
ExtraTorrent Shuts Down for Good - srigi
https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-shuts-down-for-good-170517/
======
sergiotapia
I was about to add them to our tracker list. :(

[https://github.com/sergiotapia/magnetissimo](https://github.com/sergiotapia/magnetissimo)

There's something really sad when these sites die, a part of my teenage life
is gone for good. I felt the same way when Demonoid shut down.

Can these sites skate the legality line by offering only magnet links? Why are
their costs so high if they can just host magnet links and cache the site with
Varnish or something similar?

~~~
Prefinem
>Why are their costs so high if they can just host magnet links and cache the
site with Varnish or something similar?

Just from personal experience, but here is my view of it.

A good search engine for millions of torrents costs several hundred a month.
Scrapers to keep torrent seeders / leechers up to date cost another fifty to
hundred (depending on how up to date you want your torrents). Now add in a few
website servers and a load balancer for another hundred or two. You are
looking at three to five hundred a month. Doesn't seem like a lot, but this is
just a smallish torrent site. Isn't large enough to generate ad revenue or
have enough donators to keep running. Maintaining that by yourself soon get's
expensive unless you have a good job with plenty of disposable income.

~~~
cryptarch
Also, accepting donations and sponsorships opens you up to being sued for
profitting from copyright infringement.

~~~
Prefinem
Bitcoin donations was how I handled it at the time. A little more anonymous
especially if you pay for anonymous hosting with bitcoin.

~~~
Splendor
IANAL but purposefully hiding the transactions may just open you up to other
legal issues.

~~~
Prefinem
Good to know (think about). Luckily, the site is no longer in operation.

EDIT: clarification

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paol
I'm continually surprised that Bittorrent is still relying on content indexing
websites. The edonkey community solved this problem years ago with fully
distributed search that only relies on the peers themselves[0].

Can anyone with insight into the BT comunity/technology offer any ideas why
they never moved in this direction?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia)

~~~
deno
Distributed indexing is very hard, slow and easily gamed. If you remember
Kazaa, for example, it had an enormous problem with low quality content and
malware.

The best solution is not fully distributed indexing, rather decentralized
indexing, such as IPFS.

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unicornporn
It's 2017 and I'm so surprised that BT is still the dominant way to share
copyrighted works illegally. Why hasn't a fully decentralized and E2E
encrypted alternative replaced it? Who wants to actually run trackers these
days?

F2F software like [http://retroshare.net/](http://retroshare.net/) exists, but
nobody is using it.

~~~
amelius
How would that work?

I believe you can still get caught with such systems, because if somebody can
download from your machine, that somebody could just as well be a government
agent.

Unless it uses something like Tor, but in that case it could become illegal to
run exit nodes. The person running the exit node could legally be considered
an accomplice.

~~~
mynewtb
Retroshare has anonymous tunnels.

------
awqrre
[http://torrentproject.se/](http://torrentproject.se/) is interesting...

------
JimSmith84
Torrenting aside, this is the second large movie forum to shut down this year
(IMDb closed its message boards in February).

For ExtraTorrent Forum users searching for a new home, check out
[https://MovieChat.org](https://MovieChat.org)

------
dbg31415
[https://www.skytorrents.in/](https://www.skytorrents.in/)

------
sleepychu
It's hard to imagine how you could operate a successful torrenting site in
2017; they represent such a loss of income to so many people with expensive
lawyers.

~~~
algesten
Expensive lawyers yes, loss of income, probably not much. The majority of
torrent users are not likely to suddenly pay for the same content.

~~~
rhino369
Obviously it's not a 1:1 ratio of lost revenue to pirated material. But I bet
many pirates would spend some money / watch commericals if they were forced to
for entertainment.

I've seen some suggestion that they spend more on average than the average
consumer. But I suspect they'd spend even more. And getting some content free
and paying for others has discretionary effects.

~~~
zanny
> if they were forced to for entertainment

There is more free content made every day online than one person could consume
in their entire life. Even when 99% of it is garbage, that 1% is still more
than you can fill your time with.

I read a few dozen webcomics, most of which have patreons, but I don't get ads
on my rss feeds for them, and there are _thousands_ of webcomics. And artists.
And musicians. There are dozens of websites for hobbyist, amateur, and even
freelance professional games, animations, etc.

There is a fraction of pirates that will pay for content they would otherwise
torrent because they want _that_ content. But that doesn't imply they are more
likely to _buy_ entertainment. A portion probably just turn to free legal
sources.

------
throwaway20101
My memory might serve me wrong, but I recall very interesting article years
ago about playing monetary-gain games in Japan. Hazard where you win money is
banned, so as a loophole what they did instead is that you were still playing
but instead of wining cash, you were winning tiny white plastic balls (with
serial numbers). Those balls were technically worthless and just made of cheap
plastic. But once you won some, on the other side of the street where you
played, was unrelated business owner, who all business was buying sad white
plastic balls for hard cash from you.

No law is broken here. You can run a casino as long as people don't win money
or anything worth a lot. You can run a store where you buy out white plastic
balls at a premium value. And life goes on :)

I think Japanese government had hardship proving that one business is somewhat
owned or operated by another and eventually AFAIK they gave up, giving birth
to Japanese biggest mafia.

So.. long story short... run a torrent site where all you have is a database
of copyrighted content (only names such as IMDB) and provide half of a magnet
link :) Quietly find someone on the other side of the world who will host
website that does the same thing just provide second part of magnet link.
Don't know each other, don't talk with each other; wait until third person
builds an app to glue both link and viola! Long live
ExtraTorrent/PirateBay/Whatever about to die next.

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jumpkickhit
Isn't this the third big site that's gone down this year?

I guess they're getting bought out by media companies or something. So much
for the hydra.

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samat
Where should I get all the latest shows from ettv and ethd now?

------
tu7001
R.I.P ExtraTorrent

