BTjunkie 'voluntarily' shuts down

[Yip Yip]

But honestly, the filehosters/torrent sites should stop behaving like sissies just because ONE site has been taken down, and from what it seems, the feds mainly were able to arrest them because they were as stupid as having servers in the USA (not very smart) + doing money laundry (doubt they would've been able to actually shut them down completely if it weren't for this... and them being not very discreet about knowing of what they hosted)

Yes, Kim Dotcrook was involved in insider trading and other criminal activities not related to MU, which brought heat down on file sharing and I hope he tosses plenty of salads in prison for causing this apocalypse.

[defunct32]

It's very depressing, I'm sure whatever left of torrent sites now it will be gone soon. *sigh*.

[Digifiend]

More torrent problems: Toei Animation has sued hundreds of Bitorrent users who downloaded an episode of One Piece.

[Tsukasa01]

where did you read that from ? Torrents are on a downward slope to destruction it seems

[gezegond]

where did you read that from ? Torrents are on a downward slope to destruction it seems

Public ones. Private ones will last much longer, I hope.

[Knightshade]

It's very depressing, I'm sure whatever left of torrent sites now it will be gone soon. *sigh*.

where did you read that from ? Torrents are on a downward slope to destruction it seems

Public ones. Private ones will last much longer, I hope.

For you guys, and anyone interested in the future of torrents, and keeping them alive.
A very interesting read.

Spoiler warning:

While the file-sharing ecosystem is currently filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology continue to work on their decentralized BitTorrent network. Their Tribler client doesn’t require torrent sites to find or download content, as it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication. “The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down,” the lead researcher says.

The Tribler BitTorrent client is no newcomer to the BitTorrent scene. It has been in development for more than 5 years and has delivered many innovative features, which have mostly been ignored by the masses.

Today, however, Tribler is more relevant than ever before.

Developed by a team of researchers at Delft University of Technology, the main goal is to come up with a robust implementation of BitTorrent that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, Tribler is designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.

“Our key scientific quest is facilitating unbounded information sharing,” Tribler leader Dr. Pouwelse tells TorrentFreak.

“We simply don’t like unreliable servers. With Tribler we have achieved zero-seconds downtime over the past six years, all because we don’t rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers or search portals.”

So how does it work?

Like many other BitTorrent clients, Tribler has a search box at the top of the application. However, the search results that appear when users type in a keyword don’t come from a central index. Instead, they come directly from other peers.

Downloading a torrent is also totally decentralized. When a user clicks on one of the search results, the meta-data is pulled in from another peer and the download starts immediately. Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses regular BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also continue downloading when a central tracker goes down.

The same is true for spam control. Where most torrent sites have a team of moderators to delete viruses, malware and fake files, Tribler uses crowd-sourcing to keep the network clean. Content is verified by user generated “channels”, which can be “liked” by others. When more people like a channel, the associated torrents get a boost in the search results.

The latest addition to Tribler is a Wikipedia-style editing system dubbed “Open2Edit,” where users have the option to edit names and descriptions of torrents in public channels. All without a central server, totally decentralized.


According to Dr. Pouwelse, Tribler is fully capable of resisting any pressure from outside, and it will still work when all torrent sites and trackers are gone. It simply can’t be shutdown, blocked or censored, whatever laws politicians may come up with.

“The only way to take it down is to take The Internet down.” Pouwelse told us.

One thing that could theoretically cause issues, is the capability for starting users to find new peers. To be on the safe side the Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute lists of active downloaders.

“Together with software bugs and a code cleanup, that is now our last known weakness,” says Pouwelse.

While the Tribler client only has a few thousand users at the moment, for avid file-sharers it must be a relief to know that it’s out there. No matter what crazy laws may pass in the future, people will always be able to share.

Those who want to give it a spin are welcome to try Tribler. It’s completely Open Source and has a version for Windows, Mac and Linux.

[Nick Naim]

Bow your heads, cowards.

[Grouch]

For you guys, and anyone interested in the future of torrents, and keeping them alive.
A very interesting read.

Spoiler warning:

While the file-sharing ecosystem is currently filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology continue to work on their decentralized BitTorrent network. Their Tribler client doesn’t require torrent sites to find or download content, as it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication. “The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down,” the lead researcher says.

The Tribler BitTorrent client is no newcomer to the BitTorrent scene. It has been in development for more than 5 years and has delivered many innovative features, which have mostly been ignored by the masses.

Today, however, Tribler is more relevant than ever before.

Developed by a team of researchers at Delft University of Technology, the main goal is to come up with a robust implementation of BitTorrent that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, Tribler is designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.

“Our key scientific quest is facilitating unbounded information sharing,” Tribler leader Dr. Pouwelse tells TorrentFreak.

“We simply don’t like unreliable servers. With Tribler we have achieved zero-seconds downtime over the past six years, all because we don’t rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers or search portals.”

So how does it work?

Like many other BitTorrent clients, Tribler has a search box at the top of the application. However, the search results that appear when users type in a keyword don’t come from a central index. Instead, they come directly from other peers.

Downloading a torrent is also totally decentralized. When a user clicks on one of the search results, the meta-data is pulled in from another peer and the download starts immediately. Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses regular BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also continue downloading when a central tracker goes down.

The same is true for spam control. Where most torrent sites have a team of moderators to delete viruses, malware and fake files, Tribler uses crowd-sourcing to keep the network clean. Content is verified by user generated “channels”, which can be “liked” by others. When more people like a channel, the associated torrents get a boost in the search results.

The latest addition to Tribler is a Wikipedia-style editing system dubbed “Open2Edit,” where users have the option to edit names and descriptions of torrents in public channels. All without a central server, totally decentralized.


According to Dr. Pouwelse, Tribler is fully capable of resisting any pressure from outside, and it will still work when all torrent sites and trackers are gone. It simply can’t be shutdown, blocked or censored, whatever laws politicians may come up with.

“The only way to take it down is to take The Internet down.” Pouwelse told us.

One thing that could theoretically cause issues, is the capability for starting users to find new peers. To be on the safe side the Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute lists of active downloaders.

“Together with software bugs and a code cleanup, that is now our last known weakness,” says Pouwelse.

While the Tribler client only has a few thousand users at the moment, for avid file-sharers it must be a relief to know that it’s out there. No matter what crazy laws may pass in the future, people will always be able to share.

Those who want to give it a spin are welcome to try Tribler. It’s completely Open Source and has a version for Windows, Mac and Linux.

sounds like that could be pretty nice.

[overture2112]

sounds like that could be pretty nice.

There's also some other nice social features that were unmentioned, like marking other users as friends and being able to give them more upload priority- which is pretty handy since sometimes I want to send something good I found to a friend who has low upload speed (and thus torrents slowly) but I can't easily help them since sending the file myself is slower than them just torrenting but obviously a hybrid solution would be best.

Also a public wiki type system for editing names, descriptions, etc.

[Knightshade]

There's also some other nice social features that were unmentioned, like marking other users as friends and being able to give them more upload priority- which is pretty handy since sometimes I want to send something good I found to a friend who has low upload speed (and thus torrents slowly) but I can't easily help them since sending the file myself is slower than them just torrenting but obviously a hybrid solution would be best.

thanks for this the article I read did not have this mentioned I did not link to the article since it is on a site that host warez.
that's the main reason I stayed with bitcomet instead of trying tribler.

Also a public wiki type system for editing names, descriptions, etc.

this is in the article I quoted near the bottom on the sentence starting the latest feature it's called open2edit.

[narb79]

Who else is depressed about the current state of the interwebs? Between ISP Data Capping and all the shutdowns........ SNESORAMA down as well... Sorry I like to download old games...

[Knightshade]

Who else is depressed about the current state of the interwebs? Between ISP Data Capping and all the shutdowns........ SNESORAMA down as well... Sorry I like to download old games...

as for the old games you can find just about anything you would want between the forums and the mainsite.

link to the mainsite in case you have never visited it.

[lizard81288]

Wow. People still haven't found the new file sharing site yet. I can see it both ways though. I wouldn't want to go to prison and get anally raped and then shanked by the Mexican gang because I looked at them funny. Then again, MU had things going against it too, like being hosted in the US, and the employees bragging about helping pirates, ect.

I only use torrents when I can't find something elsewhere. Although, for being the internets, i'm surprised we haven't found a foreign site yet to upload files, since we keep saying, one of the issues was, it being hosted in the US.