Wow, what a month this has been in the world of torrenting. First, KickAss Torrent was shut down by the FBI. That was a huge blow as the site had taken over from The Pirate Bay as the largest torrent hosting site in the world. That wasn’t all that has happened this month, it got worse!
Torrentz, meta-search engine, shuts down
My personal favorite way to find torrents, the meta-search engine Torrentz.eu, has shut down. Absolutely no official statement has been made by the site’s owners anywhere. There has been no announcement of arrests being made. Nothing. All that you know for sure is this when you visit the homepage:
Did you notice how it says “Torrentz WAS” in the description? They are referring to themselves in the past tense. Finito. Clicking into the site you see this:
I don’t want your love, Torrentz! I want, well, torrents. And want to know what happened because, technically, you weren’t a hosting site for torrents. The best content discovery tool I knew of, gone. Over. Finito. What a shame. Those of us here at BVP have tried reaching out to Torrentz, but no reply has been received.
This is a huge blow to the torrenting community after KATs has been shutdown. Another big torrenting site will step up, and it’s starting to look like Extratorrents may be the one to fill that hole. But…
Facebook deletes multiple ExtraTorrent Facebook pages
I was a fan of the ExtraTorrent Facebook page, seeing what they had going on, for quite some time now. I went to go and check it yesterday and there was nothing to be found! Just that annoying ‘like’ thumb with the bandage.
There were thousands of fans on that Facebook page. Fans then tried to start new pages, I read on their forums via a private message that over 6 had been started and shut down by Facebook. Poking around on the ET page you’ll find a link to a new page with just 120 fans as of this writing:
It’s not easy to be a torrent site this last month! How long this new page lasts is anyone’s guess. But the ban on ET links continues:
Yep, it’s not easy! I’ve managed a page that was shut down entirely from linking by Facebook before. It is not fun and there is little that you can do. Keep visiting the ET website, there’s no telling how long it will be up for.
Ok, I really need to update my list of the 10 best torrent sites. There’s only 8 of them left now…
Feature image via Kaspars Grinvalds / Shutterstock