Torrentz.eu Search Engine Mysteriously Shuts Down

[Batu69]

Homepage features good-bye message to its users

   Second message shown on Torrentz.eu homepage

 

Exactly sixteen days after US authorities announced the arrest of Kickass Torrents' admin in Poland, another piracy big name shut down, according to messages displayed on the home page of Torrentz.eu, the Internet's biggest BitTorrent meta-search engine.

At the time of writing, the Torrentz.eu Web page where users flocked to search for torrent download links is displaying a message that reads "Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines."

Trying to run a search, or clicking any link on the site changes that message to "Torrentz will always love you. Farewell."

All backup domains are down as well

All Torrentz domains feature the same page. This includes the main .EU domain and its backups .ME, .CH, and .IN.

Before its abrupt shutdown, Torrentz.eu had managed to reach a respectable #186 Alexa rank.

The site was launched in July 2003 by an individual named Flippy. The site's purpose was to index torrents from several large portals and aggregate all the different trackers. This allowed users to download torrent files with multiple trackers in their source, speeding up downloads and preventing dead links in case servers went down.

The mystery surrounding Torrentz.eu's shutdown

With legal pressure increasing on The Pirate Bay and following the Kickass Torrents arrests, other piracy portals have decided to shut down on their own, such as Solarmovie.

As it stands now, it looks like Torrentz.eu admins decided to pull the plug on their own and avoid any future legal problems.

When YTS (YIFY) shut down last year, the MPAA later revealed that it had reached an out-of-court settlement with the YTS admin, who then decided to stop any movie pirating operations.

Additionally, we must not rule out any security breaches. Piracy portals aren't famous for their well-defended walls. Let's just remember the hostile takeover of the EZTV TV torrenting group.

 

 Message shown on Torrentz.eu homepage

 

Article source

[PriSim]

i think the judgment day is near everything is going down ! or secretly vanishing !

 

BTW its working !

[ashish.k]

Yeah, not working. Man, all good sites are going down.

[innocentz1407]

God bless torrentz.eu.. RIP   hope coming back

[jayesh30202]

its working for me

[steven36]

this what the site says

 

you click on the page it it tries to go to ads and ublock origin blocks it i think they closed it

[PriSim]

42 minutes ago, jayesh30202 said:

its working for me

 

first i think the same but when i use the search button it says torrentz will always love you so its down no results shown

[pc71520]

[Str8Sh00t3r]

8 hours ago, ashish.k said:

Yeah, not working. Man, all good sites are going down.

big fat shame

[Freddynic159]

https://torrentproject.se/ <== best alternative ever.

[SnakeMasteR]

Never used it, they've listed lots of fakes and had fake ratings. Won't miss. ?

[snowman]

I use this: http://btjunkie.eu

[steven36]

17 hours ago, n0_risk! said:

Never used it, they've listed lots of fakes and had fake ratings. Won't miss. ?

it just lead to other torrent sites was all .unless you used a grease monkey script to add magnet and torrents..  it was a search engine like Google but for torrnets  not really a torrent site it was a not bad site i used before and never did i get one fake. People get fakes because they try to download  stuff that dont exist yet. You can  get fakes going to any torrent site if you are a idiot  who downloads new things that never existed. Torrentz was used more than anything else after KAT closed for people who torrent  to download and not to socialize . Who cares about being friends  on public p2p/?  I just get my magnet or torrent  and get the hell out  of doge I never joined a public P2P site there is no need unless you upload at a site . 

[pc71520]

torrentz.eu

R.I.P.

 

 

 

[DKT27]

Here is a list of sites it used to search for:

 

 

Click on it for a larger view.

 

I used to like it. Sometimes, some site's own search were not giving proper results, so this site was always helpful in such cases. Sometimes, when some torrent seems different, searching on this improved it's chances of not being a wrong one.

 

If you guys ask me, these two are the top of the line torrent sites. Some people say one will go another will come, which is true, but this time, something different has happened, we may not see a better site than Kat or this one here.

 

Torrentproject looks good.

 

If you guys ask me, rather than spreading further by going onto different sites, people need to make a community out of a site, to bring back the best torrent uploaders and community. Currently, I personally think going back TPB is better for all. Until some other site takes over from Kat.

 

Eitherway, someone made a pic for this.
 

Spoiler

 

 

[straycat19]

I have a feeling that there is a new technique being used by law enforcement that instead of targeting multiple sites they just see who comes to the top of the heap and take it down, whether they do it publicly or behind the scenes by coercion of the site admin.  That is much quicker and requires far less work on their part since they don't have to go through the entire legal process but just visit a site admin and convey their evidence and intent and the site folds.  So in the days to come there may be many more.  Though TPB has never been totally taken down, I am beginning to wonder why not, why leave it up and running?  Could it be a huge honeypit which allows the transfer of files in exchange for the IPs of the persons using it?  I am suspicious by nature and when things don't seem to make sense I begin to question why.  Why not use the RICO laws and apply them to ISPs?  Afterall, if there are a lot of users from an ISP who are breaking the law and the ISP does not cut their service to them then the ISP could be charged as a participant in an ongoing criminal enterprise. Same with companies that provide a VPN service.  Most of these services and small ISPs could not afford to fight a legal battle and the larger ones, since they are multi-faceted companies, could not risk losing their FCC licenses for cable TV and internet phone.  The government can always break these big monopolies up, they have done it before, and eliminate a portion in the process. I think we will see a lot of things change in the next few years.  

[RobrPatty]

when are they going to be burning books out of the library? we all kmnow its coming

[SnakeMasteR]

They'll only burn those about filesharing. ?

[steven36]

1 hour ago, straycat19 said:

I have a feeling that there is a new technique being used by law enforcement

Torrentz.eu  went down because he called it quits  even though they was in the 1# spot they didn't host torrents its not illegal to link to the sites even Google , Bing, Yahoo , Duck Duck go does this. Besides im not really into conspiracy theories Kat was the 1st big site the feds took down since 2012  the rest of the sites cut a deal with the mpaa that shut down here lately .

 

 

Quote

Torrentz Has Died, But It Won’t Take Torrenting With It

 

Two weeks ago, federal authorities seized and shuttered KickassTorrents (KAT), the world’s largest torrenting site. This week, Torrentz, the world’s largest torrent search engine, closed without notice or explanation. Two of the largest sites in piracy have blinked out—but that won’t speed piracy’s steady decline.

 

If you’re not familiar with Torrentz, it’s easiest to think of it as the Google of the torrenting world. And if you’re not familiar with torrenting, it’s a file-sharing technique that spreads data across multiple computers and is often used for piracy, but not always! Torrentz didn’t host files itself; it instead acted as a search engine, directing people to sites (like KAT) hat facilitated actual peer-to-peer sharing of pirated content. That made it a major presence not just within the torrenting community, but on the Internet at large; before it shut down, it was 186 on web-ranking service Alexa, putting it ahead of sites like Weather.com and Flickr.

 

So what happened? WIRED’s attempts to reach Torrentz’s operator, who goes by the handle “Flippy” on the site, have been so far unsuccessful, though he (or she! it’s unclear) did reportedly tell torrent-tracking site TorrentFreak that he would not be commenting further.

 

For one thing, it doesn’t seem to be the result of direct legal action. And Torrentz’s role as a search engine presumably gave it legal cover, since it did not host or directly enable the exchange of files. And while Torrentz had received scrutiny from the MPAA and RIAA in the past it complied with DMCA takedown requests by removing links to pirated content.

 

That’s a far different model from KAT. When KAT founder Artem Vaulin was arrested in mid-July, the criminal complaint alleged that KAT cost copyright holders millions of dollars by not only enabling free downloads of first-run movies, but also by being unresponsive to legitimate DMCA takedown requests. KAT also profited by selling ads that netted millions of dollars of revenue per year against illicitly gained content.

 

Moreover, the Torrentz.eu domain still lives, though it now describes itself to visitors in the past tense, saying “Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines.” Attempts to search or navigate the site yield only a taut goodbye: “Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.” But if there had been a formal takedown request, you’d expect the site to be gone or perhaps even replaced by a DMCA seizure notice.

 

Though it’s unclear what drove Torrentz’s operator to board up shop after 13 years, it is clearly going to leave a void in the torrenting world. One that’s likely to fill up quickly, says Dan Deeth, spokesman for network-equipment company Sandvine.

 

“The next site will pop up pretty quickly,” says Deeth, whose company has tracked BitTorrent traffic through its pipes for the last several years. “The technical sophistication of someone who uses BitTorrent in modern times usually surpasses the ability to find [torrents] by other means.”

 

In fact, just a few hours after Torrentz’s closure, torrent fans were already comparing notes on potential replacements on sites like Reddit. If history is any guide, the closure of two major sites in two weeks won’t put a dent in piracy.

 

“There isn’t a big traffic swing when sites like that go down. It’s not really a factor,” says Deeth, who points to repeated closures of popular site The Pirate Bay in years past, none of which noticeably affected the rate of piracy. Torrentz may have been a search engine for pirated content—but so is Google. (Although please don’t click random Google links promising first-run movies; you’re basically begging for malware).

 

That resilience to individual site outages does belie the general trend of BitTorrent traffic, though, which is sharply downward. In 2011, BitTorrent accounted for nearly 23 percent of all daily traffic in North America, according to Sandvine. Five years later, its share has collapsed to less than five percent.

 

A confluence of factors contributed to that decline, says Deeth, including more active policing of individuals by content owners, the shift from desktop to mobile, and most importantly, the availability of paid (but affordable) streaming options. Why go through the hassle of piracy when Netflix and HBO Now have most of what you need? “Stuff is a heck of a lot easier to get legally now,” says Deeth. And, with the apparent death of Torrentz, a little bit harder to get illegally. At least, until the next Torrentz pops up. Which, by the time you’re reading this story online, it almost certainly already will have.

 

 

Source:

https://www.wired.com/2016/08/torrentz-died-wont-take-torrenting/

 

 

[Archaven]

kat was the best for me .. guess i have no more sources anymore. well i get most my games from steam nowadays. but my wallet is really bleeding. cant afford dishonored 2 with that price tag.. 

[UpGrade]

i wonder if this has anything to do with snowdens latest tweet... lots of torrent sites going down since!

http://yournewswire.com/mysterious-tweet-sparks-fears-edward-snowden-is-missing-or-dead/

[SnakeMasteR]

He posted a lot more than just 'It's time.' obviously.

"Did you work with me? Have we talked since 2013? Please recontact me securely, or talk to @bartongellman. It's time."

And it's not a mystery as to why he tweeted that. Gellman is writing a biography of Snowden, and he's gathering information for that book.

Snowden also quoted a tweet by journalist and author Barton Gellman, who said that he is seeking information on Snowden's work in the intelligence community so he can write Snowden's biography, and "tell it truthfully."

Gellman elaborated in an encrypted message:

"I'm writing a book for Penguin Press called DARK MIRROR: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State. I want to hear from anyone who has first-hand information on either. It need not be some deep dark secret. I'm interested in your observations about Snowden's work and work habits at CIA, Dell, NSA and Booz; or his time in the Army; or in computer training courses; or the surveillance programs and practices he described. Agree with him or not, I'd like to hear from you."

https://reddit.com/r/politics/comments/4wfznf/mysterious_tweet_sparks_fears_edward_snowden_is/

[steven36]

2 hours ago, UpGrade said:

i wonder if this has anything to do with snowdens latest tweet... lots of torrent sites going down since!

http://yournewswire.com/mysterious-tweet-sparks-fears-edward-snowden-is-missing-or-dead/

I doubt it,  some people who worked with him in the past tweeted he was fine after that.

The reason most likely Torrentz closed.  was what i like to call the Megaupload effect . Back when the feds shut down Megaupload  many others got scared they was next to  be closed down,  So they  closed too and took everyone's money and ran and  others got really scared too . Some blocked the USA  and others  got really bad  at deleting peoples files and banning people . They still are  Filehost  and that's been years ago. That's back when I deiced  to stop uploading too filehost  to the public even.

[idear]

torrentz.eu is not dead! He works at another address.

 

Quote

 

 

[Batu69]

Torrentz.eu new address > http://torrentz.filespook.com/

 

Thanks to @matei for the link.