Torrent

.torrent files are basically BitTorrent’s equivalent to ed2k links used in eDonkey network. In essence, .torrent files include instructions for BitTorrent -compatible P2P clients where to find the “tracker” for the downloaded file, hashed checksum that verifies for the client that it is actually downloading the correct file, the full size of the file and the filename of the file.

So, essentially .torrent files are very, very small files that simply contain some textual data about the file itself. Thus, downloading the torrent file itself takes only matter of seconds, if not milliseconds, but it is not the file that is downloaded from the P2P network. Instead, .torrent files are typically hosted on just standard web servers and can be even passed via email. But in a computer with a BitTorrent -compatible client installed in it, launching a .torrent file typically starts a process where the BitTorrent -compatible client first contacts the tracker described in the .torrent file and if the tracker server is found and “seeds” (people sharing the file in question) are available, launches a download process of the file described in the .torrent file.

To use .torrent files in order to download files from BitTorrent P2P network, you need to have a BitTorrent -compatible client installed on your computer. Some of the clients are available here:

BitTorrent (the original client, open source)
ABC (open source)
Azureus (open source)
BitComet (open source)
BitTornado (open source)
G3 Torrent (open source)

First of all is : http://www.torrentspy.com/

TorrentSpy, formerly one of the most popular BitTorrent sites on the Internet, has been permanently shut down. After two years of court room drama, TorrentSpy lost the case against MPAA in last December. This however, was not the reason for shutdown. According to TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell, the decision was made by the site’s administration to ensure the anonymity and privacy of former users.

TorrentSpy was found guilty without evidence that the court claimed were destroyed on purpose. TorrentSpy was defending theirselves, to no avail, by saying the actions were made to secure user privacy.

The greeting at torrentspy.com says, “Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users – permanent shutdown.”

TorrentSpy is certainly not alone with legal issues. Amongst the ones in the line of fire is The Pirate Bay which is currently waiting for court hearing. “Today all big torrent sites are pressured somehow,” said TPB admin Brokep. Brokep told TorrentFreak that TorrentSpy was closed because of the economical reasons of an admin, nothing more. He also convinces that this will not be the case with TPB.

Torrentspy.com – was a popular BitTorrent indexing Web Site. It tracked torrent files (which were hosted externally) and provided a forum to comment on them. It also integrated Digg-like user-driven content site ShoutWire’s feed into its front page. In August 2007 there were more than 1,000,000 torrents indexed with thousands of new torrents indexed every day.

The Motion Picture Association of America filed a lawsuit in February 2006 for TorrentSpy facilitating copyright infringement as many torrents on its site were copyrighted films. In December 2007 the court ruled against TorrentSpy for “widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in an effort to hide evidence of such destruction.”On March 24, 2008 facing further fines for not cooperating with the court, TorrentSpy shut itself down.

On May 7, 2008, a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay the Motion Picture Association of America $110 million for infringement of thousands of copyrighted film and TV shows. In a four-page final ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper entered the multimillion-dollar judgment against TorrentSpy parent company Valence Media for willfully inducing, contributing and vicariously allowing copyright infringement on its Web site. Cooper also issued a permanent injunction against the Web site, which shut down March 24. The MPAA, which represents the Hollywood studios, filed suit against TorrentSpy in February 2006, claiming that the site’s torrent files were illegally uploaded. “This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites,” MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said. “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios.” Whether the MPAA will collect the $110 million from TorrentSpy remains to be seen. Court records show that Valence and TorrentSpy principals Justin Bunnell and Wes Parker have filed for bankruptcy. In May 2005, the site was forced to remove all torrents of Star Wars: Episode III after a stolen workprint of the film was leaked to the internet.

Shut down : On March 24, 2008, TorrentSpy’s servers were shut down, shortly after a message was posted commenting on the end of TorrentSpy:

“Friends of TorrentSpy,

We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.
The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.
Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users – permanent shutdown.

It was a wild ride,

The TorrentSpy Team

‘Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.’ – Justice William O. Douglas“

Several days after the shut down of TorrentSpy, former employee Jason Hughes introduced his own bittorrent site movieTorrents. TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay $110m (£56m) in damages to the Motion Picture Association of America for copyright infringement.

The second will be : http://thepiratebay.org/

The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) is a Swedish website that serves as an index for torrent files that it tracks. It bills itself as “the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker” and is ranked 91 (as of 16 July 2008) in the Alexa ranking list. Initially established in November 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån (”The Piracy Bureau”), it has been operating as a separate organization since October 2004. The site is currently run by Gottfrid Svartholm (”anakata”), Fredrik Neij (”TiAMO”) and Peter Sunde (”brokep”).^{[citation needed]}

According to the Los Angeles Times The Pirate Bay is “one of the world’s largest facilitators of illegal downloading”, and “the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright — or pro-piracy — movement.”

On 31 May 2006, the site’s servers, located in Stockholm, were 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. The raid, alleged by Pirate Bay to be politically motivated and under pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA),was reported as a success by the MPAA in the immediate aftermath, but with the site being restored within days and the raising of the debate in Swedish culture, The Pirate Bay and other commentators considered the raid “highly unsuccessful”. On 31 January 2008, Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four of the individuals behind The Pirate Bay for “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws”.

Current setup

Currently TPB runs Lighttpd and PHP on its dynamic front ends, MySQL and MySQL-proxy on the two database back ends, Sphinx on the search system, Memcache for caching SQL queries and PHP-sessions, and Varnish in front of Lighttpd for caching static content. TPB currently consists of 24 dedicated servers including six dynamic web fronts, two databases and eight BitTorrent trackers.

Old information on the hardware used by TPB can be found here along with some images taken before the raid.

Trackers

On 7 December 2007, The Pirate Bay finished the move from Hypercube to Opentracker as its BitTorrent tracking software, also enabling the use of the UDP tracker protocol for which Hypercube lacked support. It is reported that their trackers currently (December 2007) answer about 17,000 announce requests per second.

Now let’s go to Romania :

http://torrents.czone.ro/

The big question is  :  In Romania is legal ??

While some ISPs are busy finding ways to log file sharing traffic to provide evidence for law enforcement authorities and others are simply blocking any P2P traffic, a small romanian ISP, Czone attract users with torrent. 81.181.111.20  torrents.czone.ro .

Top 25 Public sites

Rank # Torrent Site Alexa Rank (Dec 07) Alexa Rank (Mar 08) Change (%)