DamnedIfIknow used our news submit to let us know that since the original shutdown of Napster, the music and movie industry are effectively playing a long game of Whac-A-Mole, shutting down one big site after another as new ones pop up. Their intention was to drive people to legal alternatives, however, like the Whac-A-Mole game, once one site is hit, another site springs up. The only difference is that each new one is an improvement over the last one. Several examples of P2P sites and servers shut down include AudioGalaxy, Sharereactor, LokiTorrent and Razorback2.
The shutdown of the original major BitTorrent website Suprnova turned out no different. At its time, it was seen as a big loss for its users, however it did not take long for its former users to start jumping to other BitTorrent sites. For example, Mininova only just started after Suprnova went down and now its popularity has already spiked above that of Suprnova. However, Mininova is not the only popular BitTorrent site as many others including TorrentSpy and The Pirate Bay are doing pretty well also.
Unlike most file sharing applications where the Application indexes and lists which files the user is sharing, it is very difficult to tell what files a given user is sharing over BitTorrent, making it more difficult to determine which users have the largest number of shared files. Also, due to the nature of how BitTorrent works, it is much more difficult for the music and movie industries to try testing files to see which are copyright without them also breaching copyright by sharing out the content as it downloads.
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Over time, several popular sites absorbed the Suprnova refugees and more - growing to nearly the size of Suprnova at its peak. Mininova is currently the largest torrent site, with a size that even exceeds that of the once-mighty Suprnova. That's quite an impressive feat for a website that only got started shortly after Suprnova's closure in December 2004. |
It looks like BitTorrent technology is here to stay for a long time, particularly as the original author is working with the movie industry to put its software to practical legal use. However, with an increasing number of BitTorrent websites springing up, it would take the shutting down of a lot of BitTorrent websites simultaneously to have any significant impact. For example, if the Mininova, TorrentSpy and The Pirate Bay were shut down together, give it a few months and there will be another handful of BitTorrent sites reaching (or exceeding) the popularity of these.
DamnedIfIknow wrote: What a suprise. Take down one site and several more pop up. Kinda reminds me of the "Whack a Mole" game. 🙂
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Source: P2P Core
