In most cases these attacks don’t last too long, but every now and then they get more serious. For example, in recent weeks several French torrent sites have had to deal with a serious flood of unwanted connections, rendering the sites and trackers in question unavailable.

The Morocco-based provider Genious Communications hosts several of the affected torrent sites, including smartorrent.com and cpasbien.pe. To find out more TorrentFreak contacted CEO Hamza Aboulfeth, who told us that the attacks come in all shapes and sizes.

“The biggest attack was on smartorrent.com where we had over 30 Gbit/s which gave us no choice but nullroute the IP at the moment of the attack,” Aboulfeth says.

The attacks range from common HTTP floods to UDP and SYN flood attacks and huge botnets. As a result, Genious has migrated several clients over to a specialized DDoS protection setup.

“We have our own professional DDoS protection system so we had to move some of our clients to it, the rest just moved to Cloudflare where they offer decent protection for a reasonable price,” Aboulfeth says.

The biggest challenge is to mitigate the attacks on trackers as these are not dealing with regular HTTP requests, but so far the company has managed to take the edge off the assaults.

The attacks started a few weeks ago and have been continuing ever since at varying intensities. They are all targeted at several of Genious Communications’ file-sharing related clients, but the identities of the individuals behind them remains a mystery.

Aboulfeth hasn’t heard of any cash demands, which excludes the extortion scheme several other sites were subjected to earlier this year. According to the CEO, it’s most likely that competitors or an anti-piracy group are behind the attacks.

“I think the attacks are most likely coming from competitors or some copyright agency,” Aboulfeth says.

“One common thing is they are all French torrent websites, and I know for a fact that I have been contacted by someone hosted somewhere else claiming that one of our clients is attacking him, and of course my client is denying that,” he adds.

In the long term the sites have no other option than to make sure that they can cope with the DDoS attacks. In most cases they eventually pass, without their victims ever knowing what their purpose was.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Traditionally, BitTorrent users are very loyal, which is reflected in the top 10 where most sites have had a consistent listing for more than half a decade. But in common with every year, 2014 sees a few movers and shakers, as well as several newcomers.

The top three slots remain intact compared to last year, with The Pirate Bay in the lead despite several domain name changes.

The most notable absentee this year is isoHunt. The site has been featured in the top 10 since 2006, but went offline in 2013 after it settled its legal dispute with the MPAA for $110 million.

Last year’s newcomer H33t also fell out of the top 10 after it lost its domain name. The site relaunched after two months downtime at H33t.to but has lost most of its traffic.

The first newcomer in the top 10 this year is YIFY-Torrents, which is also one of the youngest torrent sites after being founded in 2011. The site has grown tremendously over recent months, and by focusing on popular movie releases YIFY has evolved into Hollywood’s new nemesis.

Isohunt clone/replacement isoHunt.to is the second newcomer, which is quite an achievement since the site only launched two months ago. RARBG is the last ‘new’ name, the site has been around for many years but is listed in the top 10 for the first time.

Below is the full list of the top 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language content sites are included. The list is based on various traffic reports and we display the Alexa and U.S. Compete rank for each. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

Did we miss anything? Feel free to join the discussion below. People who want to increase their privacy may wants to use a proxy or VPN service.

1. The Pirate Bay

To many people The Pirate Bay is synonymous with BitTorrent. The site was founded more than a decade ago and is still expanding, despite various legal troubles, domain hops and ISP blockades. The Pirate Bay currently has well over a billion page views a month.

2. KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents was founded in 2009 and has quickly moved up in our top 10, settling into 2nd position this year. Responding to a looming domain seizure the site moved from its kat.ph domain to Kickass.to last August. Despite domain troubles and blockades by Internet providers in the UK and Italy, the site continues to grow.

3. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for many years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files, it merely redirects visitors to other places on the web. The site uses several domain names with .eu being the most popular.

4. ExtraTorrent

ExtraTorrent continues to gain more traffic and has moved up again in the top 10, now placed as the 4th most-visited torrent site. This success didn’t go unnoticed by rightsholders groups such as the MPAA who recently called out ExtraTorrent as one of the top pirate sites. The site was forced to trade in its .com domain for .cc this year, after it was suspended by its domain registrar.

5. YIFY-Torrents

Roughly three years ago nobody had ever heard of YIFY but today the movie release group is one of the most recognizable movie piracy brands on the Internet. This reputation resulted in a court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK last year.

6. EZTV

Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. Because of its focus, EZTV’s traffic varies in line with the TV seasons.

7. 1337x

1337x focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they launched 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” In common with most other sites in the top 10, 1337x.org is currently blocked by the larger UK Internet providers.

8. isoHunt.to

Isohunt.to was launched last October, less than two weeks after isoHunt.com shut down. The site is not affiliated with the old isoHunt crew but copied the site’s design. This has not been without success, as the site now has millions of pageviews a day.

9. BitSnoop

BitSnoop is one of the largest BitTorrent indexes, claiming to index a massive 21,437,061 torrent files at the time of writing. The site’s torrents list continues to grow steadily, as do the number of DMCA notices that it receives.

10. RARBG

RARBG, which started out as a Bulgarian tracker several years ago, is the third newcomer in the top 10. Together with isoHunt.to it is the only website in the list that hasn’t been blocked in the UK, which may in part explain its popularity.

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche. The Alexa rank for The Pirate Bay is estimated based on the ranking of the .sx domain and isoHunt’s Alexa ranking is based on the past month only.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The major labels are responsible for blocking a wide range of websites including The Pirate Bay, and last month they teamed up with City of London Police in a campaign to shutter popular torrent sites.

Keeping the pressure up, UK music industry group BPI is now contacting torrent sites with a legal threat of their own. In their letter the BPI accuses torrent site owners of encouraging and facilitating massive infringement of their copyrights.

“We are writing you in relation to the Site’s very large-scale infringements of the Members’ copyrights in sound recordings in the UK. The site encourages and enables the infringement of those copyrights by users of BitTorrent technology,” the letter notes.

The BPI explains that it found pirated music from Amy Winehouse, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Take That and many other popular artists via torrent sites, and claims that site owners are liable for these infringing works.

“We have carried out tests which confirm that torrent files for sound recordings identified in the enclosed list are available for download and/or accessible by magnet link on the Site. You are therefore liable for infringement of the copyright in those sound recordings,” BPI explains.

To prevent further damages the BPI asks the site owners to “take immediate action” to prevent further infringements.

As can be seen in the image above, the BPI wants site owners to remove a list of albums and tracks from their sites. However, it doesn’t stop there as the music group also demands that future uploads should be prevented and reserves the right to expand the list in the future.

The enclosed list doesn’t specify any URLs. This means that the torrent site owners would have to install a broad keyword filter to comply, or otherwise prevent new titles from being added to the site.

Responding to the letter, one torrent site owner made it clear to TorrentFreak that he doesn’t intend to cooperate.

“Apparently BPI thinks that all the whole world is governed by UK laws, sponsored by BPI! They don’t like torrent sites – fine, we don’t like their ‘music’,” we were told.

According to the site owner his site complies with takedown notices as most others do, including requests from BPI members. However, he can’t find any recent notices from the BPI itself and the music group is not among the most active senders.

“There are several music labels who happen to be BPI members who send cease and desist notices. These are processed normally – content gets deleted if they send URLs, which usually takes up to four hours,” the site owner explains.

The BPI has a different view on the matter and believes that the torrent sites have an obligation to take action.

“These sites exploit artists’ work without their permission and undermine the massive investments that labels make bringing new music to fans,” BPI’s Chief Executive Geoff Taylor tells TorrentFreak.

“They also inhibit the development of legitimate services, which need a level playing field to grow. We have therefore written to ask that they take immediate action to ensure they no longer infringe copyright,” he adds.

If the sites fail to respond positively the BPI plans to take legal action, as the group makes clear in its letter.

“If we do not hear from you by 8 July 2013 with confirmation of the above, then the Members will take appropriate legal action in relation to the Site without further notice to you.”

Whether that means site owners will be dragged into court, or that the BPI will apply for the sites to be blocked in the UK, remains to be seen.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Free content and online piracy more or less comes to an end – right?

If the rhetoric coming out of industry bodies like the RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BPI and FACT is to be believed, that’s exactly what would happen. These organizations think that file-sharing sites and services are motivated only be the reward of hard cash and without it they would cease to function.

But is that the case? Is The Pirate Bay only interested in being super-resilient in order to maintain its advertising revenue? Is your favorite private tracker only making the site better and enforcing tight ratio rules in order to keep this month’s donations healthy?

Entertainment companies nearly always offer a resounding ‘YES’ to each of the above while uncompromising pro-piracy advocates throw in a blanket “NO”. The truth, as with most things in the file-sharing debate, lies somewhere in the middle.

Everyone needs at least a little money

Let’s get one thing straight from the start – ALL file-sharing related sites are interested in money, just as everyone reading this article will be. Money is a fact of life (ask charities who rely on handouts) and in the file-sharing world servers and bandwidth have to be paid for. Sites cannot operate without cash so revenue has to be generated to keep them online.

Basics out-of-the-way, the question switches to how that cash is raised.

Advertising and affiliate schemes, free and forced donations.

Public sites like The Pirate Bay raise money in a way that is roughly compatible with the original file-sharing ethos. Not only is content-free but the site is free to use too, with money generated via advertising and affiliate schemes. Unless users want to, they don’t contribute a penny towards the site’s upkeep.

Broadly speaking, the same can be said about most publicly available sites, such as the many varied public indexes that cull torrents from other sites. They tend not to have communities of their own and generate revenue from advertising and affiliate schemes. It is hard to prove or say with the utmost certainty, but it seems likely that some of these exist mainly for the money.

Private trackers, on the other hand, are a different prospect altogether. They have their own walled ecosystem where the main unit of currency is bandwidth. In most cases all users must contribute bandwidth via their uploads or face getting kicked out. Users with lots of upload bandwidth need never pay any actual money to the site. On the other hand, those with limited upstream clout may find themselves in a position of having to donate real cash to stay on board. Private torrent sites generally generate cash from this latter group, plus other users who simply value what the site has to offer and voluntarily hand over cash as a ‘thank you’.

But while these are basic explanations of how money is raised to keep sites running, we still don’t have an idea of whether the operators of these sites are only running them to make money. The truth is that only the sites and those close to them know for sure, but there are some interesting signs to be read.

Ethical pirates, evil pirates, and the swashbucklers in between.

If we take a look at The Pirate Bay, we can see a site that in pretty much all respects has not improved in more than half a decade. For a traditional business this would be suicide. Expansion plans and grand ideas for the future aren’t fueled by standing still. The site definitely makes some money and the people behind the site could certainly make money elsewhere in a less risky occupation.

On the other hand, private sites are very much a mixed bag. There are some trackers around that aren’t interested in any more money than is needed to pay the bills each month and these are quite easy to spot with their relaxed attitudes. These sites are often over-sized hobbies for their owners.

At the other end of the scale (and this is a bitter pill) are trackers, large and small, that are almost entirely focused on money. They have donation drives every other month plus tight ratio restrictions and ruthless bannings unless users stump up cash. Every Christmas there is some crisis or other which imperils the admin’s drink supply future of the site unless there is an immediate cash influx from site members. Often these sites are completely filled to capacity, unable to process even one solitary extra invite. Until cash is handed over for one of course, then space is magically found.

In between though there are many other trackers which through no fault of their own have become slaves to their site’s finances. What started off as a fun hobby with a few hundred members costing very little, can rapidly turn into a much larger concern that without funds cannot be kept going. The admins of these sites aren’t in this to make money but if they don’t then the site won’t survive in its current state. The options are i) cull the site back to its roots and pay the small bills from your own pocket, ii) say it was good while it lasted and shut down, or iii) leave the decision to another day that never comes. Many site owners are in this final position.

But for all of this post’s previous 800 or so words we still have no idea whether site operators are all in this game for the money. The likely truth is that some are and some aren’t, but in most cases their users don’t really care one way or the other. A good service is being provided – for free.

Sharing is not all about money

However, what we do know is that the people actually sharing the files in the first instance are almost completely not motivated by money at all. They do it for fun, for entertainment. They do it for the thrill and to enjoy the act of sharing something with others. How do you deal with that – ineffective strike systems or the on-the-spot fines being mulled by France at the moment? That won’t cut off their finances for long – or place them in the industry’s back pocket either.

The simple fact is there were file-sharers before torrent sites came along and there will be file-sharers after they have gone. If the authorities squeeze every last drop of revenue from all the major sites, no matter what their financial motivations were, then people will come together to find a new solution.

The biggest fear for the entertainment industries must be that even after they’ve removed all financial incentives and blocked all the sites, the sharing culture simply continues.

Then what?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Update: Top 2014 Torrent sites

Traditionally BitTorrent users are very loyal, which is reflected in the top 10 where most sites have had a consistent listing for more than half a decade. This year there are a few movers and shakers, as well as several newcomers.

The most notable absentees this year are BTJunkie and Demonoid. Both sites have been featured in the top 10 since 2006, but went offline in 2012. BTJunkie permanently quit early last year and Demonoid’s future is also uncertain after it disappeared during the summer.

The first newcomer in tenth place is H33t, which has been growing steadily in recent years. The second newcomer is TorrentReactor, one of the oldest torrent sites around that makes its comeback after not making the list last year.

Then there is also a group of notable sites that didn’t make the cut, but deserve a mention. YIFY-torrents.com for example, which launched late 2011 and has grown exponentially since. Also worth mentioning are the Pirate Bay proxies, including Pirateproxy.net, which in itself almost deserves a spot in the top 10.

Below is the full list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on various traffic reports and we display the Alexa and U.S. Compete rank for each. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

Did we miss anything? Feel free to join the discussion below. People who want to increase their privacy may wants to use a proxy or VPN service.

1. The Pirate Bay

To many people The Pirate Bay is the equivalent to BitTorrent. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the various legal troubles and new blockades in the UK and the Netherlands. The Pirate Bay currently has well over a billion page views a month.

2. KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents was founded in 2009 and has moved up in our top 10 year after year. Responding to increasing worries over domain seizures, the site moved from its kickasstorrents.com domain to kat.ph in 2012. This year the site continued to grow, despite being blocked by Italian Internet providers.

3. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for many years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files, it merely redirects visitors to other places on the web. The site uses several domain names with the .eu being the most popular.

4. IsoHunt

Two years ago isoHunt became the first search engine forced to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt continues to be listed among the world’s top torrent sites. isoHunt is currently trying to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.

5. ExtraTorrent

ExtraTorrent continues to gain more traffic and has moved up again in the top 10, now being the 5th most visited torrent site. This success didn’t go unnoticed to rightsholders groups such as the RIAA and MPAA who have called out ExtraTorrent as one of the top pirate sites recently.

6. 1337x

1337x focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they started 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” The site moved up from spot 10 last year to 6th in 2013.

7. EZTV

Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. It was one of the newcomers last year despite being around for more than 7 years, and is relatively popular among Australians. Because of its focus on TV-content EZTV’s traffic varies in line with the TV-seasons.

8. Bitsnoop

BitSnoop is one of the largest BitTorrent indexes, claiming to index a massive 19,091,736 torrent files at the time of writing. The site’s traffic continues to grow steadily, as do the DMCA notices that it receives.

9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor is back in the top 10 after dropping off last year. A few months ago the site was blocked by a court order in Italy, but the site nonetheless continues to gain visitors.

10. H33t

H33T has been around for many years and has built a dedicated user base, mostly in Europe and Asia. Despite the wishes of the music industry, the site isn’t yet blocked by any court orders. The site made the news a few months ago when its owner took a stand against the avalanche of copyright takedown requests.

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The site can be best described as a movie torrent database with a beautiful design and the ability to create movie watch lists. The site itself doesn’t host any torrents, but lists magnet links instead. At the time of writing, the movies.io database contains 4317 movies and 13,534 magnet links.

When users search for a movie, they get a page with a large backdrop image and movie details such as the plot, genre and rating which is pulled from themoviedb.org. Logged in users also have the option to add movies to their watchlists and share these with others, or collaborate on them.

TorrentFreak got in touch with one of the founders, who we’ll call Jack, to find out more about the project. He told us that a precursor to the current site was actually a gift to his girlfriend.

“The initial motivation is actually kinda cute: my long-distance girlfriend and I love to watch movies together, but come the evening we can never remember which! For her birthday, one of my gifts was the precursor of Movies.io, basic but functional,” Jack told us.

But there was another driving force. Jack and his friends also find the current official options to download movies rather limited or overly complicated.

“Technology should be simple, and serve humanity. Content distribution is hard, not because we don’t have the tech for it, but because of legal concerns. Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal has a hilarious comic on trying to watch Game of Thrones legally: unfortunately, this experience is far from isolated.”

“The internet is of legal drinking age, yet we are stuck with a slew of poorly designed, incompatible, proprietary, flawed, restrictive solutions for watching and downloading multimedia content legally. BitTorrent is fascinating because it takes advantage of the distributed nature of the internet to share content efficiently between thousands of peers.”

Eventually, and after two weeks of coding, Movies.io was born and ready to be shown to the public. According to Jack the site is made by and for movie enthousiasts. A no-nonsense site that is unspoiled by ads, and one that’s intuitive and efficient to use.

“I think the service is unique in the way that it combines an open movie database, a good torrent search engine, and a very pure user interface. We give you a way to discover new movies and make collections of them, that’s it,” Jack told us.

“In a way, our love for movies shows through the design and general experience of the website. Some movies are pieces of art, and they deserve to be treated as such. The content is given a central place, through gorgeous full-screen backdrops, high-resolution covers, and plot. We don’t feature trailers, as they usually spoil a good movie, trying to wow people rather than ease into the ambiance.”

But there’s always the legal side of things. While Movies.io has plenty of legal content on the site, it also links to Hollywood blockbusters. This means that it will be a prime target for the MPAA, who believe that torrent search engines are facilitating content theft.

Jack and his friends are aware of the legal threats they could run into, but believe they have little to worry about.

“We are prepared for them, but then again, there is not much legal ground to stand on for potential takedown requests: we don’t host any copyrighted material on the website. We don’t even store torrent files, we just have magnet links, like The Pirate Bay,” Jack told us.

“The legal demise of Movies.io would be a sad turn of event. That said, as lunatic as they were, the TPB founders had one thing right: sink one ship, ten others will replace it. Content distributors are fighting against a wave bigger than them: in a way, they have already lost.”

According to Jack, content creators should embrace BitTorrent and other novel distribution methods, and they encourage movie makers to get in touch.

“We think there is a win-win scenario possible for content creators on such a platform: see the recent success of Louis CK’s $5 sale. While still too rare, it shows that there is definitely something waiting to happen. TPB has its Promo Bay, and we could very well launch something similar. If you are an independent content creator and would like to discuss your options, don’t hesitate to drop us a mail,” Jack concludes.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Which torrent sites get the most visitors at the start of 2012? At first glance little seems to have changed, as many of the sites in the top 10 have been among the top torrent sites for more than half a decade. But moving down the list we see quite a few movers and shakers as well as three newcomers.

The most notable absentee this year is TorrentReactor, one of the oldest torrent sites on the Internet. The Russian-based site hasbeen featured in the top 10 since 2006, but missed the cut in 2012. Last year’s best newcomer LimeTorrents took an even bigger hit in traffic and has dropped off the list as well.

Below we have compiled a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

1. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is probably the best known BitTorrent brand on the Internet. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the various legal troubles and blockades that were designed to hurt the site in recent years. The Pirate Bay currently has close to 2 billion page views a month.

2. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files, it merely redirects visitors to other places on the web.

3. KickassTorrents

Founded in 2009, KickassTorrents is one of the youngest sites in the list, and this year it moved up to the top 3. Responding to the increasing worries about domain seizures, the site moved from its kickasstorrents.com domain to kat.ph a few months ago. The site continues to innovate and release new features every other week.

4. IsoHunt

In 2010 isoHunt became the first search engine forced to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt continues to be listed among the top torrent sites. In 2012, isoHunt hopes to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.

5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie had to deal with a setback a few months ago when the site was blocked in Italy following a court order. In response to the block, the site’s owners launched an ad-free proxy site for Italians only. Just as last year, BTjunkie settles in fifth place.

6. ExtraTorrent

ExtraTorrent is one of those robust torrent indexes that doesn’t make the news very often. Compared to last year the site has moved up a spot and is now the 6th most popular torrent venue.

7. Demonoid

The semi-private tracker continues to attract a massive audience, also on the new .me domain name. Behind the scenes the site’s owners are working on a new and improved look.

8. EZTV

Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. Despite its fair share of downtime this year, EZTV has managed to get a spot in the top 10 for the first time in its six year existence.

9. Bitsnoop

BitSnoop is another newcomer that gained a large audience this year. This didn’t go unnoticed by the RIAA, who filed a complaint at the U.S. District Court of Columbia and obtained a subpoena to reveal the identity of BitSnoop’s owner a few months ago.

10. 1337x

1337x is also new to the top 10, and focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they started 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” Its 10th place this year proves that they’re getting the success formula right.

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

4shared, the largest English language file-sharing site, is serving 2.5 billion pageviews alone every month, and this number is increasing rapidly.

Below we have compiled a list of the top 10 largest (general purpose) file-sharing sites on the Internet, based on measurements by Google. What stands out immediately is that 8 of the 10 sites are related to cyberlockers, and only 2 are BitTorrent sites.

This picture is quite different from the landscape 5 years ago when BitTorrent sites dominated the file-sharing space. Early 2007 Mininova was the first BitTorrent site to earn a place among the top 100 most-visited sites on the Internet, and soon thereafter they were joined by The Pirate Bay.

In the years that followed BitTorrent sites continued to dominate, but in the background cyberlockers were catching up, and catching up fast. Where most BitTorrent sites were seeing moderate growth, several new cyberlockers saw their traffic surge. In the last year many cyberlocker sites have outgrown The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, isoHunt and other popular torrent sites.

Below is the full list of sites based on Google’s ranking. We have to note though that several site owners in this list told TorrentFreak that the monthly pageviews and unique visitors are hugely underestimated. The Pirate Bay for example claims 1,500,000,000 pageviews, which is more than double the Google estimate. Other sites report similar ‘downgrades,’ so overall the ranking would still hold.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Research from Cyberdefender, a respectable web security outfit, shows that visiting these sites can lead to a disastrous outcome. You’ve been warned.

They say:

“Avoid torrent sites at all costs – even if they are safe (not malicious), some of the ads found in torrent sites can compromise your computer’s security.”

“How to avoid it: Stick to official downloads/streams such as iTunes, Hulu/Hulu Plus, Netflix and legitimate websites. Downloading illegal software can expose your computer to trojans and spyware.”

Oh yeah, and you shouldn’t play any games either.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Below we have compiled a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

Do you know a good public torrent site that’s not listed here? Feel free to plug it in a comment.

Update: 2012′s best torrent sites.

1. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is probably the best known BitTorrent brand on the Internet. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the immense legal witch hunt launched by the entertainment industries several years ago.

2. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for years. A few weeks ago the site traded in its .COM domain and switched to .EU, but this didn’t affect the site’s traffic.

3. IsoHunt

Last year was a tough one for isoHunt, as it became the first search engine that had to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt is still the third largest torrent site in terms of traffic. In 2011, isoHunt hopes to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.

4. KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents was the fastest growing newcomer of last year, and managed to continue this upward trend throughout 2010. The site released many new features and continues to innovate, still without a single banner ad on the site.

5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie had a pretty quiet year, which is usually good news for a site that operates in the BitTorrent niche. The only setback was the removal of the site’s front page from Google due to a DMCA complaint. As last year, BTjunkie settles in fifth place.

6. Demonoid.me

The impossible happened. Demonoid finished 2010 with only a minimal amount of downtime, compared to weeks or months in previous years. A few weeks ago the site announced that it would move from the familiar .COM to a .ME domain in response to the news about US domain seizures.

7. ExtraTorrent.com

ExtraTorrent is one of those robust torrent indexes that don’t make the news very often. In 2010 it continued to expand and the site gained two spots compared to last year.

8. TorrentDownloads.net

TorrentDownloads is in the same league as ExtraTorrent, a no nonsense torrent index that provides torrents to millions of users each month.

9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor fooled most of the tech press last year when it announced that it had bought a Russian town, one of the better PR stunts seen in 2010. On the flipside TorrentReactor seems to have lost some traffic due to a Google penalty, dropping the site to 9th place this year.

10. LimeTorrents.com

LimeTorrents is the best newcomer of 2010 in terms of traffic, which promises a lot for the new year. The site went live half a year ago and already made it into the top 10 in this short period. It’s also a bit ironic as ‘Limewire’ got shutdown a few months ago.

Honorable Mention EZTV

If there’s one site that deserves an honorable mention it’s EZTV. The leading TV-torrent release group almost made it into the top 10 on its own, but due the seasonal traffic spikes it just fell short. It has to be noted though that unlike other sites in the above list EZTV’s traffic doesn’t rely heavily on search engines such as Google or BitTorrent meta-search engines. EZTV currently has 30 million visitors a month and continues to expand.

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.