TorrentFreak Email Update

Posted: 07 Jan 2012 01:37 PM PST

Which torrent sites get the most visitors at the start of 2012? At first glance little seems to have changed, as many of the sites in the top 10 have been among the top torrent sites for more than half a decade. But moving down the list we see quite a few movers and shakers as well as three newcomers.

The most notable absentee this year is TorrentReactor, one of the oldest torrent sites on the Internet. The Russian-based site hasbeen featured in the top 10 since 2006, but missed the cut in 2012. Last year’s best newcomer LimeTorrents took an even bigger hit in traffic and has dropped off the list as well.

Below we have compiled a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

1. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is probably the best known BitTorrent brand on the Internet. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the various legal troubles and blockades that were designed to hurt the site in recent years. The Pirate Bay currently has close to 2 billion page views a month.

Alexa Rank: 78 / Compete Rank: 577 / Last year #1

2. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files, it merely redirects visitors to other places on the web.

Alexa Rank: 142 / Compete Rank: 1.053 / Last year #2

3. KickassTorrents

Founded in 2009, KickassTorrents is one of the youngest sites in the list, and this year it moved up to the top 3. Responding to the increasing worries about domain seizures, the site moved from its kickasstorrents.com domain to kat.ph a few months ago. The site continues to innovate and release new features every other week.

Alexa Rank: 257 / Compete Rank: 1,165 / Last year #4

4. IsoHunt

In 2010 isoHunt became the first search engine forced to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt continues to be listed among the top torrent sites. In 2012, isoHunt hopes to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.

Alexa Rank: 259 / Compete Rank: 1,153 / Last year #3

5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie had to deal with a setback a few months ago when the site was blocked in Italy following a court order. In response to the block, the site’s owners launched an ad-free proxy site for Italians only. Just as last year, BTjunkie settles in fifth place.

Alexa Rank: 385 / Compete Rank: 802 / Last year #5

6. ExtraTorrent

ExtraTorrent is one of those robust torrent indexes that doesn’t make the news very often. Compared to last year the site has moved up a spot and is now the 6th most popular torrent venue.

Alexa Rank: 446 / Compete Rank: 1,574 / Last year #7

7. Demonoid

The semi-private tracker continues to attract a massive audience, also on the new .me domain name. Behind the scenes the site’s owners are working on a new and improved look.

Alexa Rank: 455 / Compete Rank: 2,397 / Last year #6

8. EZTV

Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. Despite its fair share of downtime this year, EZTV has managed to get a spot in the top 10 for the first time in its six year existence.

Alexa Rank: 1,151 / Compete Rank: 13,647 / Last year #na

9. Bitsnoop

BitSnoop is another newcomer that gained a large audience this year. This didn’t go unnoticed by the RIAA, who filed a complaint at the U.S. District Court of Columbia and obtained a subpoena to reveal the identity of BitSnoop’s owner a few months ago.

Alexa Rank: 1,415 / Compete Rank: 5,242 / Last year #na

10. 1337x

1337x is also new to the top 10, and focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they started 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” Its 10th place this year proves that they’re getting the success formula right.

Alexa Rank: 2,006 / Compete Rank: 10,856 / Last year #na

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.

Source: Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2012

MPAA Lawyer Inspired File-Sharing Religion, Catholic Bishop Unhappy

Posted: 07 Jan 2012 05:42 AM PST

On Wednesday it was revealed that after being founded in 2010, The Missionary Church of Kopimism is now formally recognized by the Swedish authorities as an official religion.

The Church’s creator, philosophy student Isak Gerson, told TorrentFreak that he hoped the development would encourage people to be more open about the fact they are practicing Kopimists.

"There's still a legal stigma around copying for many,” he told us. “A lot of people still worry about going to jail when copying and remixing. I hope in the name of Kopimi that this will change."

One group that will hope the opposite is true are the long-time Kopimism rivals at the MPAA. But according to The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, an employee of the movie industry group actually provided the inspiration for the original Kopimism movement to be transformed into a full-blown religion.

“In an interview in 2007 or 2008 (I believe, not sure about the date) the Swedish lawyer for the MPAA, Monique Wadsted, got a question about her views on the people advocating file sharing,” Sunde explains.

“It's just a few people, very loud. They're a cult. They call themselves Kopimists," Wadsted responded.

Wadsted, who participated in the prosecution during The Pirate Bay trial, had previous experience with cults having represented the Church of Scientology in a copyright case. Little did she know that the seeds of inspiration had just been planted and were about to turn “a cult” into something more.

“It made me think that it might be of benefits to look at what we do as a religious movement,” says Sunde. “One of the fun things working with The Pirate Bay has always been that we've started lots of fun crazy projects. Some work, some (most) fail. I started researching what kind of angle it would give us if we registered a religion.”

Interestingly, Sunde says that in Sweden its possible for anyone to create a religion as long as they’re organized – the actual content of a religion is not examined. But it was the fact that religions enjoy more protection than political groups that piqued Sunde’s interest most.

Nevertheless, several years passed before the idea for a copying church were turned into reality by Isak Gerson, who at just 19-years-old has already gained more exposure for his new faith than many other religions achieve in a lifetime. Even the Catholic church have noticed but perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re not impressed.

“It’s crazy and seems like a send up of religion, a send up of copyright and a send up of the government to register such a body as religious,” says Bishop Peter Ingham, head of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong in Australia.

“There should be some measuring stick against what you call religion,” he said. “In my mind, if religion has nothing to do with God — or what people perceive to be God — then it’s a sham. It looks like it’s just a way of getting around the law of piracy and copyright. How could a religion promote illegal activity?”

The Missionary Church of Kopimism has no requirements for its congregation to break the law, but Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge does raise an interesting issue – that of religious confession.

“Conversations with preachers of official religions acting on official duty are privileged conversations, meaning they can't be eavesdropped on or forced as evidence; a priest can even go to jail for inadvertently disclosing something that was said under the privileged conversation of confession,” he explains.

“In the case of this religion, the preachers are defined as the ones facilitating holy copying (and remixing). Translated to nerdspeak, that means the communications between operators of trackers/hubs and the people who partake in the sacrament of copying now carries confessional status, by and large making it illegal and impossible to collect as evidence in a trial,” Falkvinge continues.

“That brings a whole boatload of interesting legal ramifications with regards to evidence collection and trying to persecute the worshipers of holy copying and remixing, doesn't it?”

Source: MPAA Lawyer Inspired File-Sharing Religion, Catholic Bishop Unhappy

The Pirate's Press

Sunday, 8 January 2012