The Pirate Bay goes magnetic
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- The Pirate Bay — or the latest rev after unsuccessful entertainment industry efforts to close it down — has changed it ways.
It’s decided trackers are passe and that “magnet links”are where’s at.
Magnets, invented by Gordon Mohr, allow websites to link to content on p2p networks, p2pnet posted in 2004, going on:
“If you`ve installed a p2p app that works with Magnets, clicking a link will trigger a download within the application and it`ll start automatically.”
uTorrent and Vuze are examples.
With Magnet links, The nice thing is you can get super fast downloads from multiple sources of a file and the bandwidth cost to the website operator is zero, LimeWire`s then CTO Greg Bildson told p2pnet.
Content creators of all kinds can produce and distribute their creations very affordably. For example, a low budget movie could be distributed this way. A lot of artists that are held back by the economics of expensive web servers and bandwidth can be freed of that and just concentrate on creating great art.
Says TPB blog »»»
Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well.
By moving to a more decentralized system of handling tracking (DHT+PEX) and distributions of torrent files (Magnet Links), BitTorrent will become less vulnerable to downtime and outages:
- With decentralized peer acquisition, there is no central tracker that can be down.
- With decentralized fetching of metadata (torrents) we don’t need to rely on a single server that stores and distributes torrent files.
(Before you tech geeks out there start complaining about the info_hash in the magnet links being in HEX (”isn’t it supposed to be in base32?”) – No! According to the BitTorrent specification it should be in HEX but the client may choose to also support the old base32 encoding. If your client doesn’t support the HEX encoding, please upgrade to the latest version of you client! If it still doesn’t work, send an email to the developers of your client and ask them to add support for it.)
This is the future. And the present.
And the past, of course. 
For an excellent chapter-and-verse description of P2P magnets, go to FileShare Freaks’s `Magnet Links` which kicks off »»»
A magnet link is a unique link to a specific file, typically on a P2P file sharing network.
Magnet Links allow users to directly download files into a P2P file sharing application. Through the support of magnet links, users can follow links to find specific files quickly and accurately. In short, getting the file is as easy as following a link – the magnet points to a specific file and launches the P2P program, adding the file to the user`s download list.
Magnet Links are an extension of a greater group of URIs/URNs (not to be confused with `URL`) – whereas a URL will point to a specific website; a URI will point to the specific contents, or, location of a file. Read the technical jargon for Magnet Links on Wikipedia.
The main reason for the conception of magnet links is for increased authenticity (and less redundancy) of files being shared via P2P programs. For example, if you conduct a search for something specific in a filesharing program (such as Limewire), you`ll notice multiple sources for some of the results. We don`t have to tell you that `multiple source` files offer the best availability, in terms of transfer speeds and chances for a successful `working` download. All of the sources use the same hash link (that points to the exact same file).
Stay tuned.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
p2pnet – Steve Winwood on MagnetMix, June 16, 2004
November, 2009
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A magnet link is a unique link to a specific file, typically on a P2P file sharing network.
Magnet Links allow users to directly download files into a P2P file sharing application. Through the support of magnet links, users can follow links to find specific files quickly and accurately. In short, getting the file is as easy as following a link – the magnet points to a specific file and launches the P2P program, adding the file to the user`s download list.
Magnet Links are an extension of a greater group of URIs/URNs (not to be confused with `URL`) – whereas a URL will point to a specific website; a URI will point to the specific contents, or, location of a file. Read the technical jargon for Magnet Links on Wikipedia.
Magnet Links – What are they for?
The main reason for the conception of magnet links is for increased authenticity (and less redundancy) of files being shared via P2P programs. For example, if you conduct a search for something specific in a filesharing program (such as Limewire), you`ll notice multiple sources for some of the results. We don`t have to tell you that `multiple source` files offer the best availability, in terms of transfer speeds and chances for a successful `working` download. All of the sources use the same hash link (that points to the exact same file).
November 17th, 2009 at 11:31 am
They finally called it quits. It’s a sad day.
Oh well, maybe they’ll get the message when file sharing doesn’t drop at all after TPB turns off its tracker….. but probably not.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
The wikipedia link on magnets is rather badly broken.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Er, Magnet Links.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I’ve been using magnet links where ever they are available for months in the new Tixati client and they work great! That thing even lets you convert base-16 hex links to base-32 and vice-versa in case you’re creating a new seed and your friends run a client that only supports one of the standards.
Keep in mind, magnet links replace .torrent files, NOT trackers. DHT replaces trackers. You can have magnet links that include trackers if you include a ‘tr’ attribute in the link, and you can also put the display name of the torrent in a magnet link with the ‘dn’ attribute.
The darn TPB trackers haven’t been working for months, so I don’t think anyone’s going to notice now that they’re offline for good.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I am still using TBP to download torrent files.
Still working great.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
TPB still works with downloading torrent files.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
@ Sukasa
Fixed now (give me a bleedin’ chance
)
Cheers!
November 18th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
1) Magnet links do NOT work in Vuze, at least, not for me. Running the most-recent version of Vuze (4.3), when I click on a magnet link within FireFox, all I ever get is “Error – torrent file not found.”
2) There are plenty of other tracking websites out there (e.g., Isohunt). I also got a SmitFraud virus just by visiting TPB. I surf now with FireFox and AdBlockPlus, and there are times when FireFox will block almost ALL content on TPB, it’s so infected.
November 19th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Hi Nanny!
First a tip: Use Ubuntu and you don’t have to worry about virus.
And about vuze and TPB, it doesn’t work for me ether. But mininova does! Have you tried that page? TPBs magnet links looks strange, way to long it seems.
November 19th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
“Magnet links do NOT work in Vuze”
Try utorrent.
November 19th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Simon said: “Use Ubuntu…”
While I appreciate that there are some really cool things in Ubuntu, I think it’s simpler just to use FireFox with the AdBlock Plus add-on. It really is worry-free surfing. AdBlock will even tell you what it blocked and why. FireFox/AdBlock are awesome.
Reader’s Write: thanks for the tip to use µtorrent – I’ll give it a shot!
November 20th, 2009 at 5:47 am
A Nanny Mouse: Your computer is really fucked up! Why in hell would anyone use Wuze?
December 9th, 2009 at 4:51 am
Premium post, great looking blog, added it to my favorites!