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Type of site | BitTorrent tracker |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| URL | openbittorrent |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | No |
| Current status | Offline (Web) Offline (Tracker) |
OpenBitTorrent (commonly abbreviated OBT) is an open BitTorrent tracker project for the BitTorrent protocol.
OpenBitTorrent's initiative to provide a free, stable service with no ties to indexing sites or even hosting torrent files has been a public success and it has spawned several copies with almost identical services.
OpenBitTorrent has been suspected of being a part of, or a side project of, The Pirate Bay, because it was observed early on that both sites used the same trackers. [1] The OpenBitTorrent project has countered by stating that the sites merely shared a tracker cluster operated by DCP Networks and Fredrik Neij during a startup period (February through August 2009).
On 22 May 2010, the OpenBitTorrent tracker was shut down. [2] This was a result of a case against The Pirate Bay by many major Hollywood studios. Later the tracker came back online.
OpenBitTorrent is powered by the opentracker software. The Pirate Bay also used the opentracker software, before they shut down their own tracker. [3]
From 16 July to 2 August 2012, OpenBitTorrent went offline protesting the lack of adoption of a protocol improvement by the makers of uTorrent, that was proposed by Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij. As a result of the protest, many people had trouble downloading files on BitTorrent. [4] [5]
From 5 December to 30 December 2014, the OpenBitTorrent website and tracker was unreachable, this may have been linked to the arrest of Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij. [6]
On 5 May 2015, the OpenBitTorrent tracker was back online although the website still did not display the tracker address. [7]
The website was shut down again in July 2017, but came back online for a while in late 2018 [8] [9] and was unresponsive again in late 2019.
In 2020, the website was redirecting to Opentracker, another torrent tracker. However a year later in January 2021, OpenBitTorrent came back online again with its own tracker and website.
MediaDefender, Inc. was a company that fought copyright infringement that offered services designed to prevent alleged copyright infringement using peer-to-peer distribution. They used unusual tactics such as flooding peer-to-peer networks with decoy files that tie up users' computers and bandwidth. MediaDefender was based in Los Angeles, California in the United States. As of March 2007, the company had approximately 60 employees and used 2,000 servers hosted in California with contracts for 9 Gbit/s of bandwidth.
The Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland is a stichting in which the recording industry and movie studios of the Netherlands participate.
The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer, file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
This is a timeline of events in the history of networked file sharing.
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij, alias TiAMO, is the co-founder of The Pirate Bay, and the Swedish Internet service provider and web hosting company PRQ. Neij was one of the defendants in The Pirate Bay Trial which began on 16 February 2009. He and other operators of The Pirate Bay were charged with assisting users in copyright infringing practices. His time during the aforementioned trial has been captured in the documentary film TPB AFK by Simon Klose.
Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the former co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde.
PRQ is a Swedish Internet service provider and web hosting company created in 2004.
isoHunt was an online torrent files index and repository, where visitors could browse, search, download or upload torrents of various digital content of mostly entertainment nature. The website was taken down in October 2013 as a result of a legal action from the MPAA; by the end of October 2013 however, two sites with content presumably mirrored from isohunt.com were reported in media. One of them – isohunt.to – became a de facto replacement of the original site. It is not associated in any way with the old staff or owners of the site, and is to be understood as a separate continuation.
Suprnova.org was a Slovenia-based website that distributed BitTorrent trackers for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Started in late 2002 by Andrej Preston and for a while considered the most popular BitTorrent search engine, Suprnova.org closed in late 2004 after legal threats. The site operators supported the development of the eXeem BitTorrent client software, deeming a fixed website too difficult to operate in the present legal climate. On 2 August 2007, the domain name was donated to The Pirate Bay, which relaunched the site on 21 August 2007.
Demonoid is a BitTorrent tracker and website founded in 2003 to facilitate file-sharing related discussion and provide a searchable index of torrent files. The site underwent intermittent periods of extended downtime in its history due to the occasional need to move the server, generally caused by cancellation of ISP service due to local political pressure.
The use of the BitTorrent protocol for the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted content generated a variety of novel legal issues. While the technology and related platforms are legal in many jurisdictions, law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies are attempting to address this avenue of copyright infringement. Notably, the use of BitTorrent in connection with copyrighted material may make the issuers of the BitTorrent file, link or metadata liable as an infringing party under some copyright laws. Similarly, the use of BitTorrent to procure illegal materials could potentially create liability for end users as an accomplice.
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, alias brokep, is a Swedish entrepreneur and politician. He is best known for being a co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, an illegal BitTorrent search engine. He is an equality advocate and has expressed concerns over issues of centralization of power to the European Union in his blog. Sunde also participates in the Pirate Party of Finland and describes himself as a socialist. In April 2017, Sunde founded Njalla, a privacy oriented domain name registrar, hosting provider and VPN provider.
The Pirate Bay raid took place on 31 May 2006 in Stockholm, when The Pirate Bay, a Swedish website that indexes torrent files, was raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days. Upon reopening, the site's number of visitors more than doubled, the increased popularity attributed to greater exposure through the media coverage, which is an example of the Streisand effect.
The Pirate Bay trial was a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay. The criminal charges were supported by a consortium of intellectual rights holders led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), who filed individual civil compensation claims against the owners of The Pirate Bay.
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard is a 2013 Swedish documentary film directed and produced by Simon Klose. It focuses on the lives of the three founders of The Pirate Bay – Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm – and the Pirate Bay trial. Filming began sometime in 2008, and concluded on 28 February 2012.
EZTV is a TV torrent distribution group founded in May 2005 and dissolved in April 2015, after a hostile takeover of their domains and brand by "EZCLOUD LIMITED". It quickly became the most visited torrent site for TV shows.
BayFiles was a file-hosting website created by two of the founders of The Pirate Bay.
Popcorn Time is a multi-platform, free software BitTorrent client that includes an integrated media player. The application provides a piracy-based alternative to subscription-based video streaming services such as Netflix. Popcorn Time uses sequential downloading to stream video listed by several torrent websites, and third-party trackers can also be added manually. The legality of the software depends on the jurisdiction.
1337x is an online website that provides a directory of torrent files and magnet links used for peer-to-peer file sharing through the BitTorrent protocol. According to the TorrentFreak news blog, 1337x is the second-most popular torrent website as of 2023.
ExtraTorrent was an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Until its shut down it was among the top 5 BitTorrent indexes in the world, where visitors could search, download and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
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