BitTorrent supersite Mininova has deleted its massive torrent seed database and will now support only legal downloads through its content distribution service.
Visitors to popular BitTorrent hub Mininova this weekend discovered the file-sharing equivalent of a pub with no beer.
Following legal action by Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, Mininova – which had arguably become the world’s largest BitTorrent hub since its founding in early 2005 by five Dutch teenagers – pulled down all illegal torrents overnight.
All that remains are seeds for Mininova’s own legal content distribution service, launched in 2007 and used by several Dutch bands, video-makers and even a TV station.
A posting on Mininova’s
official blog indicates that while appeal against the court ruling is under consideration, “unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the content distribution service.”
At the time of the court ruling in August this year, Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer observed that “the result of this ruling for Mininova is that we have to reevaluate our business operations. At this time, we cannot determine what this will actually entail or imply.” An option for Mininova to filter all uploaded seeds in order to block illegal content proved unworkable.
The race is now on for another BitTorrent hub to claim Mininova’s crown and its estimated five million users per day.
Readers: which is your favourite BitTorrent site in the post-Mininova era?