
Torrent meta-search engine - mtgred
http://torrentbutler.com/
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Kylekramer
Guess they aren't going with the plausible deniability legal route.

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sajithw
From a legal aspect, how is this going to last at all? IANAL but I was under
the impression most meta-search engines operated in at least a semi-grey area
because they don't spoon feed illegal content to you. Most just index the big
trackers and (conveniently) don't discriminate between illegal and legal
content. I feel like when you are dropping torrents into buckets more specific
than "video" and "audio" (e.g. linking multiple torrents to a specific movie,
highlighting the HD versions) any conventional argument against aiding
copyright infringement is out the window.

Awesome site though.

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rfugger
Hosted in Canada (netelligent.ca) might buy them some time...

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katovatzschyn
Or create a strong enough legal precedence to help transform Canada into less
of a piracy haven.

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Natsu
"Piracy haven"? I've read the news stories that contained those allegations
about Canada and they were completely absurd.

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Yaggo
This will be taken down sooner or later, while no legal alternatives¹ exist in
many countries. Ridiculous. Movie industry: Okay, apparently you don't want my
money, that's fine, but then please don't complain about piracy.

[1] Cross-platform, HD quality, easy to use, etc.

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maushu
I would pay to watch movies recently released on cinema.

I mean, why the heck do I need to go to cinema when I have the comforts of my
home and I'm alone at the moment?

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yahelc
Basically, the Academy Awards rules are the only reason this can't happen. If
you enter the video/dvd/download stage too fast, you don't qualify for the
Academy Awards.

[http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/rules/83aa_rules....](http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/rules/83aa_rules.pdf)

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kbutler
If that were the only reason, any films that were not academy award contenders
would go to video/dvd/download immediately...

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jhrobert
"Takedown Policy Please include the full URLs to the infringing material; no
categories or search queries. We follow the same takedown policy that Google
uses." etc, etc

OK. So basically: want to take down something? try go faster than ligth's
speed...

Funny

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aw3c2
They are not infringing copyright. They make infringement easy.

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moe
Aesthetically and technically this is very nicely done. But in terms of
usability I actually find a plain list of movie names easier to parse - unless
it lacks critical information and is drowned in ads like on most torrent
aggregators...

My favorite interface is the "Overview"-mode in the iTunes store. I wish all
content sites would look like this (in case you don't know it, scroll all the
way down, then click Functions/Overview).

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arrel
Tie in rotten tomatoes reviews and you've got a torrent butler with taste.

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neworbit
Looks nice. I bet the attorneys think it looks even nicer.

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derefr
If they're going to link directly to torrents anyway (and thus discard any
shred of legal deniability), could they link _more directly_ to the torrents?
If there was a button on/around the movie poster itself that linked directly
to whatever they/users considered the "best" version of the torrent, that'd be
helpful. Half of my problem with torrent aggregators like ISOHunt is deciding
which version is actually going to be closest to my preferences (720p English
MP4 with soft-subs/captions.)

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shii
I think the point is users are going to discriminate themselves and choose as
from their own preferences. Some people (like myself) hate seeing humongous
torrents if movies that don't fit the usual scene requirements. Others only
use certain public trackers and not others, etc.

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derefr
To satisfy most people, they could probably put one button for the highest-
seeded torrent that contains roughly 700MB of content per 90 minutes of film,
labelled "CD-quality", another for "DVD-quality" (if it exists), and then the
rest of the people can click through. Actually, just filtering out any results
that aren't in the Browser's Accept-Language languages would be a great boon
to me.

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shii
That actually sounds great, and I agree that that'd cover the vast majority of
use cases. Another argument for open sourcing it to be forked to the
community's tastes :)

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rbarooah
The fact they use a hushmail address for contacting them made me actually
laugh out loud.

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mistermann
Why? Honest question, I have no idea. I haven't heard of hushmail in over 10
years, but I just encountered a guy I'll be working with that uses one, I
honestly thought they shut down.

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chris11
I worked at a place that used hushmail for the corporate email. It was a
business account, so they had their own domain, but it was through hushmail.
So I guess they are doing some business.

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eli
I don't quite get the point. If email security is important to you, you
shouldn't be outsourcing it.

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richcollins
The design is terrible. I don't care about cover art. I want to quickly find
what I'm looking for.

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luminarious
Then you're better off using any of the other torrent (meta)searchers. This
kind of view is excellent for those without access to any nifty streaming
services.

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richcollins
They have hideous UIs full of adds that pretend to be download buttons.

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BoppreH
If this is all automated as they claim, that's a hell of a good job. Poster,
length, rating, credits, synopsis and trailer, everything one could ask for.
And then they throw a full-sized screencap as the page background. Brilliant.

~~~
Kudos
It is a simple layer over <http://themoviedb.org> API with torrents added in.

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bertil
I’ll assume that this is a way to promote a global licensing solution — a
great one, because the site actually manages to give iTunes a run for its
money.

What surprized me was the lack of ranking by note. Assuming the legal
challenges are overcame, I would also enjoy being able to have two lists:
“Already seen” and “Would like to see” (that might include films not available
yet, or even un-financed projects) to parse it all better. If they manage to
make those lists work with my cinema subscription (I pay every month for a
all-you-can-go-out-and-see plan) I’d be happy to spend more on that then most
would pay for cable.

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ulvund
Would be extra cool with some sort of "sort by IMDB-rating"-function attached

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corporeal
Awesome site but it's too flashy. My guess is that it'll draw too much
attention and have to be taken down even though I would love a torrent site
that doesn't make my eye's bleed.

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schrototo
How is this _at all_ newsworthy? There's more sites like this than grains of
sand on a beach...

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reedlaw
This looks similar to myriads of Chinese websites (not the design, but the
selection of hit movies by cover art). Many Chinese sites serve up streaming
videos directly in the browser. They are too slow to be usable abroad so I
guess they avoid litigation that way.

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zalew
It'd be nice if it included info about best release type available, right
where is the [HD] icon.

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kasrak
looks great, but the trailer covers the SD links.

(Chrome, OS X)

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dotBen
Judging by the amount of Russian covers for Western movies, I'm guessing the
site is based in Russia - in which case they probably have quite a safe haven
against copyright take-down etc.

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train_robber
That's probably because of R5 releases:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R5_(bootleg)>

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malloc
damn you [developer of this], had this idea pending for the longest time.
yeah, I know this crowd knows this line too much.

Anyway, my approach would be different by a single feature: movie sync. I've
already watched many of the movies listed, and would be great to give you my
imdb rating public url and you filtering those out. You could even implement a
basic recommendation system using my ratings to give best matches.

Hope you can keep this service up.

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marknutter
This really should be a desktop app rather than a website. That way, it
couldn't be taken down, especially if the code was open sourced.

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jefe78
Cool idea. I'd like to see an IMDB link somewhere on the page and perhaps
partnerships with private trackers?

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proexploit
kickasstorrents.com does the IMDB link which is cool but there's also a
greasemonkey script that does it the other way and adds the torrent download
links on IMDB (<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/38484>) which is even
cooler

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jeffxl
It'd look a lot nicer without those social media icons there.

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JonnieCache
I present: the widgetblock chrome extension. For all your automatic-social-
media-icon-nuking needs.

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hgiihiookhijpbha...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hgiihiookhijpbhaflohognbhmamdnol)

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sktrdie
I find it very useful without the torrent part as well.

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anhtran
Okay, I just wanna say that is good design :D

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evo_9
wow, impressive. They should add the Metacritic score for each flick, that
would be incredibly useful.

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a904guy
I love the interface. I give you my up-vote.

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sblom
It's a trap!

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jhrobert
OK. Is that Iran? (kidding)

