say that in general the relationship with copyright owners is very good. Our copyright policy is being used by many companies and organizations when necessary. Some copyright owners are so satisfied with our service that they send stuff like collectors editions of their products :)
TorrentFreak: Mininova never had it’s own tracker. Why is this? Don’t you think you have a responsibility to help out the BitTorrent community here, especially now there are only a few reliable BitTorrent trackers out there?
Niek: We discussed this matter from the start. We do run a tracker, but only for Content Distribution purposes. Running an open tracker is not a trivial task, it requires major technical and financial backing. Thus, running such a tracker is currently not an option for us.
TorrentFreak: Mininova is a registered company in the Netherlands. Has 2007 been a good year for the company profit wise?
Niek: I would say this was a pretty nice year. We just bought a Palm Tree island in Dubai (we chose the bottom right leaf, for those who’re interested). I also received my second Bugatti Veyron last week (bonus for the increased Q4 numbers). Oh, and don’t forget to watch MTV Cribs next month to see all this stuff. /sarcasm
TorrentFreak: About the future, where do you see Mininova in 10 years from now? do you think people will still download .torrent files by then?
Niek: Predicting the future is probably one of the most dangerous things to do (remember Bill gates and his 640K?). One thing is for sure: P2P won’t go away anytime soon. We will probably share more files than ever in 10 years, either using an improved version of BitTorrent or a different P2P protocol. We hope that Mininova will stay on top of developments.
TorrentFreak: Thanks for taking the time to talk to TorrentFreak, even though you skipped some questions ;) Is there anything you like to add?
Niek: Thanks to all our users! Especially the 4 billion downloads wouldn’t never been possibly without your support and the great help of our moderating team. TorrentFreak, thank you for your time.
Previously: RIAA Reminds Me of The Mafia, says Musician
Next: Anti-Virus Company Says PeerGuardian is Malware
97 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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Where did good ol demonoid go :(
17 Feb 24, 2008 at 01:01 by AlkyQuote Alky
Matt Oakes wrote:
Are you american by any chance? Do you two honestly not see that are sarcasm?
Why do I always see this arrogant comments meant to demean Americans on every p2p board I come accross? The people of this country have accomplished more then whatever country you live in ever will.
U FAT CUNT!WHATTYPE OF STUPID SHIT IS THAT TO SAY?
RIGHYT ON NINJA48!
HICKS IS A HERO!
Meeh who cares if they are making money, Its a fucking good site!
Stop bitching/flaming towards eachother.
There is no reason for it and we are all humans on the same F*cking planet so have some respect for eachother.
Have respect and behave. thx
[quote comment="296631"][quote comment="296628"]
Are you american by any chance? Do you two honestly not see that are sarcasm?[/quote]
Why do I always see this arrogant comments meant to demean Americans on every p2p board I come accross? The people of this country have accomplished more then whatever country you live in ever will.[/quote]
Stupid, arrogant american.
Yeah, all the “smart” american students coming abroad to study, were gullible enough to believe, that I am from Iran when I told them as a joke, I don’t look like an arab.
By the way, I am from Russia, do any of you Americans speak Russian as well as I do English?
Someone mentioned sending a man to the moon. Ok, how about I mention the first man in space? It’s pointless, this arguing can go on for ever.
I believe Americans are a very superficial people, that’s their culture, not their fault. It becomes a problem when they try to export this to other countries, by force if necessary.
I too, thought for a bit that the guy from mininova meant it.
mininova sucks, another bunch of hypocrite capitalist cocksuckers
NUKE U$A NOW
Im also one that doesn’t see the point of having so many indexing sites, trackers are much more useful and dumpsites just promote leeches in my opinion, as there is no community there.
I think the term ‘dumpsite’ describes them well, they’re just like a big unorganised, messy hole in the ground where .torrent files are dumped for the leechers and H&Rers. No nice release descriptions, no standards, no comments, no community. Just big ad revenue collecting monstrosities.
ok then it’s settled. you guys didn’t stop arguging, so i’m considering you ALL to be american
way to go
Say what you will but if it were not for the USA….you all would be speaking German and not doing any p2p activity.
very cool the interview
I wish I could stab all of you in the face for being stupid.. Unfortunately I don’t know where you live, and I’m not the violent type anyway, so I’ll just go to bed crying over the dumb people in this world..
btw, thanks for the interview..and thank you America for existing.. You’ve made my day, everyday for many years now :P
Europeeins, just a bunch of piss and moaners! God bless the USA, FUCK the rest!!! (except AU, NZ)
<3 Mininova
burp
belch
fart
yawn
excuse me.
[quote comment="296834"]I am American. I hate our government, but I don’t hate our people. I feel that the American government and it’s actions should not be thought to represent our people as a whole. There is a reason the approval rating of our president is in the toilet. We are seperate from what our government does, and hopefully with the upcoming election, our people can finally be proud of our president and government and its actions. Please don’t take the actions of the American government as the model for the mindset of American citizens. We aren’t dumb, arrogent, etc, any more than any other civilization. All nations have their stereotypes, and usually there is only a miniscule amount of truth to them at most. Please be more respectful with your comments towards people of other nations. Lets all get along… and seed.[/quote]
Great words. I’m from Russia, and many people here tink that all Americans are stupid, fat and lazy. And every single person here hates Bush. But I have many people from the USA and thay do not fit in this f*cken stereotype. So I believe that we should not judge people accordin to the stereotypes. All in all, we’re all humans.
[quote comment="297256"][quote comment="296834"]I am American. I hate our government, but I don’t hate our people. I feel that the American government and it’s actions should not be thought to represent our people as a whole. There is a reason the approval rating of our president is in the toilet. We are seperate from what our government does, and hopefully with the upcoming election, our people can finally be proud of our president and government and its actions. Please don’t take the actions of the American government as the model for the mindset of American citizens. We aren’t dumb, arrogent, etc, any more than any other civilization. All nations have their stereotypes, and usually there is only a miniscule amount of truth to them at most. Please be more respectful with your comments towards people of other nations. Lets all get along… and seed.[/quote]
Great words. I’m from Russia, and many people here tink that all Americans are stupid, fat and lazy. And every single person here hates Bush. But I have many people from the USA and thay do not fit in this f*cken stereotype. So I believe that we should not judge people accordin to the stereotypes. All in all, we’re all humans.[/quote]
u said it..i love the American ppl but i despise the politicians they r scum of the earth ..the american ppl r one of the nicest but misled ppl by the damn government which is wreaking havoc all over the globe and due to its shitty policies ppl r hating the americans…
i say we r all humans we just need to get rid of the trashy governments
well its a known fact and 100% a golden rule ..lots of traffic on a site =$$$$
but of course they must deny it to avoid complications..although i don’t see a harm in getting profit if a website such a mininova is doing a gr8 job ..kudos for ya guys
This is Madness!.
grow up people there’s only one world and we all are part of it so don’t talk about americans! you’re on the same world!
This Is Madness!!.
Crazy.. We all have something in common! We all are fileshareres. We should ALL stick together as we all have a common goal.
Who cares what country people are from. We all know that it’s not the people, but the governments that are the problem.
People are the same the world over, and we all need to stick together.
The alternative is more of the same, wars, driven by corporate greed.
It’s up to us. We decide the road to head down.
Now all us Filesharers need to get this country BS out of our heads and get back to the community attitude.
so, LETS SHARE!
looks like some people don’t know what “/sarcasm” means. They were hinting at the allegations that torrent sites (ie TBP) making millions, when everyone knows it is false.
[quote comment="296580"]well its all good they are no.1
but their not helping as much as they could, (ie) a pub tracker[/quote]
QFMFT.
We all love TPB….and mininova
[quote comment="296878"]
the way i see it is
indexers are like lechers
and trackers are like seeders
all the indexer does is steal other sites .torrent links with some bot which uses up the bandwidth of these other sites trawling every page (leeching.)its great that its all in one place but the site that provided the original content does’nt get any page views, visits, users, which means they get no money for banners and stuff, tbh mininova is a cancer in the BT world
[/quote]
mininova does not have an automated indexer system for crawling other sites
all torrents on mininova are uploaded by users and that makes it even more remarkable for an achievement
just shows what can be achieved by a good interface
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