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Mininova Deletes All Infringing Torrents and Goes 'Legal'


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mininova.pngMininova’s decision to delete all infringing torrents from its index marks the end of an era that started five years ago.

In December 2004, the demise of the mighty Suprnova left a meteor crater in the fledgling BitTorrent landscape. This gaping hole was soon filled by the dozens of new sites that emerged to fulfil the public’s increasing demands for torrents. Mininova became the most successful of all.

Mininova was founded in early 2005 by five Dutch students, just a month after Suprnova closed its doors. The site started out as a hobby project created by tech-savvy teenagers, but in the years that followed the site’s founders managed to turn it into a successful business that generated millions of dollars in revenue.

With increased popularity also came numerous complaints from copyright holders, who saw their intellectual property being shared by users of the site. For years Mininova has complied with these takedown requests, but earlier this year the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN decided to take the torrent site to court nonetheless, demanding that the operators proactively filter torrents pointing to copyrighted material.

The case went to court in June and a few weeks later the verdict was announced. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringements, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.

To avoid having to pay these penalties, the Mininova team saw no other option than to disable access to all torrents except those that were uploaded to their content distribution platform. This means that only approved uploaders can share torrents through the site for now.

During the last few months, Mininova has extensively tested several filtering techniques, but none of these proved 100% effective. “It’s very unfortunate that we’re forced to take this action, but we saw no other option,” Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak.

Mininova still hasn’t decided yet whether they will appeal the verdict, Niek further told TorrentFreak. They have appealed the verdict pro-forma, which gives the company more time to decide whether they will indeed continue with the appeal. As it looks now, a successful appeal is the only option for Mininova to bring all torrents back.

The implications of Mininova’s decision will have a huge impact on the BitTorrent community. The millions of Mininova users and uploaders have to look for a new home, but perhaps even more importantly, Mininova had the largest collection of user-submitted torrents that were used by dozens of smaller torrent indexers.

More information on the consequences and background of Mininova’s decision will be addressed in a follow up article.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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  • Administrator

Oh my god! How? How can this happen? It was the only site after TPB and Demonoid.

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There is not much content left after this decision. Basic Course in Meditation is the most popular torrent right now. I would need to be paid to download anything that is offered there now.

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very bad news,,its my fav torrent downloading site,,i used to download each n everything from here only,,very very bad news 4 me,,i love MININOVA

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  • Administrator

I came to know about nsaneforums from mininova. :(

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Ahh, the sites come and go.. You can't do anything about it.

It's sad to hear this, but we've saw this coming.. :unsure:

Torrentz is still a good source tho :)

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  • Administrator

No one can be compared to mininova. It was the best. :(

I think I'll start findin new sites. :(

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SacredCultivator

@Haantjuh: That's what i use, it's a great search site, which gives you links to various other torrent sites as well.

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@Haantjuh: That's what i use, it's a great search site, which gives you links to various other torrent sites as well.

Same reason here.

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Those idiots just had to ruin a good thing, I used to love Mininova it...ah well, there sure will be dozens to take its place soon enough, anybody remember suprnova now? lol

I guess not is the time to scratch mininova off my bookmarks.

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  • Administrator

@Bizarre™: For me it was my torrent life. Of course I use TPB but mininova made me know about bein a :pirate: . It was a first site I saw when I was searchin for a movie that is really really close to my heart. I got that movie and I started usin mininova. And I still seed it at the high speeds. I have no more words. If it's TPB for the others it's mininova for me. I'll surly miss the site.

Now I think the emerging replacement seems Kick ass torrents IMO. Otherwise TPB and Demonoid are still ther.

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Yeah Mininova's quality went to the toilet a long time ago .. I mean the latest available versions of torrents were like a year or two old for most programs, and it used to be one the most frequently visited sites I had. So yeah.. LOL..

I guess that feeling.. when your sitting there thinking that yo should delete them all and start fresh.. no maintenance, no problems .. just fresh and crisp .. anew.. and look at all the space..LOL.. I guess it finally got the owners/moderators..LOL.. Not to mention the stupid cases..

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Mininova still hasn’t decided yet whether they will appeal the verdict, Niek further told TorrentFreak. They have appealed the verdict pro-forma, which gives the company more time to decide whether they will indeed continue with the appeal. As it looks now, a successful appeal is the only option for Mininova to bring all torrents back.

they should appeal again,if its the only way,its sad though

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Im done with torrents and gone with HTTP Downloads from www.warez-bb.org, awesome place check it out.

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@DKT27:

One can be at the top for a period of time.

However, they don't always stay there.

As for me, I have no best torrent site.

What / Which - ever is available, I utilize.

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This is bad, very bad... something must be done, otherwise big and small torrent sites are going down one by one, and many are being pressured by the law as we speak. Before we know it, the bureaucrat bastards will have won :fear:

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Oh my gosh...how can things get any worse. Wait a second, I know how:

Thats about the only more sad thing than hearing the news of mininova.

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  • Administrator

@Bizarre™: OK. I think I'll try the way you do it. And I'll try torrentz.com more.

I feel it's gonna get worse and worse day by day. But it will never stop :pirate: like us. :tooth:

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Oh my gosh...how can things get any worse. Wait a second, I know how:

Thats about the only more sad thing than hearing the news of mininova.

Ambrocious, I respect you trying to warn us and everything... and as you know, I believe bits and pieces told by the consp. theorists... but can you ever make a post which IS NOT about the doom of the universe and actually say something that is on topic? I doubt that taking down mininova is another clever step by Obama and the wealthy elite to take over the milky way. :unsure:

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