BitTorrent is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner.
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 (P2P) 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.
Vuze is a BitTorrent client used to transfer files via the BitTorrent protocol. Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content. Content is presented through channels and categories containing TV shows, music videos, movies, video games, series and others. Additionally, if users prefer to publish their original content, they may earn money from it.
BTJunkie was a BitTorrent web search engine operating between 2005 and 2012. It used a web crawler to search for torrent files from other torrent sites and store them on its database. It had nearly 4,000,000 active torrents and about 4,200 torrents added daily, making it the largest torrent site indexer on the web in 2006. During 2011, BTJunkie was the 5th most popular BitTorrent site.
Oink's Pink Palace was a prominent BitTorrent tracker which operated from 2004 to 2007. Following a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the site was shut down on 23 October 2007, by British and Dutch police agencies. These music industry organisations described OiNK as an "online pirate pre-release music club", whereas former users described it as one of the world's largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. About a month before the shut-down, music magazine Blender elected OiNK's creator, British software engineer Alan Ellis, to their The Powergeek 25 — the Most Influential People in Online Music list. Alan Ellis was tried for conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown court, the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing, and found not guilty on 15 January 2010.
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 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.
BTDigg is the first Mainline DHT search engine. It participated in the BitTorrent DHT network, supporting the network and making correspondence between magnet links and a few torrent attributes which are indexed and inserted into a database. For end users, BTDigg provides a full-text database search via Web interface. The web part of its search system retrieved proper information by a user's text query. The Web search supported queries in European and Asian languages. The project name was an acronym of BitTorrent Digger. It went offline in June 2016, reportedly due to index spam. The site returned later in 2016 at a dot-com domain, went offline again and is now online.. The btdig.com site has its torrent crawler's source source listed on Github, dhtcrawler2.
μTorrent, or uTorrent is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. With over 150 million users it is the most widely used BitTorrent client outside China; globally only behind Xunlei. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner. The miner was removed in later versions, but had already done irreversible damage to μTorrent's reputation.
RARBG is a website that provides torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. From 2014 onward, RARBG has repeatedly appeared in TorrentFreak's yearly list of most visited torrent websites. It was ranked 4th as of April 2020. The website does not allow users to upload their own torrents.
1337x is a 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 third most popular torrent website as of 2021.
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 consistent HD video quality in a 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 April 2021, the network is still active via clone sites.
