p2p news special / p2pnet: Peer-to-peer, person-to-person, people-to-people, p2p, is here. And it’s not going away. Nor will it be scarfed up and regurgitated by vested corporate interests as a wholly commercial technology meant to keep cash-cow consumers mindlessly swallowing whatever the music, movie and software cartels care to dish out.

Rather, p2p is allowing the Net and the people who use it to be truly free, sharing with each other in a way that’s never been possible before.

Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent is a primary p2p technology that’s now been locked up solid by the Hollywood establishment. But that’s OK because it continues to thrive as ever was, outside of corporate bottom line constraints, and in original form.

Given that, directories are of obvious, and vital, importance and mininova has become firmly established as a leading torrent site.

It had its first birthday a couple of days ago and we checked in with Niek, Erik, Jos, Matthijs and Rob >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

p2pnet : Running a torrent site might be considered by some to be an occupation fraught with risk. What makes you do it?

mininova : We run mininova because we believe in the future of p2p file sharing technology and we want to provide a extensive and easy to use torrent directory for users.

p2pnet : There’s a perception that what you do is illegal – that it’s in some way against the law. What’s your response to that?

mininova : Hosting torrent files and providing a directory of torrent files is 100% legal. Google is indexing warez and serials sites, so does that make their service illegal? Of course not. The technology is completely legal, although it’ll take some time for people to get used to new technologies. Remember the first days of audio casettes? The music industry was afraid this would destroy their market, but the opposite was true.

p2pnet : The major movie and music cartels are trying to nail BT sites. Do you expect mininova to eventually be targeted? Or do you have a survival plan?

mininova : We don’t suspect mininova to be ever taken down by legal actions. Unlike most BitTorrent sites, we’ve got a strict copyright policy. And we’ve got a quite good relationship with companies like Microsoft regarding copyright issues.

p2pnet : The RIAA, MPAA, BSA and other ‘trade’ organizations claim sites such as yours in effect feed criminal counterfeiters whom they’ve labeled ‘pirates’ Do you think these kinds of people really do use torrent sites to find material they can they sell illegally?

mininova : The commercial-pirate scene is much more hidden. They get their stuff from different places – warez/fxp sites, etc.

p2pnet : What’s your perception of mininova users and the users of sites like it?

mininova : Our regular visitor is a home user who visits mininova daily and looks for new content he or she likes, for example tv shows which only air in other countries.

p2pnet : When you were getting started, you had help from ThePirateBay and isoHunt. Did this surprise you?

mininova : Yes, it was a nice surprise to see that the administrators of the (at that time) biggest BT sites were so helpful to starters like us. We still cooperate closely with those sites, of course in a whole other way than one year ago.

p2pnet : What’s been your most noticeable high and most noticeable low in your first year?

mininova : In the beginning, our site went down quite often due to technical issues. Mininova simply grew too fast for our servers to handle the load. So we had quite some down time, sometimes several days. But that moment our site was up again, our forum was flooded by “thank you, you’re still alive!” posts, that’s something you’re not going to forget.

p2pnet : What would you say to someone thinking about starting a torrent site of their own?

mininova : Don’t start a torrent site just because it’s cool to have such a site. Think about new ideas, listen to the community, try to discover what people actually want on a torrent site. If your site is unique, if it has new, cool features, if it is actually something people really want, then it’ll be a guaranteed success.

p2pnet : What are your predictions for the coming year vis-à-vis p2p and the entertainment and software cartels?

mininova : We’re sure that p2p is here to stay. Maybe the form will change, maybe an enhanced BitTorrent protocol will be the next big thing, but p2p is not going away. Hopefully, the cartels will realize they can’t fight p2p by hiring expensive lawyers, but that they need to work together with the community to find a solution that’s satisfactory for everyone.

p2pnet : So you’d like to be able to sit down and discuss ways to work with the entertainment and software cartels?

mininova : Definitely. We’re always open for discussion and we’d say, Feel free to contact us.

And there’s one final thing we’d like to say: If you, as a BitTorrent user, want to see new features at mininova that you think might be useful, please contact us.

p2pnet : Thanks. And all the best for your second year : )

Also See:
first birthday – Mininova celebration, January 17, 2006
locked up solid – BitTorrent, Hollywood team up, November 22, 2005

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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