QuebecTorrent Clone Outmanoeuvres Music Industry
Just days after the QuebecTorrent BitTorrent tracker was taken down by an injunction in a blaze of publicity, a near identical clone of the 108,000+ member tracker has appeared out of nowhere. Allegedly the product of the old team, Torrent411.com is up and running with 109,000+ members – and counting.
Last week we reported on the final chapter of the QuebecTorrent story. After a long legal battle against 31 Canadian media organizations, the administrator decided that rather than fight and lose, it would be better not to mount a defense at all. After receiving a permanent injunction ordering the closure of the site, QuebecTorrent closed its doors for the last time having amassed an impressive 108,805 members.
Many people are drawn to BitTorrent news as it can be both exciting, confusing, intriguing and amazing all at the same time. Today we can report on a story which has all of these elements.
Seemingly out of nowhere appears Torrent411.com. Dubbed “The Torrent Yellow Pages”, this site will have the Canadian recording industry – ADISQ and CRIA et al – tearing out its hair out today. Hosted in Malaysia, from a standing start it already has 109,006 members, which is a couple hundred more than QuebecTorrent.
In fact, all of the QuebecTorrent user accounts have been transferred there – plus all the ratio stats and pretty much everything else. Adding insult to injury, categories that were removed on QuebecTorrent in a failed attempt to avoid legal action in Canada, have now returned. “No censoring blacklists will be tolerated on the site!” claim the Torrent411 admins.
It’s hard to imagine a bigger kick in the teeth for the media industry than this. A notice on the homepage reads:
Welcome to one and all! It is with great pleasure that we launch the Torrent411.com site today. All the team of Torrent411.com wishes you the most cordial of welcomes! Here you will find all the torrents imaginable which will be for you for thousands ofÂ’ hours to come! Filled with surprises that await you!
Of course, Sebastien Brûlotte, aka ‘Doditz’ the ex-administrator of QuebecTorrent, is abiding by the terms of his injunction to the letter. He assured us that he had no part in the creation of the new site and this is backed up the admin team at Torrent411: “All the members of theÂ’ team behind QuebecTorrent.com were preserved, except for late Doditz, our old Admin, who by court order could not join us.”
One area where the sites aren’t quite identical is the number of peers currently being tracked. Of course, to comply with the injunction QuebecTorrent is currently tracking zero peers but already there are instructions on Torrent411′s homepage to get the site’s old torrents working – either a simple edit of the .torrent file’s ‘announce url’ to match the format on Torrent411 – or users can simply re-download matching torrents from the site and use those instead.
