The homepage of the popular torrent search engine Torrentz disappeared from Google this week after Hollywood studio Paramount sent a peculiar DMCA takedown request. Paramount claims in the notice that the URL links to infringing content, but there are no links to torrents or even other torrent sites on Torrentz’ homepage. The meta-search engine has filed a counterclaim and is waiting for Google to respond.
STAR World, a prominent English language television channel in India owned by News Corp, has just announced a brand new programming segment. Interestingly, it is named after the country’s most popular torrent search engine, Torrentz. With ‘Torrentz’, which will air The Good Guys, The Walking Dead and Detroit 1-8-7, the TV-channel hopes to offer a convenient alternative to ever increasing BitTorrent use in India.
The Internet’s second biggest BitTorrent site is dumping its .COM domain. In an apparent response to the US Government’s Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement recent seizures of domain names, the site moved to a new home. Despite being only a meta-search engine, Torrentz.com appears to be taking no chances with an immediate .EU domain migration.
In a few months TorrentFreak turns five, and leading up to that milestone we will occasionally look back at how the BitTorrent landscape has changed over the years. Although there is no doubt that BitTorrent has more than quintupled its user base since 2005, there have been only a handful of sites serving a large slice of the masses.
Torrentz.com is the largest BitTorrent search engine that doesn’t actually host any torrent files. This means that its millions of users still depend on third party sites in order to download .torrent files. That said, all that changes if they have the Firefox web browser installed along with the new Magnetiser add-on.
A hacker has successfully changed the nameservers of the popular BitTorrent meta-search engine Torrentz.com. For a few hours the site was replaced with an Adbrite ad, and a link to a warez forum. To top it off, the hacker then contacted the Torrentz admin to brag about his hacking abilities.
Torrentz.com, the largest BitTorrent meta-search engine on the Internet, is currently dealing with a hostile attempt to take over the site’s domain name. The admin of Torrentz has posted a message to all its users to inform them about the situation, and is optimistic that the issue will be resolved soon.
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Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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