Mininova: Over 8 Billion Downloads, Faces Court

[Kubiatsu]

Evidently, The Pirate Bay isn't the only BitTorrent search engine scheduled to walk the plank. Even though Mininova scored its eight billionth download over the weekend, the masterminds behind the site are suffering legal issues as well.

The numbers are quite staggering as a consumer, no less than horrifying to copyright owners: 10,425,164 in downloads yesterday alone, flying through the Internet pipes at 120.7 per second. BitTorrent search engine Mininova also recorded over 10 millions searches at 119.7 per second yesterday as well, and 3,177 new torrents were added on Easter Sunday, averaging just over 2 per minute. To this day, Mininova has tracked a whopping 8,035,456,162 downloads as of 1 PM this afternoon; over 8 billion BitTorrent downloads since it opened virtual shop back in January 2005. And just think: all those numbers are related to just one website.

So what's up for grabs today? Let's see... how about the Dragon Ball Evolution movie that just hit theaters? Or better yet, the controversial X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie leaked a few weeks back. Eminem's We Made You has more seeds than a flowerbed, and a Top 40 singles UK compilation sits at the top of the front-page music section with 1969 leechers attached. Windows 7 Build 7106, Adobe Photoshop CS4 ExtendedBit Defender Total Security 2009 are just a few featured software titles, and for those looking for a new Nintendo DS game, there's plenty to download including Smiley World Island Challenge, Tuan's favorite DS title Dora Saves the Mermaids, and even My Animal Centre.

Is it any wonder that Mininova is facing legal issues? "Our goal is to provide an easy-to-use directory and search engine for all kinds of torrent files," reads the official FAQ. "Visitors of Mininova can anonymously upload torrents to this website, tracked by any BitTorrent tracker. Scrape data (amount of seeds/leechers) is collected a few times a day." Now here's the real kicker: "Note that we try to keep Mininova family-safe, so adult submissions are not allowed," the FAQ says. Although the search engine doesn't host actual pirated material, it does host the torrent leading to the copyrighted material, "family safe" copyrighted material at that.

On May 28, 2008, the site administrators reported in a Mininova blog that Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN filed a lawsuit against the organization, stemming from a demand that site administrators place a filter into the search engine that would remove leads to copyright material. The torrent themselves aren't illegal; it's usually the associated content "seeded" via multiple BitTorrent users' PCs. Implementing a filter into the system would mean that uploaded torrents would not appear in the search engine. But as Mininova states, some countries actually do allow end-users to download copyrighted material; a filter would infringe on those users' rights.

However, because neither BREIN nor Mininova could reach an agreement, BREIN pushed for a full-fledged lawsuit. Mininova remained un-phased. "We will proceed to court with full confidence, and defend our unique position in the BitTorrent world and our current copyright policy," the company said. "The court decision will be important for many other community-driven websites, like Google and YouTube." The company also said that the lawsuit will take several years, taking place in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

For the moment, Mininova is moving along as usual, now located in a new office in downtown Utrecht. The company also implemented a new content distribution service into the website, enabling content creators to easily publish their goods for free. Mininova takes a hit in the wallet by sponsoring the seeding bandwidth, however Mininova users will benefit from this new system by accessing premium content with high transfer speeds.

Ultimately, Mininova may not need to worry about its current lawsuit with BREIN. Government laws and ISP regulation may ultimately become the new DRM for the entire world; namely the new IPRED law set forth in Sweden, and the upcoming bandwidth tiers put into place by local BSPs Comcast and Time Warner. It will come to a point where legit downloaders can't even grab a few movies and episodes of Nip/Tuck from iTunes without going over the limit much less waste valuable bandwidth by downloading a pirated copy the campy BloodRayne 2 movie.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Mininova-BitTorrent-Torrent-Download,news-3776.html

[Gripen2]

lol 9 Billion downloads on a week?

[T1B]

They got nothing to worry about, the only thing BREIN has taken down so far were a few small (~less then 1000 visitors/day) sites. Mininova foreverr D: