The Pirate Bay's Oldest Torrent Is Now 20 Years Old (torrentfreak.com) 15
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Today, more than two decades have passed and most of the files shared on The Pirate Bay in the early years are no longer available. BitTorrent requires at least one person to share a full file copy, which is hard to keep up for decades. Surprisingly, however, several torrents have managed to stand the test of time and remain available today. A few days ago the site's longest surviving torrent turned 20 years old. While a few candidates have shown up over the years, we believe that an episode of "High Chaparral" has the honor of being the oldest Pirate Bay torrent that's still active today. The file was originally uploaded on March 25, 2004, and several people continue to share it today. The screenshot [here] only lists one seeder but according to information passed on by OpenTrackr.org, there are four seeders with a full copy. This is quite a remarkable achievement, especially since people complained about a lack of seeders shortly after it was uploaded.
Over the years, the "High Chaparral" torrent achieved cult status among a small group of people who likely keep sharing it, simply because it's the oldest surviving torrent. This became evident in the Pirate Bay comment section several years ago, when TPB still had comments. Record or not, other old torrents on The Pirate Bay also continue to thrive. On March 31, 2004, someone uploaded a pirated copy of the documentary "Revolution OS" to the site which is alive and kicking today.
While these torrents are quite old, they're not the oldest active torrents available on the Internet. That honor goes to "The Fanimatrix", which was created in September 2003 and, after being previously resurrected, continues to be available today with more than 100 people seeding. Ten years ago, we were surprised to see that any of the mentioned torrents were still active. By now, however, we wouldn't be shocked to see these torrents survive for decades. Whether The Pirate Bay will still be around then is another question.
Over the years, the "High Chaparral" torrent achieved cult status among a small group of people who likely keep sharing it, simply because it's the oldest surviving torrent. This became evident in the Pirate Bay comment section several years ago, when TPB still had comments. Record or not, other old torrents on The Pirate Bay also continue to thrive. On March 31, 2004, someone uploaded a pirated copy of the documentary "Revolution OS" to the site which is alive and kicking today.
While these torrents are quite old, they're not the oldest active torrents available on the Internet. That honor goes to "The Fanimatrix", which was created in September 2003 and, after being previously resurrected, continues to be available today with more than 100 people seeding. Ten years ago, we were surprised to see that any of the mentioned torrents were still active. By now, however, we wouldn't be shocked to see these torrents survive for decades. Whether The Pirate Bay will still be around then is another question.
Streaming (Score:5, Insightful)
Streaming was supposed to help solve, or at least massively slow down, pirating. For a while it looked like it might have, but then greed kicked in and streaming now sucks as bad as cable. Setting sail has once again become a thing.
Re:Streaming (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, most of the content providers fundamentally misunderstand the situation. I believe there are two main camps of content consumers:
1) There are people like me who will willingly pay the price to stream their content, as long as they don't make it actively painful - or even impossible - to do so.
2) There are people who will never pay for their content, even if somehow they succeed in making piracy impossible.
All the things these content providers currently do accomplish nothing except drive people from group 1 into group 2.
Re: (Score:3)
Concur, the licensing deals are just so painful. I understand that tapes and dvds might have had similar complex licensing shenanigans, but generally warehoused stock of 'grandfathered' media provided a buffer. Was curious to watch one series, and no one has licensed the first two seasons so I can't really start, and one service licenses season 3, but no other, and then seasons 4 and 5 are licensed by a different provider. It's also not uncommon that in the middle of streaming a show, it vanishes, and I h
Re: (Score:2)
Was curious to watch one series, and no one has licensed the first two seasons so I can't really start, and one service licenses season 3, but no other, and then seasons 4 and 5 are licensed by a different provider. It's also not uncommon that in the middle of streaming a show, it vanishes, and I have to wait months, if it will happen at all, for it to be picked up elsewhere.
I hoisted the sails after having lowered them for a long time when I noticed this happening a lot seasons would dissappear each week and nowhere to be found so we could finish a show
Further, even when watching, it's maddening that everyone has their own 'app' with obnoxiously different controls for no good reason. For touchscreens the difference isn't as terrible, but for set top boxes it's just crazy.
the other reason we prefer the clean up pirate version fast forward skipping etc just works but in many the apps won't let you and worse now they insert ads when you try for some of the services (I do accept the free services will put on ads to fund the service but forcing an ad when you skip is painful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm at the point where I'm just going to look for old films and shows with good ratings and watch those instead.
The stuff that's being produced now is of a significantly lower quality in story and plot, for the post part - and that's if it's not openly preachy.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, most of the content providers fundamentally misunderstand the situation. I believe there are two main camps of content consumers:
1) There are people like me who will willingly pay the price to stream their content, as long as they don't make it actively painful - or even impossible - to do so.
2) There are people who will never pay for their content, even if somehow they succeed in making piracy impossible.
All the things these content providers currently do accomplish nothing except drive people from group 1 into group 2.
There's a third category:
3) There are people whose money is being left on the table because the streaming companies won't provide the product we want.
I don't want seven subscriptions with seven companies giving me seven times the odds of my payment information getting leaked. I don't want to spend my time starting and stopping subscriptions to play the compelling-content chase. I don't want to worry I have to watch now or the content may be vaulted without warning. I don't want to be forced to keep b
Re: (Score:2)
From The Pirate Bay:
Video > Movies Akira Kurosawa - Seven Samurai (1954) DVDrip eng sub 04-25 2004 Magnet link This torrent has 22 comments. 1.35 GiB 9 0
If I had bought a physical copy of Seven Samurai back in 2004 when this was uploaded, watched it a few times, and kept it in its box, would it still work?
You would be lucky to have a working player
Maybe, maybe not - but I can still download a digital copy identical to the one uploaded 20 years ago, even though the original seeders are probably long gone.
On the face of it it seems ridiculous, but a medium largely used to download copyrighted materials for free could in the future end up being a valuable archive of music, films and TV shows. There are plenty of shows that have been removed from streaming services and were not released on DVD. Sometimes torrents are the only place they can be conveniently found and watched.
Who knows how far into the future Seven Samurai will continue to be seeded?
I've noticed that the up-loaders put great effort to making the files work and use standard codecs and often re-release files in updated codecs for that I thank them
Epochal (Score:3)
Actually, the oldest known torrents were uploaded on January 1, 1970. There are thousands of them!
Christ (Score:2)
Is the Pirate Bay still going in the post filesharing world?
Re: (Score:2)
Before anyone asks, I'm in the UK where bitorrent is dead. Blocked by the ISP's for over a decade now.
Nobody knows what it is here, only the ones who use VPN's do as they use VPN's to use BT.
Otherwise it's considered a retro thing where people talk about torrenting as like when they talk about the first time they playes an N64.
I literally havnt seen a torrent file save for the ones on debian.org for, well ages. And as for TPB, well thats public enemy #1 here so it and all the proxies are killed dead. Unle
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Even over here in the EU TPB is readily accessible (and quite up to date with new content). Sure, you'd have to be pretty stupid to use it locally... but it's available and the content is still legit.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep it's been blocked since 2012, The UK ISPs are legally required to block access to any number of sites on a list of banned URL's.
The Pirate Bay was one of the first and one of the main reasons for such a blocklist.
To get around it you must use a VPN, but VPN's are like the cloud, somebody elses servers vs somebody elses internet connection. You need to use a privacy focussed VPN and then you only have their assertions that they are being good boys with your data.
Bittorrent still works if the trackers ar
Re: (Score:2)
Oh and the UK ISP's also monitor Bittorrent and other filesharing traffic to catch you participating in a group known to share naughty things, so if they dont block you, even with encrypted communications, they can determine what you are downloading or uploading and you get cease and desist letters through the door, eventually a disconnection.
They try to educate you first :D
I used to use Tor for bittorrent after the blocks but that was slow as treacle. I simply switched to recording off HD TV, continued bu