Angus Kidman09 January 2008, 5:25 AM
A new BitTorrent aggregator has glossy web 2.0 touches and more than a passing reference to YouTube.
What do you get if you cross YouTube with BitTorrent?
(A) A nifty search aggregator for locating torrents?
(B) A huge legal headache?
(C) Another hugely popular web site with no possible commercial potential
(D) All of the above?
Whether you chose (D) as the correct answer or not, you might want to join the masses flocking to YouTorrent.com http://www.youtorrent.com, a torrent search engine which claims to have attracted more than 150,000 searches a day in its first three days of operation.
YouTorrent aggregates results from a dozen separate torrent search sites, including the Big Two of the torrent-swapping world: Mininova and The Pirate Bay, and lists results in a sortable format including date of origin, number of seeds and number of peers.
The interface features the usual swish Web 2.0 touches, including a list of recent searches which largely demonstrate that piracy addicts aren't big on spell-checking. Fortunately, for people too dumb to add a P to 'The Simsons Movie', the site also offers a list of related searches that includes obvious spelling corrections.
YouTorrent sports a hefty legal disclaimer which argues that the site shouldn't be used for copyright violations, and bravely if futilely claims that as an aggregator, it's not obliged to block access to potentially copyright-violating torrents. (Let's face it, there'd be nothing left to aggregate if that happened.)
Anonymity for the developers seems to be at a premium. The domain (and its twin YouTorrent.org) are registered via Moniker Online Services, and the site appears to be hosted in New Jersey. Doubtless mindful of the legal letters that are probably being prepared even as you read this, the About Us section of the site remains effectively blank.
The "we're not responsible for the content people access" argument hasn't proved particularly successful in the past -- just ask the team behind Kazaa -- so just how long the site will continue remains debatable.
Even assuming it manages to dodge the legal bombshells, turning it into a money-making proposition could be tricky. As user numbers go up, bandwidth and server costs will also inevitably expand. Selling advertising is the route that's been pursued by similar sites such as The Pirate Bay, but the latter has relied on complex arguments about Scandinavian law. YouTorrent isn't sporting any obvious fjords, so if you find the site useful, it might be best to get in before the whole thing is shut down.
Regardless of its mortality, the launch of YouTorrent.com demonstrates that the process of making torrent access easier continues unabated. While downloading illegal TV shows is still a damn site more difficult than (say) purchasing a legitimate piece of music online, it's a hell of a lot simpler than it used to be. What this means for the future of entertainment remains, as ever, anyone's guess.
 YouTorrent: at your own peril, of course... |