More than 3 billion downloads!

We are pleased to announce that Mininova reached the milestone of 3 billion (3.000.000.000) torrent downloads today! In January this year, Mininova reached 1 billion downloads and in June 2 billion downloads. This means we probably won't reach the 4 billion downloads before the end of this year (as we hoped), but more likely in 4 or 5 months from now. The news-site TorrentFreak has more detailed info. To avoid some confusion: we're counting the number of times a .torrent file is downloaded from our website, not how often the data described in the .torrent file is completely downloaded by a peer. We also reached new heights in the Alexa statistics, Mininova currently ranks as one of the 60 biggest websites in the world. To cope with this growth, we added some server-power the past weeks. Tomorrow another new server will be installed. More statistics of our servers can be found on the Mininova graphs page. This all is great news, which wouldn't have happened without the support of you (the users) and our moderating team. Thanks a lot! There's some more great news coming up the next couple of days, so please stay tuned :)

Updates for Mininova and Snotr

It's been a while since the last technical update. So today, we added some new functionality for Mininova and Snotr to make your life easier :) Updates for Mininova:
  • Number of comments in the tables. If a torrent has one or more comments, the
    Media_httpwwwmininova_rcsnx
    icon and the number of comments is shown. Clicking on the number or icon will take you to the comment page of the torrent.
  • Subcategory information in the tables. When you move the mouse cursor over a torrent, its subcategory shows up next to its name.
Updates for Snotr:
  • The video cloud. An interesting way to browse the videos.
  • The video wall. A quick way to find a specific video if you remember its thumbnail image.
  • Quick submit link. Explained on the submit page. This link makes it easier to submit videos to Snotr.
  • Animated thumbnails. When you move the mouse cursor over a thumbnail, an animated version of the thumbnail is shown.
  • Better video encoding method. Already in use since a few weeks, and results in smaller file sizes.
  • Some bug fixes.
As always, we would like to hear your suggestions and ideas. Please comment on this blog post to share your thoughts. Edit (24 September): Two more small improvements for Mininova:
  • Comments posted by the uploader of the torrent are shown in green. Example here.
  • The "number of comments" icon (see above) is now always at the right side of the column, so it's easier to compare torrents in a table.

About the MediaDefender leaked emails

Most people probably already read the news on TorrentFreak or another website: yesterday, someone published a torrent consisting of roughly 6.6 thousand leaked internal emails from MediaDefender. For those who don't know MediaDefender, it's part of the company ARTISTdirect (OTC: ARTD) and their sole purpose is to disrupt P2P traffic. They try to achieve this 'noble' goal by creating fake (decoy) torrent files and spreading these on BitTorrent websites. Their server farm consists of thousands of servers they use to seed and track these fake files. These guys like to refer to their work as "content protection". Now that these internal MediaDefender mails are leaked, I want to share my thoughts on the whole thing. What's interesting to see is that Mininova is more than once referred to as a difficult site to post fake files. Let's see some quotes:
NEGATIVES: Attempted to upload to Mininova using 15 different IPs across various ranges. Was banned on every single attempt.
-- Benny Mao, on uploading fakes to Mininova
These are very disappointing results given that people were here over the weekend. I understand that Mininova is moderating heavily, ...
-- Ben Ebert, on attempts to upload fake "Fantastic 4" torrents
And I know Mininova is our toughest site to get onto.but we gotta think of something.
-- Ben Ebert, on failing attempts to upload fakes
Somewhere in between collecting real torrents and posting decoys, post comments for these files on Piratebay, Mininova and Torrentspy.
-- Pedro Cortez, in meeting notes
REMINDER: Next Fox High Priority project - Release July 27th: "The Simpson’s Movie" Try to post to Mininova and Torrentspy by any means possible.
-- Pedro Cortez, in other meeting notes We can only be grateful for the many nice words from our friends at MediaDefender :) All thanks go to our great moderating team, who did (and do) great work. Oh, and one last quote:
It's slow. I would say on average 15-20 seconds to load a page.
-- Benny Mao, on Mininova load time. We took this remark very serious and decided to take immediate action and added a new slave database server. Graphs of the new setup can be seen at our statistics page. Stay tuned for updates!

Mininova team launches new web site: Snotr

We're excited to announce that we are launching a new web site today: Snotr. We worked more than 2 years on this web site, mainly due to a lack of time. But after dozens of delayed milestones, we think that Snotr is finally ready for public. So what exactly is Snotr? From the Snotr FAQ:
Snotr is a source for short and funny or interesting videos. Everyone can submit a video, which will be reviewed by our team. If we accept your video, it will be listed on the front page and other pages. Users can rate videos and post comments to share their opinion with others. Please note that we try to keep this website family-safe, so adult submissions are not allowed.
Some of the unique features of Snotr (compared to the other "funny videos" sites out there) are:
  • Clean interface, no adult content, SFW
  • High-quality videos
  • Real-time video resizing (just drag the video-size slider)
  • Audio volume leveled (no need to change the volume for every video)
So to be clear: Snotr is NOT a YouTube/Metacafe/Dailymotion/whatever killer, if you're looking for a place to dump your videos, stick to those sites. But in case you have some spare time to spend (*cough* work *cough*), try Snotr :) See you there! Update: For those who are wondering what the name 'Snotr' means: it doesn't mean anything at all. It's just a catchy name. P.S. If you spot any bugs, please post them here.

Received mails and problem reports (NSFW language)

We did a few blog posts on mails and problem reports almost 2 years ago, so I thought it was time for an update :D On an average day, our mail server receives ~650 incoming email messages. A large part of this is spam, the rest are regular messages (ranging from site suggestions to takedown notices). As a regular visitor, you probably know that email is not the best way to contact us about torrent problems. That's why we have the "problem reports" system: every torrent page features a "Report a problem" tab, where visitors can submit the issues they notice related to a torrent. Moderators watch the problem reports queue, and take action if necessary. Most of the times the mails and reports we receive are useful, but sometimes you see the strangest messages. Here's a compilation of the best (warning: NSFW language):
your website is very gay and will not let me hav my password as i put it when i created my account WHY NOT????
where is the pin nubmer to unzip the rar file?
Why is the creator of the Bill Maher torrent file so STUPID that they start the name of the file with a period?! Dammit! Get this clue: Files that start with a period are INVISIBLE on UNIX OSs!!! I am on Mac OS X and am sick of this moronic file naming. I am going to complain until this bozo problem is stopped.
hello please help me, i farted on the disc and it became rotten so i cleaned it with piss, then i shoved it into the ps2 but then my ps2 laser broke, what do i do, fart on it again?
pls view the contents of this movie. ther are 3 shadowlike people in a theater making commentaries while the movie is playing. i expected a good movie, but the sound of godzilola is drowned out by the commentaries who are watching the movie
oijioijojjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjiklpoiumnphnupn hello 65895665 65rfui I 2387uthjds Am fdwuirhgsfjds encoding this akijhithjiorhigorjh data foihdgndj so plase read it kgjhidosskgsfdogljfd ok ediohgjhdfoighe it fuck up my computer oidhgodshgdsihgs because of corrupt data issuls
huge codec problem!
this down load is shit! it fucked my £2000 computer. i want to sue your cheap piece of fat jelly looking arse! thank you
Fuck this shit. The menus are in Spanish and everything else in english. Whoever uploaded this really fucked up. Whoever's gonna download this is going to get fucked
dont download only trial versions. why put this shit on there.put real version not trials asshole!!!!!!!
NO HAVE SOUND!! NAO TEM AUDIOOOO
CD 1 is unburnable!
torrent says english, the language is japanese with english sub titles. tha anyway to the u/l ers but japanese is for the japanese. if you are going to put out a torrent and call it english then put it out in english ASSHOLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello i have found a realy big problem which will end up shuttingdown your web site and possibbly getting you arrested for a long time .Some reason people are putting torrents of movies on the web site that are not whot thay seem .My son downloaded the movie the simpsons movie but when it finished downloading it was not the simpsons but a xxx rated movie that has the rong movie title as the torrent name this is not the first time this has happend i will be reporting this to the ploice as the copywrite laws and rateings laws of this country are being broken in a revry sinicter way. I hope you are not sent to jail over this as xx movies are against the law here in Australia .I would not be so pissed of if the names of the movies where correct but this i believe is done deliberatly to get people to download xxrated movies without the user knowing what he has downloaded . I suggest you fix this peoblem quickly before you end up in jail
You take that album Roine Stolt -Wall Street Voodoo off the site TODAY or I'll use ALL my legal connections to shut you down FOREVER !!! I assure you I DO have connections to shut you down and get you in JAIL !!! Sincerely Roine Stolt -author .
Sometimes you have NO idea what people are talking about:
you guys obviously aren't too clever because on some of the subscriptions you've set me up for contain YOUR IP ADDRESS. You guys must be as thick as you fucking look you bunch of cunts. (by the way all i have to do is ignore the messages so im not technically subscribed)
Some users aren't too happy with our banners:
GET RID OF THE FUCKING BANNER AD FOR FUCKING TALKING SMILYS I have faithfully used mininova for a year now downloading at least 15 things a day... But i will never use it again nor will my group (another 30ish people with 8mbit connections same as me) if you dont get rid of this annoying shit every fucking time i change tab my mouse goes over the stupid banner and it shouts out oh my god go away If you do not promptly get rid of it we will stop downloading and start 24/7 DoS attacks on your host server Fucking cheap bastards
And the same guy, after we tracked down and banned the ad (which accidently slipped through):
Hi Niek, Thank you so very much for getting rid of those seriously annoying banner ads. The new look site is awesome too. Just wanted to say thanks and Happy Christmas dude Peace DsC

2 Billion Downloads!

Just 5 months ago we blogged about the 1 billion download milestone, and I'm very happy and excited to announce that we broke the 2 billion (2,000,000,000) torrent downloads mark today! This is very good news, it means our site is growing exponential: the amount of total torrent downloads roughly doubles every half year. And more downloads means more exposure, so more content available on our website. There is also a story on TorrentFreak about this milestone. I thought it would be nice to show a breakdown of the download numbers per category, so here is a graph:
Torrents categoryPercentage of total downloads
Anime3.61%
Books3.04%
Games6.59%
Movies17.89%
Music21.21%
Pictures0.53%
Software5.61%
TV Shows40.11%
Other1.42%
This clearly shows that TV Shows content is more popular than ever, followed by Music and Movies. Of course this is not the end, if the growth keeps continuing we might be able to reach the 4 billion mark by the end of this year! Watch out, Apple iTunes...

BitTorrent in your browser: a round-up

It has been more than a year since Opera added BitTorrent functionality to their browser. We expected that more browsers would follow the example of our Nordic browser developers. Nowadays, there are quite some projects and extensions to add BitTorrent capabilities to browsers, so I figured it's time for a round-up: Opera Opera was the first browser to support the BitTorrent protocol. Their BT support is quite solid, but not very advanced and doesn't support some well-known BT extensions. In short: nice for new users, but not for regular downloaders. Pros: Nicely integrated, multi-platform. Cons: No advanced features (missing DHT, peer exchange, encrypted transfers), not open source. BitFox BitFox is a quite new extension for Firefox, made by the student Joshua Hendo. The backend of the extension is based on Rasterbar's libtorrent, so it supports quite some advanced BT features. The project is in a VERY early stage of development, and can only be obtained from SVN, so I haven't tested it yet. Pros: Open source, using libtorrent, so a quite solid backend (including DHT). Cons: Not usable yet, early stage of development, seems to run only on Windows & Linux. FireStorm FireStorm is quite similar to BitFox, it's an extension for Firefox and still in pre-alpha development stage. They use the Mainline client as a basis, so they will probably support most BT extensions/features. Pros: Open source, using the Mainline reference client as a backend. Cons: In pre-alpha development stage, not usable yet, interface is quite ugly. FoxTorrent FoxTorrent is a project of the company Red Swoosh/Akamai, these guys have the funding and expertise to build a nice Firefox extension. This extension isn't that well integrated in Firefox, clicking a torrent basically opens a webpage to the webinterface of an external application. The advantage is that closing your browser doesn't stop the torrents from downloading. Pros: Open source, torrent streaming/progressive downloading support, continue downloading even when browser is closed. Cons: Not very well integrated in Firefox, no advanced features (missing port mapping, DHT, peer exchange, encrypted transfers). AllPeers AllPeers is also funded by a company, so you would expect a nice client. The whole interface looks very nice and clean, but they're more focussed towards sharing URL's/images/etc than downloading torrents. In the current stable version (0.60), there is not an option to download a regular torrent. They do have a My Torrents tab in the beta version though. Pros: Clean and professional interface, also available as a bundle with FireFox Cons: Not open source, no regular torrent support (yet), no advanced features (missing port mapping, DHT, peer exchance, encrypted transfers) Wyzo/FireTorrent Wyzo/FireTorrent is very new, they released their first public version a week ago. The difference between the two is that FireTorrent is a BitTorrent extension for Firefox, while Wyzo is a full-featured customized Firefox browser including the FireTorrent extension. These guys managed to integrate BitTorrent support seamlessly in the Firefox download manager. FireTorrent also has the most advanced BT features of all the projects mentioned here. The Wyzo browser has some cool advantages over Firefox, like direct searching on social sharing networks (including Mininova) and Alexa/Pagerank integration. Pros: Seamless Firefox integration, available as a bundle with Firefox (Wyzo), has all advanced features (including port mapping, DHT, encryption, peer exchange, STUNT). Cons: Not open source, Mac/Linux version not out yet - will be released in a few weeks Conclusion Of all the projects reviewed above, I think Wyzo has the most potential. This browser supports all the nice BT features/extensions and makes downloading via BitTorrent as easy as a regular HTTP download. Does Wyzo beat the "good old" µTorrent and Azureus? Probably not, but I will definitely recommend new BitTorrent users to install this browser. References Our friends at TorrentFreak have more background information on some of these projects: BitFox, FireStorm, FoxTorrent, AllPeers, Wyzo/FireTorrent.

Direct RSS feeds

As you might know, all our RSS feeds point to the "General info" pages of torrents. However, this is not very convenient when using our feeds in combination with torrent clients that require direct links to the .torrent files. We got quite a few mails from people that asked for an option to let the RSS feed link directly to the .torrent files. So how do you change your feed to point to the .torrent instead of the "General info" page? Well, all you have to do is add "?direct" (when it's the first "argument") or "&direct" to your RSS feed! So the global feed would become (note the question mark): http://www.mininova.org/rss.xml?direct All other cases require a ampersand: http://www.mininova.org/rss.xml?cat=8&direct Even though this flag was around for quite some time, not many people probably knew about it, hopefully this post changes that :)

Mininova.com is now ours!

Hey all, good news! In December last year we blogged that "mininova" turned out to be the 9th most Googled word. We wrote back then:
It’s good to see our site between the top-10 most popular search terms, but it probably also means the homepage of Mininova is not very trivial to find. We promise you we’re going to work on this issue next year!
One of the main reasons that so many people search on Google for Mininova, is that we use the ".org" TLD instead of the (more common) ".com". So why not simply register Mininova.com? The problem was that this domain was already registered by a scammer. This person was using the domain to trick people into paying money (up to 100$) to access our website. This technique is usually refered to as phishing. As a result, we received hundreds of emails from people who submitted their credit card information to this scammer. Fortunately that's all over now. In January, we hired the law firm Traverse Legal and started a domain dispute against "Atlas Protecta Co. Ltd.", which is an alias used by the scammer. The decision came out a few days ago, and can be read here. The arbiter judged that our three assertions were valid:
  1. The domain name registered by Respondent is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which Complainant has rights; and
  2. Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
  3. The domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
To put a long story short, Mininova.com is now ours and redirects to the ".org" site :) A short note to the people who lost money to the scammer: please contact your local bank and ask for a refund of the credited amount of money.

Technical issues April 18

After having quite some issues earlier tonight we made some source code changes. This proved to be a bad strategy (we didn't test these changes enough) and we ended up with a corrupted database. We are restoring a backup as we speak, but many of the torrents uploaded today are probably lost. We are going to try and restore those as well, but our first priority is to restore the backup of this morning. If you uploaded torrents today, please re-upload them again as soon as we are up and running again. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for understanding! Instant update: We're up again! Minus all torrents of today, unfortunately...