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Type of site | Torrent index |
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Available in | 5 Languages, primarily French |
Dissolved | June 27, 2019 |
Registration | Optional |
Users | 5 million |
Launched | 2008 |
Current status | ![]() |
Part of a series on |
File sharing |
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File Hosts |
Video sharing sites |
BitTorrent sites |
Media Servers |
Technologies |
File sharing networks |
Academic |
P2P clients |
Anonymous file sharing |
History and societal aspects |
By country or region |
Comparisons |
t411 or Torrent411 was a semi-private BitTorrent tracker website founded in 2008. [1] According to Alexa Internet, it was the 86th most visited website in France in December 2014, and the first in its category. [2]
On the 27th of June 2017, t411 was shut down in a joint operation by French and Swedish police. [3] [4]
In 2006 a BitTorrent tracker named QuebecTorrent [5] (in reference to Quebec) was created. In July 2008, QuebecTorrent was shut down by the Canadian authorities. [6] Shortly after being shut down a clone of the original website was created and named Torrent411. Torrent411 was developed by part of the team that created QuebecTorrent and they maintain the website, torrents, and members. [1] [5] [7] The website's slogan is "Les pages jaunes du torrent", [8] or "The Yellow Pages of the Torrent" in English; the 411 in Torrent411 refers to the "White Pages" telephone directory information number in Canada.
In August 2011 Torrent411 moved to the new domain name t411.me to avoid possible censure by VeriSign, the US company that manages the .com top-level domain.
In June 2013, T411 had surpassed 5 million members, [9] confirming its position as the first francophone tracker.
On October 29, 2014, the site suffered a massive DDOS attack. [10]
On February 20, 2015, t411.me becomes t411.io in response to a threat of blocking the domain name. [11]
On April 2, 2015, a French court ordered the French DNS providers to block t411.me, following a complaint from the SCPP. [12] [13]
On June 27, 2017, t411 was shut down in a joint operation by French and Swedish police.
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.
Mininova was a website offering BitTorrent downloads. Mininova was once one of the largest sites offering torrents of copyrighted material, but in November 2009, following legal action in the Dutch courts, the site operators deleted all torrent files uploaded by regular users including torrents that enabled users to download copyrighted material.
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 August 2, 2007, the domain name was donated to The Pirate Bay, which relaunched the site on August 21, 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.
Torrentz was a Finland-based metasearch engine for BitTorrent, run by an individual known as Flippy, and founded on 24 July 2003. It indexed torrents from various major torrent websites, and offered compilations of various trackers per torrent that were not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker was down, other trackers could do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website in 2012.
OpenBitTorrent is an open BitTorrent tracker project for the BitTorrent protocol.
YourBittorrent is a file sharing website founded as myBittorrent in 2003, the new site yourBittorrent is the result of a split in ownership in 2009. The site is a torrent tracking website for the P2P BitTorrent network. As such it does not host files, but hosts information about the location of these files in an indexed torrent file. These torrent files are read by a client located on an individual's computer.
What.CD was a private, invitation only music BitTorrent tracker and community launched in 2007. The site was shut down on 17 November 2016, after a report that French authorities had seized the site's servers.
EZTV was 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.
KickassTorrents was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking. KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.
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.
Library Genesis (Libgen) is a file-sharing based shadow library website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere. Libgen describes itself as a "links aggregator", providing a searchable database of items "collected from publicly available public Internet resources" as well as files uploaded "from users".
Mp3skull was a website that provided direct download links to MP3 files located on third-party sites. It was founded in 2010 and the site has been the subject of controversy for helping users to find unauthorized copies of copyrighted music.
Putlocker is any of various online file hosting index websites used for streaming entertainment media, particularly films and television series, for free. The initial website originated in the United Kingdom as early as 2011, and grew to receive millions of daily visitors after the shutdown of Megaupload. In May 2016, the website was blocked in the UK by a High Court order, and at its peak prior to a temporary closure in late 2016, Alexa Internet listed Putlocker as ranking among the top 250 most-visited websites worldwide. Putlocker has been reported by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) as a major piracy threat.
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.
YIFY Torrents or YTS was a peer-to-peer release group known for distributing large numbers of movies as free downloads through BitTorrent. YIFY releases were characterised through their small file size, which attracted many downloaders.
123Movies, GoMovies, GoStream, MeMovies or 123movieshub was a network of file streaming websites operating from Vietnam which allowed users to watch films for free. It was called the world's "most popular illegal site" by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in March 2018, before being shut down a few weeks later on foot of a criminal investigation by the Vietnamese authorities. As of July 2022, the network is still active via clone sites.
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