On The Pirate Bay's blog, the decision is pitched as a step forward, away from centralized trackers to newer, decentralized systems like DHT and PEX:

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.

Which is all well and good, but DHT support isn't in all torrent clients yet, and many cheaper routers choke on the added connection load. It remains to be seen how smoothly the transition will go—the main site is still up and searches still work, so you can go judge for yourself—but there's little doubt that The Pirate Bay, as precariously positioned as they are as a company (read: owned by a bunch of incredible sketchballs), was under external pressure to get rid of that giant, 25 million+ torrent liability of theirs.

And because we're all People On The Internet here: Godspeed, I guess. [TorrentFreak via Lifehacker]

The other major bit they're missing—where to get torrents where the policies are a little, um, flexible—we've got you covered. If you've got more tips, shower the comments with 'em. [Maximum PC]

"uTP measures the time a packet takes to get sent from peer A to peer B, so in theory uTP will detect congestion anywhere on that path, although in practice the congestion most often happens somewhere on the first-mile uplink connection."

So won't that effect seeding—the very concept torrenting is based on? What if you're throttling yourself while everyone else is downloading like mad with a non-uTP client? TorrentFreak says that beta testers haven't reported any significant issues, and suggests that a more efficient use of the network may actually boost download speeds. uTorrent has a massive user base, and if all those users switched over, maybe that could happen.

If you're with an ISP who slows you down when you use too much bandwidth (like Comcast), or any provider that slows down when it's congested, uTP could actually be a very positive thing.

These days, µTorrent is developed by BitTorrent, Inc itself, and they've been looking to extend an olive branch in the whole net neutrality debate for a while now:

This will have a huge impact on ISP networks according to Simon Morris, BitTorrent's VP of Product Management. "If uTP is successful it should result in a multi-billion dollar windfall in terms of savings for ISPs," Morris told TorrentFreak

Cool...but I can't really see this making ISPs who shape torrent traffic suddenly go changing their mind. But I'm all for something being tried, and I'd love to hear your impressions of the beta if you've been using it for a while. Detailed background at: [TorrentFreak]

It kind of sux that even a monitoring app got banned. But, according to Apple:

…this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

So no torrent apps, at all, period. Right then.

Instructions on how to install µMonitor on a Jailbroken iPhone can be found here: [µMonitor via TorrentFreak]

Bram Cohen, known as the dude who allowed you to download cams of shit movies you don't want to pay for, has created Bram's Cube. It's basically like a Rubik's Cube, but it has gears inside that add another layer of difficulty. So much difficulty that I wouldn't even want to attempt this thing. It just looks too frustrating for words. But hey, if you're a glutton for punishment and feel the need to be taken down a peg or two, go for it. [Shapeways via Today's Big Thing]

Mininova's been working on a copyright filter for a while, but with the stakes so artificially high, it would need to be almost perfect to make operating the site worthwhile. This means that Mininova will either A.) Become the premier torrent indexer for Linux ISOs and public domain FLAC music, or B.) die.*

With two major torrent sites all but snuffed out in the last few weeks, there are only a few decent alternatives left. Although if you're of a hardier type, there's always Usenet. [Torrentfreak]

*Spoiler: It's B.

Demonoid
Demonoid, besides having a solid community and good quality torrents—no porn, exceedingly few viruses—also operates the other major torrent tracker besides The Pirate Bay. (A tracker is what help makes the whole BitTorrent system work, since it makes sure every peer's talking to each other properly.) It doesn't have the best selection around, but what most of what you'll find there is quality. The catch is that you need to snag an invitation from a member or when they periodically dole them out to the public.

Mininova.org
Mininova's always one of our preferred torrent sites—tons of torrents from multiple trackers, not a lot of crap in the interface, and the search isn't bad. Actually, it's kind of the like The Pirate Bay, but with less crap and fewer headaches. The catch now is that they're slowly implementing a new copyright filter to keep copyrighted torrents from being uploaded. But you should still be able to find True Blood on there, no problem.

ISOHunt
ISOHunt is a BitTorrent and P2P search engine that's got what feels like the most sophisticated search engine of the bunch. But like the others, you just punch in what you're looking for, and it pulls up results you can sort by seeds, date or whatever. It has one of the most massive indices of any site, so it's a good thing the search engine is up to it. Still, with a lot of torrents, it can be hard to find exactly what you're looking for.

BTJunkie
BTJunkie claims to be the largest torrent search engine of all, with around 5,000-25,000 new torrents added to the index daily. The quantity doesn't seem noticeably better than the other sites listed above, however. Also, the interface is really ugly. But you know, it's there if you need it.

EZTV
If you've downloaded a TV show, whatever site you snagged it from, chances are, it came from these guys. They're the most prolific TV rippers around, and usually have solid quality rips of shows up within hours of airing. If you're interested in TV, you might as well just go to the source—their site points to wherever their files are hosted, so you don't have to search through a million different sites to find the right EZTV torrent.

The whole scene is admittedly a bit depressing now, after years of high profile closures—Suprnova, OiNK TorrentSpy and LokiTorrent—so these are what's left of the big sites. And even they're not guaranteed to survive. Demonoid went offline for several months back in 2007-2008, Mininova has a copyright filter attached to it, and really, any site is just a police raid away from possibly going down. So tread carefully, and don't get too attached to any of them.

And of course, you should drop your own suggestions in the comments.

According to the site: "tracker.btarena.org" can be used to track new torrents.

The torrents available from the BTArena.net copy still carry the announce URLs from The Pirate Bay's tracker but since all torrents were updated with the OpenBitTorrent tracker, they will remain functional even when GGF's version of the site takes over at the end of this month

Remember: this is a torrent file index, not the petabytes of data they link to.

The anonymous uploader who compiled this huge torrent told TorrentFreak that he wanted to have a backup of the site in case all torrents mysteriously disappear after the site is sold. "I suppose I want us to have assurances. If the TPB deal disappoints us, we can just put it up again," he said.

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is also hosting what it calls "the $675,000 mixtape"—a collection of the 30 songs that student Joel Tenenbaum was found guilty of sharing, and then fined that amount for.

[The Pirate Bay via TorrentFreak –Thanks Mark!]

There's an update at the end of the post from Global Gaming Factory X CTO Johan Sellström that's as bizarrely worded and unclear as their original announcement and press release, so who knows what it really means:

"We had discussed closing it down initially so I think that's why he said so. The plan is to use technology from Peerialism that makes bandwidth utilization more efficient and then it would not make sense to shut it down. Peerialism will modify the tracker but it will be backwards compatible. But all this is subject to change if for some reason it would not work. It is our ambition to do so.

So, um, if their new thing doesn't work, then they'll shut it down? Ooookay.

The idea, Sunde said, is that The Pirate Bay will live on whatever happens—but would shutting down the tracker and scattering to the wind be really living? I think not. I also think it's gonna take a few days to figure out what the hell is really happening.

Possibly unrelated, but The Pirate Bay is down at the moment. [Torrent Freak - Thanks Brenden!]

Yates was working at the Burbank distribution company hired to cut promo reels for talk shows when he made a copy of the DVD and uploaded it to the internet. Of course, he blamed his grandmother.

When confronted, Yates accused co-workers and Paramount employees of putting the contraband copy on the Internet. But videotaped footage showed Yates making the unauthorized copy of "The Love Guru" at work before leaving the building and then going into his car, Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik M. Silber said. Yates subsequently blamed his grandmother, saying that he showed the movie at her birthday party and she then gave it away to a cousin who gave it to a friend who was the former roommate of the man who is believed to have uploaded the movie, but has not yet been charged. In his plea agreement, Yates confessed to making a copy of the comedy and later distributing it to others.

A true american hero! Keep fighting that good fight! [WSJ via Gawker]

This category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

That's what Apple told the developers Maza Digital. They wanted to offer Drivetrain as a remote front end for Transmission, a BitTorrent client which runs on Macs and PCs. The funny thing is that, even if assuming that BitTorrent is used to download copyrighted material, Drivetrain itself doesn't do anything illegal at all: It just controls the software on the PC and doesn't use the iPhone itself for piracy.

Even if Apple has the right to approve whatever they want—after all it's their store—this time their arguments are just dumb. [Maza Digital via iLounge]

The movie industry would like to tell you that those 4 million downloads are totally equivalent to 4 million lost tickets at an average cost of 7 bucks a piece according to the Hollywood Reporter's figures, knocking about $28 million off its weekend total, which was a still respectable $85 million, though less than X3's opening weekend gross of $103 million.

It's not. Even discounting the few people brave enough for a repeat viewing of this crime against decency—adamantium bullets, really?—pirates who are piratey pirates were never going to pay to see it anyway, and the incredible download numbers undoubtedly drew more of them in. It's like a YouTube video with 2 million views. It makes you more likely to click.

But 4 million is still something of a watershed number. 1 million downloads was pretty damn good. 4 million is berzerk. The Dark Knight hasn't even sold 4 million copies on Blu-ray, and it's like the biggest thing ever on the format.

That's fairly incredible buzz for a thoroughly lackluster movie that's a bona fide wolverine fart in summer filled with actually good blockbusters, hype it likely would've never achieved otherwise. And being able to talk about all those millions of downloads in the press is just one slice of this illicit hype machine. (If Fox was smart, they would include the bootleg workprint as a special feature on the Blu-ray.)

Would it have made more $85 million if it hadn't leaked? Maybe. But I kind of doubt it. Would fewer people have seen it? Definitely. [Hollywood Reporter via digg]

The guilty verdict handed down to the Pirate Bay leaders resulted in a huge amount of publicity and popularity for the Pirate Party, regardless of the fact that the two are not officially related. Membership has shot up to a record 42,000+, and a recent poll to check out the frontrunners in the E.U. election showed even rosier numbers.

The Pirate Party is now the second-most popular party for voters 18-30, and Swedish newspaper DN.se predicts a vote of 5.1% in the election, which will be enough for a seat in Parliament. Sure, it's a minority vote (and that's being generous), but a pirate can surely stand his ground. [DN.se (warning: Swedish) via TorrentFreak]