BitTorrent Community After SuprNova Shutdown

prostoalex writes "Folks from MonkeyMethods.org have researched the BitTorrent world after many popular destinations (SuprNova among others) have been shut down. Since BitTorrent always relied on the presence of trackers and servers hosting them, MonkeyMethods decided to see whether the shutdown impacted the BitTorrent community. So has the shutdown of centralized SuprNova had any impact? "In this case, centralization is a feature, not a necessity. Just look at del.icio.us most popular and you'll see BitTorrent sites every couple days, as people uncover new places to find the files they're looking for.""

Comments

Not really affected at all.

[bob301]

The only effect SuprNova's shutdown had on me was to force redundancy on me- now, I get my files from a variety of sources. Sure, it's a little bit harder to browse what's new from 5 different pages, but it also keeps me focused on what I went looking for in the first place.

One falls, others rise

[Stevyn]

I used to use Suprnova. Then it went down. Now I use Lokitorrent and I get much better transfer rates. It just goes to show the RIAA/MPAA that when you stop one website, another will take it's place and probably do better. This is the same as Napster to Kazaa.

I understand that Loki was around while Suprnova was still up, but I never used it. Now I use it.

Re:first

[Lord_Dweomer]

What a troll...but I'll bite.

Ok, who cares how this illegal copyright infringement community is affected? How about the members of that community? I'm sure there's TONS of people on /. who have used those sites, and this is VERY relevant to us, whether you agree with our ethics or not.

You know, I'd really like to see some sources for your complaint of terminology used for movie and music copyright infringement vs. that of software infringement, because frankly I can recall seeing EVERYBODY being called swindlers, thieves, pirates, etc. I mean, didn't the RIAA start that campaign?

And if you already own a copy of the work, then it is not illegal. I know I've downloaded a movie on more than one occasion when my DVD got scratched beyond repair.

Comparison to Napster

[Lord_Dweomer]

This is kind of like what happened when Napster first went down. Everybody panicked, but once people started communicating, people started to learn where html sites were that linked to songs or FTP servers. Then Kazaa came along and all was good again.

But once all the other P2P apps came along, again we lost some of the consolidation of files. But people still adapted, and people began learning what networks were good for certain types of files.

Today with bit torrent, we are able to have entire trackers devoted to types of content, such as anime, tv shows, etc, and even before Suprnova and others went down, I still checked a few BT sites for all my files. However, I have to admit, it was pretty damn convenient to just go to Suprnova (which I think easily had the best interface and site mapping) and take a gander at what had been added that day.

I hope mininova takes off, because I enjoy it, but it really doesn't have the traffic or variety it needs yet to be a big competitor. Torrentreactor is still going strong, and so are several others. Frankly, I wish there was a markup language for bit torrent files that could include info such as what type of file it was (tv show, movie, song, album, etc), and possibly what season/episode, recording method, duration, etc. That way that info could be used with an RSS feed and I could REALLY tailor a personal site to all my needs without having to check each of the seperate sites.

Re:SUPPLY AND DEMAND

[G-funk]

Movies will still get made, but they will be low budget indie-type movies made by artists for art's sake. And they will, 99% of them, suck donkey dick. I've seen low budget films, and they are just BAD. Good movies require millions of dollars to make. Name the last 10 really good movies you saw. Or 20, or 50. How many were low budget (something you or I could make) and how many had budget in the tens of millions?

You've already answered this. Supply and demand. If enough people really want to see $100 million plus movies, they'll pay to see them. They'll realise pretty quickly that if they don't pay to see spider man, there's not gonna be a spider man 2. And if they refuse to pay, then they didn't want to see it so badly in the first place. Most importantly: All the future unmade movies have no right to exist. If the movie industry ends, so be it. I like big some big budget flicks, and I pay to see them at the cinema, even tho I have a broadband connection and azureus and I don't have to.

Besides wich even if copyright were thrown out monday morning, the ??AA are still free to excercise whatever technological means they please to stop (most) people copying their garbage.

isoHunt's .torrent index stats

[AmVidia HQ]

With my work on indexing BitTorrent sites, I can shed some light: nothing changed.

From http://s3.isohunt.com/stats.php?mode=btSites

You can see smaller sites on the list relative to Suprnova (it had more than 30,000 torrents online at any one time), but total torrents available didn't change (60,000+ online). As I keep adding more sites, index size is getting bigger than before SN died actually, online torrent count is close to 70,000. Peers also remain at above the 1 million mark.