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Official BitTorrent Search Opens
starrsoft writes "The official BitTorrent search has debuted. The search engine was built by BT inventor Bram Cohen. The question? Will he get sued? The BT search seems to be down right now. (It'll really be down after this story is posted...) Spiegel has more (En): "Naturally other sites such as Bitoogle, Isohunt, SuprNova or Torrentspy have tried before, but either they became fast a goal of legal attacks on the part of the industry or they furnished rather durchwachsene [??] results. BitTorrent search however proves with first tests [that it is] as...Google...fast. The results come from a large number [of] more well-known and unknown... sites, and...permits sufficient restricting to the inquiry, in order to obtain really relevant results.""
BitTorrent search however proves with first tests [that it is] as...Google...fast.
:-/
;-)
So fast that the browser times out on a search for "mozilla". Hopefully they'll get those kinks worked out soon.
Bandwidth generously provided by Hot or Not
That explains everything.
Will he get sued?
I still think that anyone trying to sue Bittorrent or a generic search engine would have a hard time of it. Bittorrent has so many legal uses that it just isn't funny. Here's some example of legal torrents:
Privateer Remake
OpenOffice
Star Trek: New Voyages (legal fan made)
FreeBSD
Star Wars: Revelations (legal fan made)
Xandros Free Edition
Mozilla Firefox
Doom 3 Demo
America's Army (now for Linux and OSX)
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Elitetorrents.org gets closed by the feds: http://www.ice.gov/graphics/news/newsreleases/arti cles/starwars052505.htm
"durchwachsen" means "marbled" or "streaky" when applied to meat, but can also be used figuratively, meaning "mixed", "so-so" etc.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Look at the ToS, it has some.. intresting stuff.
2. Online Conduct
You agree that you will not use the Site or the Services:
* to develop, generate, upload, post, display, transmit, disseminate or store information that: (A) infringes any third party's intellectual property or other proprietary rights, including, but not limited to, using third party copyrighted materials, without appropriate permission, using third party trademarks without appropriate permission or attribution, or using or distributing third party information (whether or not protected as a trade secret) in violation of a duty of confidentiality or otherwise; (B) is or, in BitTorrent's sole discretion, would have the tendency to be, defamatory, libelous, harassing, pornographic, an invasion of privacy, obscene, abusive, illegal, racist, offensive or harmful or otherwise objectionable; (C) constitutes unsolicited promotions, advertising or solicitations for funds, good or services, including junk mail and spam; (D) otherwise violates this Terms of Service in any way; or (E) obstructs or otherwise interferes with the normal performance of another person's use of the Sites or the Services;
Seems they are covering a few legal holes.. but will it stand against RIAA/MPAA's pack of lawyers?
I like muppets.
You can always append filetype:torrent to your google searches. For example:
+ ubuntu
http://www.google.com/search?q=filetype%3Atorrent
Ryan
God damn thats good service. It's already available. Kudos to Chad Walstrom! Click on File Sharing here.
We have a new expression: zero-day features!
so if i were to post a link to the DeCSS code a couple years ago. i wouldn't get sued, because i have only posted a "road sign" to the code?
Someone further up in the thread put it perfectly. I believe the metaphor went like this -
If you asked me for some illegal drugs and I said, "Sure, here you go," I'd most definitely be going to court over that. However if you asked me for some illegal drugs and I said "Joe Bloggs on the other side of town might be able to put you in touch with someone who has the drugs," the case against me would be much less concrete.
In the case of the torrent search engine, you aren't pointing someone directly at the illegal goods. Far from it. Years ago if you linked directly to DeCSS, you're sued. However if you linked to a website that had links to DeCSS you'd have a hard time finding someone that could successfully prosecute you. With torrent search it's more like linking to a website(the torrent) that links to a website(the hosting BT user) that links to the file(the file on the host's compy).
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
What makes this so amazing is, this was not shut down because the RIAA sued, or because they made threats. The FBI raided the house, arrested the owner, and shut the website down. I wonder what the FBI will do with the server logs??
This has to be the dumbest waste of taxpayer money ever. Lets go after places that share music and tv shows.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
so, um, whats the catch here.. just use google with 'appropriate search term' and 'torrent'. gives tons of links to the file in question which work as well (or not)
From the article: U.S. law enforcers said on Wednesday that they have shut down a computer network that distributed illegal copies of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" before it appeared in movie theaters.
Federal agents executed 10 search warrants and seized the main server computer in a network that allowed people to download nearly 18,000 movies and software programs, including many current releases, the FBI and Homeland Security Department said.
The Elite Torrents network, found online at www.elitetorrents.org, relied on a technology called BitTorrent that allows users to quickly download digital movies and other large files by copying them from many computers at once.
The network signed up 133,000 members who collectively downloaded 2.1 million files, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Homeland Security Department.
Visitors to the Web site on Wednesday saw a notice that read, "This site has been permanently shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."
San Francisco Photographers
Took some time to load thre results (page loading is fast but searching is slow). Looks quite ok in that it has a clean interface without tons of ads. However, there is one major flaw: No seeds / peers stats. You only get a "Speed Estimate" which was for all of the torrents my search returned: "Fast". It was a search I recently did on IsoHunt and the results may have been seeded but only with a few (less than 10) seeds and peers. This is far from being "fast" in my opinion.
This also leads to the question how often the data is updated. Since no actual seed / peer stats are displayed, I guess the database is update not that often. The other torrent search sites aren't updated that often, either but it seems to me that the official bittorrent search is updated even more seldomly.
This pretty much makes it uninteresting for me. I want to know how many seeds and peers a torrent has so I can judge the speed to expect and how long the torrent will still be alive. A loose term like "Fast" doesn't cut it for me in that case.
That javascript isn't ever refered to in the body of the page. It's never called. At least not as far as I can see. The form certainly doesn't. Maybe it's an artifact of the development or something.
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