A few weeks ago the Pirate Bay crew hinted that ‘others’ were working on a new torrent hosting service that will host torrents for other torrent sites, without providing a search function.
Together with open tracker initiatives like OpenBitTorrent, torrent storage services such as Torrage could provide the building blocks for many new torrent index sites. This week the idea became reality with the launch of Torrage, which is already in use by some of BitTorrent’s most reputable sources.
The site, which also allows individual users to store torrents online, is hosting hundreds of thousands of torrents already. It is currently in use by Suprnova and the new and improved EZTV site. To get started, Torrage has an API and some example code available for torrent sites owners.
Once the torrent files are uploaded they can be accessed through a url that is based on the info_hash value of the torrent. “You can not search or list torrent files that are stored here, you can only access them if you already know the info_hash value of the torrent you want to download,” the Torrage site explains.
TorrentFreak spoke to several torrent site owners who all agreed that it is a welcome addition to the range of tools they have available now, and we can expect to see more sites with Torrage powered download links in the near future.
Without having to operate a tracker and store the .torrent files, maintaining a torrent site will be less complicated and much cheaper. This aside, some might argue that this decentralized setup will reduce the legal liability for site owners since their part in the BitTorrent chain has been significantly reduced.
Whether the various copyright holders and anti-piracy watchdogs such as BREIN, IFPI and the MPAA will agree with this assessment remains to be seen. Regardless of what they think, Torrage is a service that has the potential to help out many torrent sites, old and new.
