What’s most interesting about the site is that its users can also browse torrents based on an actor or director, a feature that other torrent sites lack. With just a single click users can list all the films where Patrick Swayze made an appearance, or all the films directed by Quentin Tarantino.

“The actors and directors can be added by the users when they upload a torrent file,” Files24 founder Oleg told TorrentFreak. “Also if we recognize the movie, we automatically check and fill in any missing data,” he added.

Although the site also lists music and games, thus far these advanced searches only work for movies. TV-shows are oddly enough listed in the movies section but Oleg told TorrentFreak that a TV and software section will be added in the near future.

The navigational structure and design of the site is not the only thing that’s unique to Files24 though. According to one of the site’s founders, Files24 also has a dedicated tracker that is optimized to facilitate the highest download speeds.

“We track which country users come from and the tracker then gives priority to peers from their own country. As a result users can download at much higher speeds,” Files24’s Oleg told TorrentFreak.

One of the downsides of the site is that users are only permitted to upload torrents with a Files24 tracker, so this may severely limit the number of torrents that will be added to the site. On the other hand this is also one of the upsides, since this will stop a great deal of spam and fake files from being uploaded.

Files24 went live yesterday and currently lists some 40,000 torrents. It is clear that the site is still work in progress but the new features the site has to offer will be welcomed by many BitTorrent users. Of course they will also be frowned upon by Hollywood. Nothing new there.

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

Wilkinson was pleasantly surprised by all the attention. He explained in his email to RLSlog that the people who illegally downloaded his film actually helped to promote it.

He writes: “Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded “The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!”

To illustrate this, on IMDB the film received close to 700 votes with an average rating of 8.2 which makes it one of the most popular movies of the last 2 weeks.

Wilkinson continues to praise the pirates and adds: “What you guys have done here is nothing short of amazing. In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. YOU HAVE HELPED PUT THIS LITTLE MOVIE ON THE MAP!!!! When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”

This example once again illustrates what a powerful promotion tool filesharing networks are, especially for independent productions with a small budget.

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

TorrentFreak had a chance to talk to Ben, the owner of FlixFlux to ask him about his motivation to keep adding such features to his site, he said:

“Basically the whole reason I put FlixFlux together was to make it easy to find decent films to download. It’s not always easy to work out what a film is going to be like just from the plot summary and list of genres. With a trailer though you get a good idea of what a film’s going to be like. So I guess the reason I added them was to make it easier to find decent films to download”

Adding trailers to the site and listing the charts on the frontpage will almost certainly grab the attention of the MPAA. We asked Ben whether he thinks this will make him an easy target for the MPAA.

“It’s up to the users if they want to download the torrents or not, and that may or may not be illegal where they are. What the site provides is a list of box office hits, details about them and a list of available torrents. None of the movies are hosted by me, nor any of the torrents. So hopefully I’ll be safe from the MPAA.”

Easy target or not, FlixFlux will keep indexing the latest movie torrents and introduce more features to the site. “I want to make it even easier to find movies in the future”, Ben says “Instead of just listing the new releases it’d be nice to be able to say “show me a good horror from the last couple of months” or “list any comedy from the last couple of weeks.”

We’ll keep an eye on it.

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