But a third site, celebrating its tenth anniversary today, is old-timer TorrentReactor. At the start of the year it was the ninth most-popular torrent site on the Internet but with isoHunt’s closure and the disappearance of H33T, it’s position is likely to improve at the start of 2014.

The site has experienced many ups and downs over the last decade but is one of the few still in an upbeat mood and having fun. In 2010 the site claimed it had bought a Russian village and the story went viral, something the team never expected for an elaborate joke.

Rejecting the idea of a repeat performance, TorrentReactor have come up with something else to celebrate their birthday – a browser game called Game of Torrents. The game is still under development but is set to go live next month with plenty of new features. When it does a few lucky torrent users can also pick up some cash prizes.

“It took us some time to develop some basic mechanics and graphics. We developed tons of ideas along the way and it turned out game development is even greater fun than we expected,” TorrentReactor told TorrentFreak.

“The current gameplay is trivial. A player needs to click the big ‘Upload torrent’ button and buy automatic uploading units that can do the job for him/her. So the start is pretty easy,” TR explain.

“The goal of the game at this time is to get all the achievements. This sounds easier than it is. Not only there are trillions of torrents that need to be uploaded but there are some negative events that should be avoided. For example, your virtual computer may break down or your virtual ISP will block your torrenting activity. Just like in real life. These events should be monitored and dealt with during the game. Later we plan to add many interesting upgrades that will make the game even more unpredictable.”

TorrentReactor are also promising a future multiplayer upgrade but in the meantime will launch the game in single player competition form in a few days time. It’s not Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, but it’s surprisingly addictive when you get going and the promise of hard cash is something neither of those titles offer.

“We’ll start the competition on the 1st of November and it will last two weeks. Players that have the greatest amounts of torrents uploaded by that time will win real money. The first three cash prizes will be $300, $200, and $100 respectively. Seven runner-up players will get smaller rewards. There will be a top-players list where anyone can see who the leaders are,” the site’s admin concludes.

In the meantime TorrentReactor are making available an early beta version of the game so that people can get used to the kind of thing that will be on offer in a couple of weeks time. We haven’t played the game for long but aside from a sore finger we can confirm virtual raids on hosting providers, ISP power failures and random copyright infringement issues.

Players who would like to have some features implemented (we’d like to see seedbox and VPN boosts please) are welcome to mention them in the comments section below.

An early beta of Game of Torrents can be played here.

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

Nevertheless, in recent times two of the world’s largest torrent sites, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay, both celebrated that special birthday. Both bear the scars of battle but remain defiant, at least for now, but there are others who achieve longevity with far fewer war wounds.

At the start of the year, TorrentReactor was the ninth most-popular torrent site on the Internet. Like The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents the site has been subjected to domain blocking in recent years but currently offers its own proxy workaround. That’s a fairly recent development though, so how did it all begin?

“It began ten years ago as a project in a new, very interesting and promising area,” TorrentReactor (TR) told TorrentFreak. “File-sharing was very ‘geeky’ at that time and torrent sites like this tended to make it more public. Over several years TorrentReactor evolved into a big torrent indexing machine serving many millions of people per week.”

Like the majority of torrent sites, TR didn’t start out intending to take over the world. The site rarely had a sustainable team of developers and many of those involved were running other projects at the same time. That was enough to keep the site moving forward and improving as necessary but a couple of years ago things began to change.

“Now we can proudly say there’s a big international group of people working on the project. We still have some side projects but now they are mostly spin-offs or otherwise related,” TR explain.

With the site’s increase in popularity has come a demand for new hardware. Starting out small, TorrentReactor originally rented servers from other companies but alongside the site’s growth came a need to buy its own equipment. Currently the site is running on five servers for databases and front end, plus others to proxy the site’s traffic.

While there is no Pirate Bay-style museum piece, TorrentReactor are no strangers to pulling off Pirate Bay-style pranks.

“The most wide-spread was probably the joke we pulled off about us buying a village in the middle of Russia. It was totally unexpected how viral this thing would go and we definitely had a lot of fun reading about it in lots of various news sources,” TR explain.

But jokes aside, it hasn’t all been so much fun. The site has experienced significant problems over the years and at least one disaster that was completely unexpected.

“In 2010 we had a large hosting partner with ten servers hosted there for various projects including TorrentReactor,” TR explain.

“At the end of the year they had a huge scandal with one of their key employees who was fired and later accessed the whole system and damaged all the HDDs they had. Servers we had with them were located away from each other so we thought it would be safe to store backups with the same hosting provider.

“However the disaster damaged everything: the website code, databases, and all backups. All the other backups we had were dated months before the incident. It took us at least several weeks to restore most of the functionality and data although some of it was gone forever.”

Since then the site has introduced a whole new way of storing and managing its data and so far there has been no situation that has required it to be tested. But interestingly, TR now cite more recent events as causing serious issues for the site. So who is to blame? None other than the world’s largest search engine.

“It is well known that Google brings lots of traffic to file-sharing websites and any changes in algorithms may affect that traffic. This year is probably the most challenging one because Google has introduced many new search algorithms and all torrent sites have suffered from that,” TR explain.

“The changes happened at the same time we were actively rebuilding the website from scratch so we had to work even harder to bring back the traffic and keep the development pace. But the experience we got is definitely a valuable one and will help us a lot in the future.”

All in all, TorrentReactor say that at times external factors caused them to lose around 50% of the traffic they had at their peak.

“A couple of years ago we had over a million visitors a day and now we have around 500k. Many new sites played their part in this too. File-sharing traffic is still growing despite many anti-piracy movements and all that. It just redistributes in a different way giving good small sites a chance to have their audience.”

But despite the setbacks, enthusiasm is high among the TR team and work is underway to modernize and reinforce the site with an eye on the future.

“Loyal visitors might have recently noticed our new main page is full of images, covers for the content we have available. We see many content-oriented websites switching to this kind of look. It helps users select the content they want a lot faster and easier,” TR note. “Visual perception of images is a lot better than reading titles, it gives you the idea of the content instantly.”

TR admit that there are other aspects of the site that should have been upgraded years ago, the user interaction system for one. That is currently being rebuilt with a focus on “friendly and fun” with content discovery mechanisms based around social elements.

“Users will be able to find out more about movies they like and actors that play in them, or browse through game-related content and chat with others who like similar games. More will be revealed in the coming months,” TR concludes.

Whether TorrentReactor or in fact any other major torrent site will be around in another ten years is open to debate but for now there are definitely no plans to fade away.

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

Alexey, the owner of TorrentReactor.net, informed TorrentFreak that his company has won its domain dispute against TorrentReactor.com. The complaint was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on October 26 of last year, with Alex stating that the .com domain is abusing the brand TorrentReactor has built over the years.

New York resident Craig Pratka, the (former) owner of TorrentReactor.com, was not operating a website under the name TorrentReactor but had simply forwarded the domain to the affiliate site allcontentaccess.com. In his complaint, Alex argued that the sole intent of the .com domain was to mislead users of the .net domain.

According to WIPO, Alex stated that Pratka was “intentionally attempting to attract Internet users to his web site for commercial gain, since the web site associated with the disputed domain name is redirected and urges visitors to pay money in order to access its database.”

The WIPO arbitration commission reviewed the case and finally concluded that the domain was indeed registered in bad faith. Alex told TorrentFreak that the domain was transferred to his company yesterday, and that the case is now officially closed.

This successful dispute follows a failed one against the previous owner of the .com domain, Jinsu Kim, who offered to sell it to TorrentReactor.net for $150,000 a few years ago. Alex declined and offered $30,000 instead, to which Kim replied with a new price tag: “The price is $50k and not negotiable.”

In 2008 Alex tried to go for the cheaper option and filed a WIPO dispute. This request was denied because at the time he had not yet registered the TorrentReactor trademark.

In the years that followed the .com domain was sold to Craig Pratka, who owns several torrent site typo domains, and is currently in the process of registering the Pirate Bay trademark. How much Pratka paid for the .com domain is unknown, but based on the previous quotes it can’t have been cheap.

Thankfully there are trademark and copyright laws to stop such abusive behavior.

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

The village, founded in 1958 by a religious group connected to the Russian Orthodox Church, was reportedly bought for 4.5 million rubles ($148,000 or 115,000 euros). TorrentReactor said that the money would be used to re-equip the local school, repair roads and purchase agricultural equipment. Not least the money would bring the village into the Internet age through the introduction of broadband, a wonderful prospect for a place said to have only three computers and a single dial up connection.

But those who know TorrentReactor will also be familiar with their sense of humor and earlier pranks. This news concerning the village was quite rightly taken with a grain of salt – or two.

After being reported in dozens of Russian news outlets, the claim was investigated by a correspondent at local news outlet Media FM in Tomsk who managed to speak with Tatyana Tolkachev from the Asinovski district where Gar is located.

As it turns out, TorrentReactor’s assessment that the village had 214 residents was a little off the mark – it actually has 380. Equally the claim that there are only 3 computers in the area was an underestimate, there are more, and many have Internet access.

Furthermore, the notion that the villagers make a living from selling home-grown vegetables in a nearby town possibly painted an overly rustic image of a place which actually has its own fire department, a club, a few shops, a post office and a school which houses 50 students.

And, according to administrator Marina Platov, the revelation that her village has been sold and renamed is a surprise to her, but nevertheless, not an unwelcome one.

Should an offer be received, Platov said the villagers would not be against it. The roads in and around Gar are very poorly maintained and that 4.5 million rubles would be very helpful, she explained.

The TorrentReactor crew, who now feel obligated to help the town out in some shape or form, informed us that renaming the town is not a viable option. “We can’t rename the village, it’s a long story,” founder Alex told TorrentFreak this morning in response.

Indeed, according to another report, renaming villages isn’t easy. Although a choice can be made by the villagers, the final decision lies with the President of Russia.

So, now that the poor and needy villagers of Gar have become excited at the prospect of some significant investment from a torrent site, what are the TorrentReactor people going to do to stop them becoming disappointed?

“We can do other things,” promises Alex.

To find out what exactly, we have to wait until tomorrow.

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

Within a few weeks the campaign raised some $20,000 from potential citizens, but this wasn’t enough. Sealand turned out not to be an option as it was prized at 750 million euros, which equals to nearly one billion US dollars. Other alternatives were considered but most islands lacked a proper Internet connection.

Now, three years later the Russian based torrent site Torrentreactor has reportedly bought some land of their own, without any help or funding from the outside. TorrentReactor founder Alex informed TorrentFreak about the peculiar move which puts the torrent site on the map in rural Russia.

The town of Gar, founded in 1958 by a religious group connected to the Russian Orthodox Church, was bought for 4.5 million rubles ($148,000 or 115,000Eur). Gar is located in the center of Russia and has only 214 inhabitants who make a living from selling home-grown vegetables in a nearby town.

With the financial injection from TorrentReactor the people of Gar (now the people of TorrentReactor) will be able to get connected to the Internet. Right now, there are only three computers available in the entire town, and just one is connected to the Internet via a dial-up connection.

“Most of it will be split among villagers and the rest will be used to re-equip the local school, repair roads, purchase agricultural equipment and machinery. Also torrentreactor.net company decided to pay for broadband Internet connection in the settlement which will result in about 900,000 rubles ($30,000) because there are no networks nearby,” TorrentReactor says.

Although some might see it as a vanity buy, or an overly expensive marketing campaign, the TorrentReactor team stresses that the humanitarian motive came first.

“We realize it’s just a drop in the ocean comparing to the amount of money needed to help thousands of other villages. But we at least do something to support complete strangers. We are proud that we are able to do so and hope we will be proud of this in the future,” the TorrentReactor team said.

According to TorrentReactor the local authorities were skeptical about the deal at first, but they went ahead with it after the right price was negotiated. TorrentFreak contacted the Tomsk authorities for a comment on the unusual deal, but thus far they are yet to respond.

Because we were unable to verify the deal from both ends, we have to inform our readers that TorrentReactor is known to carry out pranks and ludicrous actions. Earlier this year their partner site shipped condoms to the RIAA, MPAA and various other anti-piracy outfits, informing them that their bullying tactics are not appreciated.

Although the condom action was verified and legit, TorrentReactor’s latest announcement has not yet been officially confirmed by Russian authorities. TorrentFreak readers who live in the area or have more information are encouraged to get in touch with us to provide additional details.

Update: Despite confusion, village still wants torrent site investment.

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

Websense reports that TorrentReactor has been injected with an IFrame that connects to a malicious site full of exploits. The exploits affects various applications including Internet Explorer and Adobe’s Shockwave and Acrobat Reader.

Once the user is successfully exploited a Trojan Downloader with an extremely low anti-virus detection rate will download and install a rootkit on the user’s system, after which more evil is bound to happen.

TorrentReactor’s founder Alex told TorrentFreak that they are looking into the matter and hope to fix the vulnerability as soon as possible. Alex further told us that he has no clue who’s behind the attack.

This is not the first time that TorrentReactor has suffered from an IFrame injection as The Register points out. Last year it dealt with a similar security breach.

Needless to say, TorrentReactor users may want to avoid the site for the time being if they’d rather not have a rootkit on their system.

Update: Alex told TorrentFreak that the problem has been addressed. “It was sql injection which was fixed the same day. Now we do everything to prevent it in the future. We’re very sorry.”

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

It’s interesting how BitTorrent Inc’s focus has shifted to include DRM and be restricted to only legal content. The initial goal of BitTorrent.com was to index all the various movies, music, TV shows and other files available over BitTorrent. Wired News reported in 2005 on the upcoming launch of the site that was going to be “an advertising-supported search engine dedicated to cataloging and indexing the thousands of movies, music tracks, software programs and other files for download.”

We recently wrote about how BitTorrent.com was helping game developers distribute demos. In that article we profiled the strategy game Disciples II: Dark Prophecy. It was only a demo. But if you type “Disciples” into the search box on BitTorrent.com, you’ll find both the demo and a pirated version of the full game. Or try searching for “Prison Break” and see what you find. Each one of the 29 results you get is a copyrighted file. How exactly do these “filters” work?

How does BitTorrent.com get all this illegal content? It obviously doesn’t have an active uploading community like The Pirate Bay or Torrentspy. Instead, it indexes other torrent sites like The Pirate Bay, Meganova, Torrent Portal and TorrentReactor.

So, our question is, How is BitTorrent.com different from any other so-called illegal torrent site that indexes copyrighted content? Btmon.com does exactly the same thing! Sure, BitTorrent.com’s frontpage is full of game demos, legal music downloads and movie trailers, but one little search query away is just about every popular movie, TV show, music album and computer game.

In our minds, and according to US law, what BitTorrent.com is doing is not illegal. The DMCA clearly states that websites are only required to take down files if the copyright holder or a representative files a complaint. But why does the MPAA sue sites like Isohunt and Torrentspy (who also respect the DCMA), while they’re in bed with BitTorrent?

Dan Glickman (MPAA) and Bram Cohen (BitTorrent)

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

John from Searching Unlimited LTD, one of the masterminds behind the project told TorrentFreak that he is happy that he was able to bring these brilliant people together and recruit some of the web’s most gifted engineers.

Although the sites are sold to Searching Unlimited LTD, the site owners stay in charge of daily operation.

John Gotts explained:

All BitTorrent admins who sell their site will own a part of Searching Unlimited LTD, the parent company. However, they all will continue to own and operate the site they sell us. Additionally they will get pay and advertising revenue share of both their old company and any new projects they help create or support.

Gotts added that the great thing about this initiative is the brain trust that they are creating at Searching. “It’s a family of companies, and the huge amount of traffic we generate, together with the genius people who are involved, make it a very powerful family”.

BitTorrent sites make up for a significant portion of the total Web traffic. Teaming up all these high traffic BitTorrent sites (combined with their other projects) will instantly make them a big and powerful player on the online advertising market.

Stay tuned!

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