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)
Pages: « 1 2 3 [4] Show All
he has 2 Bugattis?!?!
and an island in Dubai?!?!
the filesharing community can never unite because there are no filesharers in America because in America they are all pirates
not software pirates but romantic swashbuckling historical revolutionary figures with parrots
arrrghhhh
Bluetack and PeerGuardian and SafePeer are crap and nobody should use blocklists because they are crap
arrgghhhh
support piracy support the RIAA support the MPAA arrrghhhhh
Share Files NOt wars
Why on EARTH did you include the sarcasm as a part of the title!? I read it just because I thought the fucker had earned shitloads of cash on that site, and now I know, he doesn’t.
Stupid headline, ppl could start biocotting this site because of that headline, I know I would’ve, if I didn’t read it..
Americans make the BEST movies in the world. So thanks to them for sharing…
First of all, “your” IS NOT “you’re/ you are”.
And without the USA, we’ll all be speaking RUSSIAN and peeing vodka right now.
Regardless of what country a person lives in there will always be assholes. From looking at how the original comment by Matt Oakes at #15 blew up it is easy to see that many of the people here are assholes themselves. I myself posted earlier and did a little demeaning, and for that i am an asshole. Stereotypes about entire countries are worse than some racial stereotypes because it is much more likely that it is wrong. To all those that hate another country because of a certain group of people, keep your opinion to yourself because you make yourself the fool.
[quote comment="296583"]i like how mininova feels, but tpb has a tracker… cant decide which one i like the best[/quote]
[quote]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 :)
Pirate Bay: “…..but it’s simpler to just say: 0 torrents has been removed, and 0 torrents will ever be removed.”[/quote]
Oh, I don’t know. I find the choice rather easy. One prefers to bend the knee and one refuses to bend the knee. Or bend over.
Yarrr!
We are very excited to announce that the Global job search engine has been released!
perfectsea.comis the first website that includes all jobs related to a lot of countries that speak English.
There are over 8 countries and/or areas jobs on PerfectSea.com. It searches over thousands job sites and provide millions jobs to our customers.
We use total automatic Robot technology to collect tons information from website, do analysis. So perfectsea.com provides the unique job search environment to our customers, let
them have a place to search all jobs in the world. This is one site solution.
Let people just come to one website and search the job, whatever where the job is, what kind of job the user wants.
Job seeker can get great benefits from it. People don’t need to go to different website for looking for job. This is one stop solution.
Perfectsea.com will change the way people looking for the job
83 stop spamming. I got a head ache just looking at your comment.
Yaargh, americans sucks me wooden leg.
This interview failled to mention the fact that mininova used to be third or forth most popular.After the dead of torrentspy and demonoid ( RIP ) the crowd moved to mininova,and there’s your new number one.
Nice to see how this thing got back at “pissing of the yank” again,but frankly, I think that’s to easy.
Give those poor bastards a break,wil you ? It’s not easy for them,retard for a president,dollar is down and ching chong china is the new leader in the world.
So,I think, lets be nice to the yank and remember the times when USA really ment something good.
cheers,
-the Queef-
fact:americans waste the most oil among developed nations,using less eficient cars/suvs when there’s no need to…
fact:americans says they’re opposed to “war for oil”…
WoW, Mininova owner has their own island in Dubai AND 2 Bugattis?!
I think I might start an torrent site and become a ‘torrent freak’
LOL XD
I wonder if people really are stupid enough to not get the “/sarcasm” remark… :]
Anyway, nice to see Niek / Mininova in the spotlight again :)
Cheers from us at EZTV.
if you kill the bush clan, the world will love america again.
In fact, Mininova celebrated the 4 billionth .torrent download earlier this week………..
when you get the .torrent file that’s nothing. you have to download the content and continue spreading it. mininova, try to count the finished downloads !
America is the current and LAST world power according to Bible prophecy. True they are the self-appointed rulers who try to impose their will on all others. That’s not in dispute, it’s just the facts. It doesn’t make them “better” than anyone else or mean they can’t be conquered. Far from it. They exist because they invaded the large country of America and filled it by sheer number of immigrants, mainly from England and Europe. So what if they were originally the Anglo-American world power and got all their ideas and inventions from others? There are also many Americans who have done great things, and not all of them are arrogant. They also have developed and excelled in many fields of endeavor. Are the people in general smarter or stronger than anyone else? No, not at all.
The govt must be the most corrupt on Earth, and it’s sins are too numerous to mention, but that’s not the fault of the people. Every nation has good and bad individuals, and I don’t know of any which doesn’t have both types, with many shades in between.
There’s many great things happening in this world that most don’t even know about and will never see on the News. The world IS going to get better, but that will involve eliminating all the problems.
[quote comment="297669"]he has 2 Bugattis?!?!
and an island in Dubai?!?![/quote]
Even if he did have these things (which due to his sarcasm and the way the site works, obviously not) I would wish him all the best. I get all my files from mininova for free so why should I begrudge any profit? its not as if I have to pay them anything is it?
It seemed to me running trackers was one of Suprnovas biggest hurdles.
2 references to this post
Pages: « 1 2 3 [4] Show All
Add your response