Soon The Pirate Bay will stop linking to .torrent files. Instead, the world’s largest BitTorrent site will only list so-called magnet links. One of the advantages of the switch is that The Pirate Bay will be much more portable, and easier to copy. A new torrent listing all titles and magnet links on The Pirate Bay proves this point, as the public can download a copy that fits easily on a small USB stick – or even a few dozen floppies.

Last month The Pirate Bay announced that it will stop hosting torrents in the very near future.

This change is expected to go into effect before the end of the month. From then on, Pirate Bay users can only download files through magnet links.

The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages of the transition to a “magnet site” is that it requires relatively little bandwidth to host a proxy site. This is needed, because The Pirate Bay is currently blocked in several countries, and more are bound to follow in the months to come.

Without torrents, the Pirate Bay also becomes extremely portable which makes it possible for people to download a personal backup. As we said before, such a copy would easily fit on a thumb drive. Pirate Bay user “allisfine” was intrigued by this idea and decided to find out how small a copy of the torrents site would be.

“I did a complete snapshot of ALL the Pirate Bay torrents, in case somebody wants to close it or something similarly crazy,” he told TorrentFreak.

Using this script, “allisfine” managed to copy the title, id, file size, seeds, leechers and magnet links of 1,643,194 torrents. Comments were not copied to keep the files as small as possible, and the end result is a full copy of all magnet links on The Pirate Bay in a 90 megabytes file, 164 megabytes unzipped.

There is some confusion as to whether the 1,643,194 torrents are indeed a full copy of the site, as The Pirate Bay itself lists 4,199,832 torrents in the footer link on its site. However, the latter stats apply to the number of torrents that are available on several public trackers, The Pirate Bay itself only hosts a fraction of those.

With the release of the copy everyone can now download a personal backup of The Pirate Bay in a few minutes. Although searching the copy isn’t as convenient as using The Pirate Bay itself, there is little doubt that someone else will soon come up with another script that solves this problem.

Recent history has shown that when a site is threatened with shutdown, or censored, the Internet is very quick to come up with a workaround. And with thousands of backups of The Pirate Bay floating around, it will be very hard at this point to get rid of the famous torrent site.

What’s perhaps even more striking is that the greatest arch rival of a billion dollar entertainment industry is nothing more than 164 megabytes of text. Something to think about.

So... Bittorrent underwent a similar evolution, so it seems.

One thing that could theoretically cause issues, is the capability for starting users to find new peers. To be on the safe side the Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute lists of active downloaders.

Are we being glad piracy is an ever-growing industry now? Or are we so stupid we think something being impossible to achieve will prevent any draconian laws to try?

So that I'm clear, you're saying if someone chooses not to release a work, it's a good thing for pirates to steal it from them because everything anyone creates belongs to the world?

Isn't the point of copyright to allow artists to make a profit off their work? If they aren't willing to sell copies, I don't really see how one can object to piracy - the creator isn't losing anything materially.

Isn't the point of copyright to allow artists to make a profit off their work? If they aren't willing to sell copies, I don't really see how one can object to piracy - the creator isn't losing anything materially.

Isn't the point of copyright to allow artists to make a profit off their work? If they aren't willing to sell copies, I don't really see how one can object to piracy - the creator isn't losing anything materially.

Are you for serious? You're saying end-users determine what is fair for rights holders? What if the rights holders are in the middle of a strategic plan to create profit for their shareholders?

Nevermind; if you don't get what you want, you'll pirate it. Lets hold all rights holders at the point of a gun and WONDER WHY THEY DON'T LISTEN TO YOU. The best part is that piracy - your tool to encourage rights holders to do what you want - is one of the most important reasons why they won't.

Lamest justification ever. Can't pirates just admit what they do is wrong and move on? Why the need to be white knight pirates fighting for freedom?

Don't try to muddy the waters with lameo 'abandonware' internet lawyering.

Let me give you a counter example. If you want to use someone's IP (say a statistical tool, or some branded analysis program) and they don't have a partner delivering it in your region, shoudl your company simply go photocopy some of the questionnaires? Should they just steal it and use it without licencing, because licencing is too darn difficult?

If you think 'today's episode of Doctor Who' is equivalent to 'the word barbie in cultural context after 70 years', you are a fucking moron.

Wait, so if I ripped off someone's IP in the corporate arena when they hadn't done anything with it for a while, you think that's ok?

Are you fucking retarded? IP is a fucking asset, you moron. Companies (especially companies in the tech space) have vaults full of patents and copyrights and other IP, and this appears on their balance sheet... and you're saying they don't REALLY own it if YOU PERSONALLY don't think they're using it?

Seriously, when did property rights become about what YOU wanted, and not what the owner wanted?

PROTIP retard, I compared a specific example of media (and a very new one with broad monetisation and licencing happening right now) to a fucking WORD that has been co-opted by culture. If you are seriously equating them, you're a fucking idiot.

Do you know why Adobe tried to stop people using 'photoshop' as a verb? Because of this very phenomena! As Bakustra says, to retain rights you must exercise them, and if you want to continue to own a trademark you need to make sure it is used in the sense you own it and isn't diluted into regular use, or you'll lose it. This is in no way comparable to pirating some TV show just because you couldn't find it at the shop.

Isn't the point of copyright to allow artists to make a profit off their work? If they aren't willing to sell copies, I don't really see how one can object to piracy - the creator isn't losing anything materially.