Btswarm.org

Btswarm.org is a fast and clean BitTorrent site that is available in 5 different languages. The site currently indexes 107,907 torrents, which represents over 80TB of data. Btswarm supports search based RSS feeds, a great feature that every site should have in my opinion.

SumoTorrent.com

SumoTorrent who recently partnered with FileSoup, one of the oldest BitTorrent communities, collects the BitTorrent stats for our monthly stats post. But, they also serve torrents and offer not only .torrent links but also Azureus magnet links, and DHT links.

One of the things about SumoTorrent that I particularly like is that they have their own tracker, something more BitTorrent sites should do. At the moment 50% of all the torrents on public trackers are tracked by The Pirate Bay All hell would break loose if they were taken down.

FlixFlux.co.uk

FlixFlux is a BitTorrent site that focuses on movie releases. On the frontpage they list the US box office charts, DVD rental charts, and the UK box office charts. If you register you can also keep track of your favorite movies on the site. FlixFlux has a description for every film including the IMDB rating and plans to add movie trailers and for their torrents soon, which is an interesting feature.

A similar site also dedicated to movies torrents is Superfundo, they focus mainly on Scene and aXXo movie releases.

TorrentTAB.com

TorrentTAB is a new BitTorrent meta-search engine that displays the search results in a tabbed view. Personally I’m not a big fan of meta-search engines, but I know others like it. The tabbed searching works quite well. TorrentTAB site currently searches Isohunt, Mininova, Torrentz, BTjunkie, Meganova, and Torrentspy.

JunkNova.com

JunkNova is a torrent review site that keeps you up to date on all the stuff that’s available on BitTorrent, similar to sites like rlslog and hypoh. JunkNova is brought to you by the makers of TorrentScoop, a Google-powered BitTorent search engine.

MicroTor.org

The last site in our list is Microtor, a site that only indexes TV torrents. MicroTor allows you to browse through the available shows and seasons and they also have a brief plot outline for every TV show.

Do you know any new BitTorrent sites that are worth a visit? Feel free to leave a comment!

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.

TorrentFreak asked Meganova owner Bogaa if these rumors are true. And indeed, Bogaa confirmed the story:

Yes, Targetpoint made an offer to buy Meganova. They offered $20.000, 30% of the ad revenues and an additional $1000 per month. We do however prefer to continue working with Targetpoint on a pay per click basis.

Meganova is not the only BitTorrent site that Targetpoint is interested in. They are currently working with sites like Isohunt, The Piratebay and Mininova. And according to a our source they even have a 37% share in The Piratebay .

It started a couple of months ago when Targetpoint contracted two major adult content BitTorrent sites Empornium and PureTna. Empornium has approximately 650,000 active users; they moved their servers from the US to The Netherlands after the acquisition by Targetpoint in August 2005.

So it seems that Targetpoint is willing to invest in sites that have trouble getting advertisers through other channels such as Google’s Adsense because these sites are (assumed to be) associated with copyright infringement.

Targetpoint was founded in 2004 and is an Israeli company, with servers located in the Netherlands. In these countries offering .torrent files is not considered to be act of copyright infringement.

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