Today the group serves more than 16 million visitors a month on its website alone, and a multiple of that on the other torrent sites they distribute their releases on.

Several days ago EZTV’s website suddenly went offline without prior notice, something that usually leads to wild rumors about what the cause. Luckily EZTV’s problems are due to technical problems and they are currently working on a comeback.

EZTV’s Novaking told TorrentFreak that a rebuild of the servers stuffed up and they are currently waiting for some tech people to look into it. It’s not clear when the site will return, but it’s safe to assume that it will be a matter of days, not weeks or months.

This is not the first prolonged outage the popular TV-torrent site has suffered this year. During the summer the website was down for six weeks. It went offline because of hardware problems, but EZTV decided to take advantage of the situation and relocate all hardware to a new datacenter while implementing several new features.

Even though the website is currently offline, EZTV’s releases are still widely available though a number of sites. “You can still get our stuff from Mininova, The Pirate Bay, Twitter and Zoink,” Novaking told TorrentFreak.

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Together with open tracker initiatives like OpenBitTorrent, torrent storage services such as Torrage could provide the building blocks for many new torrent index sites. This week the idea became reality with the launch of Torrage, which is already in use by some of BitTorrent’s most reputable sources.

The site, which also allows individual users to store torrents online, is hosting hundreds of thousands of torrents already. It is currently in use by Suprnova and the new and improved EZTV site. To get started, Torrage has an API and some example code available for torrent sites owners.

Once the torrent files are uploaded they can be accessed through a url that is based on the info_hash value of the torrent. “You can not search or list torrent files that are stored here, you can only access them if you already know the info_hash value of the torrent you want to download,” the Torrage site explains.

TorrentFreak spoke to several torrent site owners who all agreed that it is a welcome addition to the range of tools they have available now, and we can expect to see more sites with Torrage powered download links in the near future.

Without having to operate a tracker and store the .torrent files, maintaining a torrent site will be less complicated and much cheaper. This aside, some might argue that this decentralized setup will reduce the legal liability for site owners since their part in the BitTorrent chain has been significantly reduced.

Whether the various copyright holders and anti-piracy watchdogs such as BREIN, IFPI and the MPAA will agree with this assessment remains to be seen. Regardless of what they think, Torrage is a service that has the potential to help out many torrent sites, old and new.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Those who try to upload a ‘possibly infringing’ torrent to Mininova get the following message; “Your torrent has been uploaded successfully. It will not appear immediately on the site, as the content will be downloaded first by a third party to check for infringing content. If the content is found to be non-infringing, the torrent will be posted on the site right away.”

Mininova has announced that they are currently testing the removal system with only a few titles, among these are most of the torrents uploaded by the popular scene and release groups. It looks like the removal system checks the info hashes to see if the torrents are on the ban list. If this is indeed the case, the easiest way to get around the filter would be to modify the torrent by adding a small file to the original release and create a new torrent. This new torrent will have an unique info hash and will be accepted by Mininova, until it is blacklisted of course.

This could be the death of scene releases and torrents from popular release groups, since these will be the prime targets of the copyright holders simply because they are downloaded more often than others. This will mean that more exotic and home brewed torrents could remain on Mininova, and will likely be incompatible with the popular releases offered elsewhere, resulting in smaller swarm sizes for Mininova users.

One of the TV release groups that has seen most of its torrents banned from Mininova is EZTV. However, NovaKing, one of the admins at EZTV, is sympathetic towards Mininova, despite the filter. “I can understand why Mininova is going down this path. It is wiser for them to push the initiative and show the content distributors that they are not the bad guys instead of being forced by a judge to more than likely do the same thing in their upcoming court case,” he told us.

“We are not sure how much this affects the TV shows that we release as the filter has only been in effect for a short period of time. But to cater for the users out there that do not know we actually have our own website and only get their shows via Mininova, we have changed how we post our torrents to Mininova,” NovaKing added.

Since Mininova’s content removal tool checks for the info hash of the torrent, they circumvent the system by linking to the ‘infringing’ torrents indirectly. “Now when you see a show from us it will contain a text file which contains a link to a valid torrent file, this will keep us from being filtered as the torrent we post does not contain any copyrighted content.” Of course, the latest torrents and news about EZTV are also posted on Twitter, EZTV’s own website and on many other torrent sites.

Only time will tell how effective the removal system will be, and whether the Mininova team will continue to use it in the future. It is likely that it is a compromise that they were forced to make, as a sign of goodwill towards the copyright holders who they are set to face in court next week. If successful, this test case might be used to pressure other torrent site owners to do the same. We hope, however, that the copyright holders will invest their time and money in serving their customers instead. Opening Hulu up to everyone outside the US might be a good start. Or they perhaps they could license content to Mininova.

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The most popular copy of the speech comes from the leading TV-torrent distribution group , EZTV. Novaking, one of the admins at EZTV told TorrentFreak that they simply couldn’t ignore this historic presidential election. “It would have been idiotic for us not to supply it,” he said. EZTV had also distributed copies of the debates, but the demand for these didn’t come close to that of Obama’s final speech.

Interest in the speech was not simply limited to the United States. A more detailed look at the geographical location of the people who downloaded the file via BitTorrent, shows that more than half of them come from outside the United States. However, the remaining 46.2% is a significantly greater share for US downloaders than for the average TV-show release.

Although the number of downloads for Obama’s speech were way above that of an average TV-show, it didn’t come close to the numbers of the Olympic opening ceremonies earlier this year. Despite the massive file size of 5GB, the opening ceremonies were downloaded over a million times, mostly by Chinese. The IOC, who owns the right to the broadcast wasn’t too happy about this, and went as far as contacting the Swedish Minister of Justice, to try and get the .torrent file off The Pirate Bay.

Unlike with the Olympics, we haven’t heard about any takedown requests for Obama’s presidential acceptance speech. In fact, if we could ask Obama if we can download a copy for personal use, he will more than likely answer with popular campaign slogan, “Yes we can.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Swarmplayer EZTV is experimenting with uses slightly modified torrent files (.tstream), which make it possible to stream video files using the BitTorrent protocol. This new technology allows publishers to offer video steams without having to pay for expensive bandwidth. Theoretically, you can watch all torrent files with the player but it’s recommended to use newer releases, as they often offer a higher swarm speed. Streaming the typical TV show will run to around 100kb/sec, a speed unattainable with their older television torrents due in part to the low peer numbers, as much as the larger piece size used in the pre-stream torrents.

Novaking isn’t too worried about the sequential piece transfer, and loss of the tit-for-tat impacting the speeds of the swarm for those not trying to stream. “The spread will be so wide in the first week,” he tells us, “that it won’t affect it greatly. Of course it’s impossible to tell until it’s fully live and working.” Currently, only their own torrents will be available via .tstream files, but the hope is that should the test prove successful during the next week, to have them for the torrents from their partner sites, such as MVgroup as well.

BitTorrent streaming is the ideal low-cost distribution model for online video. Here at TorrentFreak we have been testing out the Swarmplayer since its very early beta days with Mininova, and it does look to be a very promising development. However, the client does not (yet) have an option to keep a fully saved copy of the file on your system for later re-watching, and it also doesn’t allow you to change the port it uses. But these are minor issues that should be solved easily.

It is interesting to see that this multi-million dollar research project collaborates with torrent sites like Mininova, and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC. Could this be the future of television? It is at least a possibility, and something for major networks to look at, as some already are (the BBC is a member of the group behind P2PNext, for example). EZTV’s Novaking certainly seems to think so. “We are hoping that TV networks start seeing this as a method to provide people with what they want”.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It seems to be an agreement that benefits both sides. MVGroup gets the exposure of EZTV’s fanbase, and several new seeders. EZTV on the other hand, expand their list of shows. This is particularly important at this time of year when most US shows have finished for the season, leaving them light on torrent releases, although EZTV admins claim this was incidental, and not planned.

MVGroup admins told TorrentFreak “[we] would like to take this opportunity to thank EZTV in helping us continue our founders legacy, to spread high quality educational material via p2p, to everyone, everywhere, for free and with no ratio.”

With the first shared releases out and available, we shall see with interest how well this works, especially if MVGroup sourced shows (what should we call them? MVTV? EZMV?) appear on our new Top TV shows lists.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“We decided to move to the desert of Sinai in Egypt since we feel that we’ll be safe there.” Connectivity in Egypt should be uncongested, with only about 1 in 13 of the population regular net users, despite modern infrastructure investments by Telecom Egypt. Meanwhile, the sun should do wonders to counter the typical pasty-faced stereotype of the typical computer addict.

In other news, there’s egg on the face of ABC, as a pre-air episode of the popular TV-show “Lost” hit the net. Apparently, the episode is from a DVD screener, and proves, yet again, that the problems come from members of the industry, who are often claimed to be the victims.

There is more breaking news today, as the popular OiNK replacement Waffles.fm now accepts new members. For months thousands of users have waited to get an account at the popular private BitTorrent tracker, and today this may become reality.

Unfortunately, things have not been so rosy for all BitTorrent sites. BT-chat, a popular torrent site has closed it’s torrent operations, to concentrate on its Bluetooth based IM client.

BT-Chat owner NBtX told TorrentFreak ” Server costs we’re starting to get too much, and the ads were making everyone mad. We have since then decided to stop providing torrents, and focus solely on the Bluetooth instant messaging program.”

However, the worst news comes for users of the private BitTorrent tracker BitHQ. Like EliteTorrents before them, they have been raided and shut down by US Federal Officers. No comment from any party involved has been forthcoming so far.

What a day….

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It’s understandable why the BitTorrent community feels a bit jittery this week after the shock demise of the OiNK tracker, particularly when another top site seemingly disappeared today.

Back in March we described EZTV as ‘the leading TV-torrent distribution group’ so when people tried to access www.eztvefnet.org today and got simply directed back to Google, panic started to creep in.

Luckily, this error is the result of some administrative issues and EZTV is alive, well and offering this message to their users:

Due to some misunderstandings during the transfers of domains relating to EZTV, the domain www.eztvefnet.org has been temporarily lost and now appears to redirect to a google query for EZTV. While we are working on resolving this issue, please be advised that there are alternative domains leading to our site – www.eztv.it and www.eztv.nl

NovaKing, admin at EZTV told TorrentFreak: “We are currently having some dns issues with eztvefnet.org so would like to inform our loyal fans that we prefer for people to start using the shorter easier to remember domain names!”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.