What’s hot in the wonderful world of BitTorrent in 2011? At first glance little seems to have changed, as the top 3 is identical to that of last year. But moving down the list we see quite a few movers and shakers as well as a surprising newcomer.

Below we have compiled a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

Do you know a good public torrent site that’s not listed here? Feel free to plug it in a comment.

1. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is probably the best known BitTorrent brand on the Internet. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the immense legal witch hunt launched by the entertainment industries several years ago.

2. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for years. A few weeks ago the site traded in its .COM domain and switched to .EU, but this didn’t affect the site’s traffic.

3. IsoHunt

Last year was a tough one for isoHunt, as it became the first search engine that had to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt is still the third largest torrent site in terms of traffic. In 2011, isoHunt hopes to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.

4. KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents was the fastest growing newcomer of last year, and managed to continue this upward trend throughout 2010. The site released many new features and continues to innovate, still without a single banner ad on the site.

5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie had a pretty quiet year, which is usually good news for a site that operates in the BitTorrent niche. The only setback was the removal of the site’s front page from Google due to a DMCA complaint. As last year, BTjunkie settles in fifth place.

6. Demonoid.me

The impossible happened. Demonoid finished 2010 with only a minimal amount of downtime, compared to weeks or months in previous years. A few weeks ago the site announced that it would move from the familiar .COM to a .ME domain in response to the news about US domain seizures.

7. ExtraTorrent.com

ExtraTorrent is one of those robust torrent indexes that don’t make the news very often. In 2010 it continued to expand and the site gained two spots compared to last year.

8. TorrentDownloads.net

TorrentDownloads is in the same league as ExtraTorrent, a no nonsense torrent index that provides torrents to millions of users each month.

9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor fooled most of the tech press last year when it announced that it had bought a Russian town, one of the better PR stunts seen in 2010. On the flipside TorrentReactor seems to have lost some traffic due to a Google penalty, dropping the site to 9th place this year.

10. LimeTorrents.com

LimeTorrents is the best newcomer of 2010 in terms of traffic, which promises a lot for the new year. The site went live half a year ago and already made it into the top 10 in this short period. It’s also a bit ironic as ‘Limewire’ got shutdown a few months ago.

Honorable Mention EZTV

If there’s one site that deserves an honorable mention it’s EZTV. The leading TV-torrent release group almost made it into the top 10 on its own, but due the seasonal traffic spikes it just fell short. It has to be noted though that unlike other sites in the above list EZTV’s traffic doesn’t rely heavily on search engines such as Google or BitTorrent meta-search engines. EZTV currently has 30 million visitors a month and continues to expand.

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

During 2010 the United States Copyright Group (USCG) sued tens of thousands of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared films without the consent of copyright holders. The aim was not to take cases to court, but to get alleged infringers to pay a cash settlement to make legal action go away.

One of the movie companies partnering with USCG are Achte/Neunte, the makers of the movie Far Cry. That case originally had more than 4,500 defendants but in November 2010 a district court judge told USCG that they could only pursue those who were sued in the correct jurisdiction, 140 in total.

Now, according to Hollywood Reporter, USCG have not been put off by this setback. On the contrary, they have just signed up a new company to their scheme.

Although Nu Image Films may not immediately ring any bells with BitTorrent users, they have an impressive 179 movies in their portfolio. One of their most successful movies to date will certainly sound familiar- the 2010 blockbuster ‘The Expendables’.

According to Thomas Dunlap at USCG, The Expendables will be the focus of a new lawsuit being prepared by his company which is set to target the untold thousands of Internet users who shared the movie on BitTorrent during 2010. Dunlap says other lawsuits for Nu Image movies will follow.

The potential numbers are significant. The Expendables first appeared in TorrentFreak’s chart of most-pirated movies back in August 2010 and stayed there for 8 straight weeks. It was also the 27th most-searched for term on one of BitTorrent’s most popular indexes last year.

In a sure sign that USCG’s business plan is all about making money from piracy and not stopping or deterring it, THR quotes Dunlap as saying that USCG has been doing background checks on identities of BitTorrent users it has obtained to date and that those who live in “a $100,000 house” may be more appealing targets than those who live in a “$10,000 trailer”.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Anti-piracy outfits come in different shapes and forms. The largest group are so called DMCA-agents, usually small companies that help copyright holders to prevent their content from spreading over the Internet. They are tasked with sending takedown requests to sites that host or link to their content, including Google, Twitter and torrent sites.

While the majority of these outfits do their job with a relative low profile, there are a few oddballs that continue to make the news due to their unconventional tactics. In the past we’ve covered the mysterious ways of the Web-Sheriff, and more recently the Indian based company AiPlex Software has been making a name for itself.

Last September Girish Kumar, managing director of AiPlex Software, admitted that his company DDoSed torrent sites that were not complying with their DMCA takedown requests. “We flood the website with requests, which results in database error, causing denial of service as each server has a fixed bandwidth capacity,” he said at the time.

This revelation was not appreciated by everyone, and led to the start of Anonymous’ Operation Payback which took down the AiPlex website for days on end. A costly attack for the Indian multi-purpose firm that also specializes in medical transcription and search engine optimization.

Despite this setback AiPlex is not backing down, on the contrary. Although the DDoS attacks seem to have stopped the outfit has continued to harass torrent site owners, often incorrectly. Now Bitsnoop has alerted us to an interesting email conversation he had with AiPlex’s managing director.

A few days ago Bitsnoop’s owner received a takedown request for the following torrent, which linked to a copy of the Indian blockbuster Tees Maar Khan. The torrent site owner quickly took the linked page offline and thought the case was settled, but he was wrong. Yesterday, AiPlex’s general manager Girish Kumar sent a reminder for the file that was already removed.

For Bitsnoop’s owner these type of incorrect reminders are an annoyance, and he replied to AiPlex that similar unverified requests will be ignored in the future. Girish Kumar obviously failed to see the mistake he made, but quickly replied with an oddly worded, brand new and unprecedented threat.

HI,

In that case we may have pull the cat out of the bag & ban u completely…Anyways, if u don’t confirm to adhere to our Infringement notification requests, we will be forced send ur website details to the Indian Govt. to further ban ur site across pan India. In fact we have done this to several sites & u are given the last chance to comply the request…

Awaiting for ur earnest reply,

Best,

Girish Kumar N

Managing Director

Aiplex Software Pvt. Ltd.

Really?

It is hard to take any of the above response seriously and indeed Bitsnoop’s owner wisely ignored it. Needless to say, through these unusual threats AiPlex is not making themselves popular among site owners. TorrentFreak contacted Girish Kumar to hear more about their close ties and influence within the Indian authorities, but we have yet to receive a reply.

Of course this is just one side of the daily DMCA troubles torrent site owners face, there are also many agents that are more pleasant to work with, and these usually get more done. When the takedown notices are complete and properly formatted most torrent site owners will cooperate and take the infringing links offline quickly.

AiPlex has obviously chosen to go down another route, which makes it harder for them to succeed. But, this doesn’t matter much for them of course, they’ll simply ask the Indian Government to ban Bitsnoop and The Pirate Bay, making piracy a thing of the past.

And putting themselves out of the anti-piracy business in the process.

Article from: TorrentFreak.