First, BitTorrent goes and puts a search box on it’s homepage. Lots of folks knew about this; I even podcast the news. Now, Federal agents have raided the homes of 10 individuals who are part of the EliteTorrents network. They even have a video release about the raids which is sadly not available via .torrent.
Is this the beginning of the end for infringing uses of BitTorrent? Will this have a chilling effect on filesharing? Will this make non-infringers who use BitTorrent – podcasters, vloggers, authors, speakers – stop using this technology? Has the future of BitTorrent brightened suddenly with trackerless support and an official search engine and then dimmed just as quickly? I really don’t know.
UPDATE: Maigh sends an email letting me know about a Wired article discussing the BitTorrent shutdown: U.S. Jacks Torrent Site. Thanks!
UPDATE II: Waxy reports that Torrentspy is blocking/filtering their searches because of DMCA orders.
Feds
Probably in part due to the recent addition of a bittorrent search engine to the official bittorrent website, essentially bringing a 3rd degree of separation from the masses of copyrighted material traversing the net. 10 search warrants were executed…