The Pirate Bay Will Stop Serving Torrents

[accadacca]

In a month The Pirate Bay will no longer offer downloads of .torrent files. Instead, the largest torrent site on the Internet will only provide so-called magnet links to its visitors. The first step in this direction was made today with The Pirate Bay replacing the current default torrent download links with magnets. Could this be the end of an era?

http://torrentfreak.com/images/magnetbay.jpg
After half a decade of loyal service, The Pirate Bay shut down its tracker (http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tracker-shuts-down-for-good-091117/)in November 2009.

The Pirate Bay argued that BitTorrent trackers have been made redundant by technologies such as DHT and PEX (http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrents-future-dht-pex-and-magnet-links-explained-091120/). In addition, The Pirate Bay team said that they might move away from torrents entirely and switch to offering magnet links instead.

[Iceaxe]

Pirate Bay has offered Magnets for a couple of years and I have used them. For the average user I don't think you will see any difference. My bit-torrent client, Vuze (http://www.bogley.com/forum/www.vuze.com), can use torrents or magnets interchangeably.

It doesn't say this in the article but I believe the real reason for the switch to magnets is they are much harder for outside interests (Feds, IMDA, Etc) to track.

[Deathcricket]

Pirate Bay has offered Magnets for a couple of years and I have used them. For the average user I don't think you will see any difference. My bit-torrent client, Vuze (http://www.bogley.com/forum/www.vuze.com), can use torrents or magnets interchangeably.

It doesn't say this in the article but I believe the real reason for the switch to magnets is they are much harder for outside interests (Feds, IMDA, Etc) to track.

Bingo! Since they don't actually host the file, only provide a link to where it's hosted, this is also much harder to track down and prosecute as well. Pretty smart IMO.

[Sombeech]

DHT and PEX are great news for the average Torrent user, from what I understand. It's awesome to know this will make it harder for the FEDs to track.

But yeah, most of us won't experience a difference if we're using clients like uTorrent because it's already been using this. Plus I get all mine from www.torrent-finder.info (http://www.torrent-finder.info) which is just an iframe really to other torrent trackers.

As for the Pirate Bay change, I wonder if they just got exhausted with the harrassment from the U.S. Feds which have absolutely ZERO business dealing with them.

[KapitanSparrow]

Sadly, there is not much out there in terms of movies, tv shows or games that I want to download right now :haha:

[Iceaxe]

I wonder if they just got exhausted with the harrassment from the U.S. Feds which have absolutely ZERO business dealing with them.

I disagree.... in that a lot of US intellectual property is being stolen through Pirate Bay.

[Deathcricket]

Sadly, there is not much out there in terms of movies, tv shows or games that I want to download right now :haha:

*Pssst Skyrim Psstttt*

[KapitanSparrow]

*Pssst Skyrim Psstttt*

I need to up my graphics card :haha:

[Don]

I disagree.... in that a lot of US intellectual property is being stolen through Pirate Bay.

But it's users sharing with users. PB may introduce those users, but how is that a criminal act? PB shouldn't be the target.