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Mininova Celebrates Its 3rd Anniversary

The popular BitTorrent site Mininova celebrates its 3rd anniversary today. At the time it launched, no one would have predicted that it would become the success story it turned out to be, but we can now safely say that Mininova is here to stay.

mininova logoThere was quite a bit of news surrounding Mininova in the last year, they regained the .com domain, served billions of torrents, and launched a content distribution platform for independent publishers. Most impressive perhaps is that they are now among the 50 most visited websites on the Internet, which makes them the most frequently visited BitTorrent site.

The first public version of Mininova went public on January 15, 2005 and was hosted at the DSL line of Niek, one of the founders of the site. The name “Mininova” was inspired by SuprNova.org, the popular BitTorrent site that decided to shut its doors in December 2004, a few days before Mininova was launched. Not surprisingly, within a few days Niek’s connection couldn’t handle the bandwidth.

Gottfrid of The PirateBay was so kind to offer them a hosting account until they found a more permanent solution. After a while Mininova temporarily moved to Gary of IsoHunt, but soon after that they got their own servers. Since that time, Mininova continued to extend and upgrade their server park, which consists of 27 servers at the moment.

What are Mininova’s plans for the future, you might wonder. We talked to Niek from Mininova and he told TorrentFreak: “We want to focus on getting more publishers for our recently launched Content Distribution service. Currently we have over 200 publishers and we’re sure this this number will grow tremendously the coming months”

There is no doubt that Mininova will continue to grow throughout 2008, we wish them all the best with their future endeavors.

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  • T

    Yeah go mininova. its dead simple and easy to use. it was the first torrent website i used and still the main one

  • Winston

    Ever since Demonoid shut down Mininova has been my #1. Long Live.

  • I like turtles!

    They get rid of fakes so frickin quick there. T is right, they don’t do much to the layout of the site which is nice. I like the new feature where yo u can thank the torrent uploader. Great site.

  • Anonymous

    the comments section for each torrent rocks

  • Dan

    the site just works, everyone likes it.

  • Anonymous

    Happy birthday mininova – I wish suprnova was still around but you deserve the #1 spot today!

  • bloodypalace

    The PirateBay is the father of all torrent sites! go TPB!

  • George W Bush

    gotts my agents all hacksed up mininova,

    I have a crack team remembering all the ips!

    NOW YOU WILL FALL!

  • wimpynova

    mininova exist bcause its a pussy. they dont have a tracker and they remove torrents. what a bunch of wimps.

  • Mohamed

    Mininova is an absolute favorite that does the job well done ,user friendly,constantly updated with handy tools suhc as the helpful commants sectiona nd the recently added thankyou

    gr8 work guys

  • 1

    @6 it is around, it was resurrected by TPB

  • You better be quick!

    @8 You have only this year left in your term!

  • Roflcer of the Lawl

    Happy birthday!

  • The Seeder

    You can find alot of other good sites off of Mini. So if you just want something specific you can find another torrent site there. seedmonster.com built for seeders was good for me, thier torrents are well seeded. Go mini!

  • IFPI

    SUDDENLY

  • ipodnova.tv

    anyone know the status of ipodnova.tv ? i know this is supposed to be about mininova… but i havent been able to access ipodnova for a few days.

  • Jaqcues

    Awesome.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t use mini, (midnight ftw) but Good for them! Lets hope we see a 4rg anniversary topic next year!

  • l337

    eahhhhh congratulations mininova…go ahead!

  • Jondo

    Mininova will probably ben gone within 6 months, that is the fact of all high profile torrent websites eventually. Doubt it will take long for another to become the new big thing though.

  • TheOneX

    Mininova is great website and they do a great job over there, PERIOD.

    But after all i stand behind piratebay.org and especialy because they are fighting against copyright and such.

    TPB Does way more things than any other torrent site and i gotta respect that.

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  • IPwnz

    Good job living for 3 years, Mininova! Please last long, since you are my only site for torrents since demonoid.com died.

  • kj

    Mininova rocks, thanks for the great 3 years guys.

    What movies are worth downloading? I keep my list at http://moviestoget.blogspot.com

  • Mike Gleeson

    [quote comment="263141"]Mininova will probably ben gone within 6 months, that is the fact of all high profile torrent websites eventually. Doubt it will take long for another to become the new big thing though.[/quote]

    Maybe; but while other torrent sites host more undifferentiated open vs. closed material, mininova is (I think) on the right track.
    By not censoring the content, but rather promoting legal content, they are setting a large and excellent precedent for BitTorrent and p2p in general; they actually move the “legal use” from theory into application; instead of “our site MIGHT be indexing something (or somethings) that is legal to share”, Mininova is saying “Our site is indexing what our users want, but we as a site are emphasizing what IS legal to share.”

    This is a whole different legal ground, and honestly I think it ratchets the site up from theoretically-legal-but-realistically-mostly-just-used-for -illegal-purposes, all the way up to theoretically-legal-but-realistically-acts-as-much-as -a-legal-means-of-open-source-content-distribution-
    as-for-illegal-content-distribution.
    And believe you me boys and girls, those legal consequences are much more valuable than “Thank the uploader” (although, that is a good /neat idea!).

    Speaking of which, I have an idea for the evolution of bands: they should release a (say) six-song, DRM-free EP onto the “Featured” section of all the torrent sites, and make it totally legal for everyone to download the EP. Then, when they release a full length album, they can request the torrent sites not place it into the Featured section [it'll get online, but this is more of a good faith dialogue b/w the admins and the artists].
    That will guarantee promotion, give the fans a more-than-fair, good sized, fully legal taste of the music, establish good (well, at least better:) relations between the admins and the artists, establish _very_ good relations between the _fans_ and the artists, and I strongly believe would sell MUCH more albums.

    I mean, think about it.
    Buying albums now is like paying money to Satan because you love the new album, and you’re hoping that at least a small, tiny fraction of your money makes its way to the artist.
    Stealing albums now is like spitting in the face of the artist who is producing the music you like.
    But downloading the FULLY-LEGAL EP, whether you buy the album or not [preferably, buying the album if you like the EP] is like saying “Torrents, thank you and I will fight to protect you including because you are so legal; Artist, thank you for making great music and being cool with releasing the EP for free; Satan, kiss off !”:)

    Okay, well, maybe all except that last part, but that too will come with time (maybe the devil would then at least switch his focus from attacking the fully legal BitTorrent to something more constructive, like producing even MORE great music that people like so much they want to pay for it – “Moo-hoo-ha-ha-ha”!

    That’s my two cents. Peace.

  • b

    Wonderful thoughts, Mike. I agree — they index what users want, but as a site are calling attention to legal and high-quality (not JUST legal) content.

    And everyone who likes ambient music, check out the Musictrade label’s stuff on Mininova’s Content Distribution. I’m not associated with them in any way but they put out great stuff.

  • Crandom

    As long as the CD system doesn’t get anything illegal uploaded onto it, where mininova stores the files themselves, they will survive. If they do store illegal stuff, they could be fined/servers stolen/taken down.

    I could just image MediaDefender or MediaSentry or anyother evil media tracking company uloading illegal conent to mininova’s CD system and suing them.

    Someone should sue those bastads into the ground. They’re more illegal than torrent users by hacking peoples pcs (MediaSentry…). A good $1.77 trillion dollar fine (like comcast should get: http://digg.com/tech_news/Comcast_could_receive_1_77_Trillion_fine ) should sort them out :)

  • Synthetic

    Grats Mininova!
    Its the only torrent site I’ll use <3

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  • Anonymous

    mininova is the greatest.

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