YouTorrent is a fairly new BitTorrent search engine that has been getting positive reviews of late, so I gave it a shot.
The premise is simple: YouTorrent is a meta-search engine that indexes torrents from other sites (such as btjunkie, The Pirate Bay), then prioritizes the results based on the number of seeds and peers each torrent has. For example a search for something like Cloverfield offers multiple results but most importantly provides the torrent with the most participants first. For those not familiar with BitTorrent, the more seeds and peers a Torrent has, the faster the file will likely download.
As a meta-search engine YouTorrent doesn’t discriminate against legal and pirated content (yes, there is legal content on BitTorrent) so it’s a case of anything goes, and this is both a strength and a weakness. If you do frequently download using BitTorrent you’ll love YouTorrent, it’s quick and the results it gives negates the need to use other sites when searching for Torrents. On the other hand YouTorrent efficiently facilitates video piracy; sure, there’s an ongoing legal argument as to whether a search engine can be held liable for indexing pirated content elsewhere, but that didn’t help TorrentSpy when the Feds came knocking. The site is hosted in the Netherlands and has a Moniker hide your details service running on the Whois record, but chances are if the owners are in the United States, it’s probably only a matter of time until the MPAA or RIAA sends in the lawyers, so give it a shot while you still can.
The funny thing about that search screenshot is that every single one of those Cloverfield torrents listed is a fake. I suspect Media Defender is furiously forwarding this email as a sign of their success spamming bittorrent with fake rips.
This link, not this email.
Youporn, youtube, youtorrent… Does Web 2.0 also mean horrible stolen “business” names? I use business loosely only because YouTube is the only legitimate business out of the bunch.
@3
LOL - how about YouYou.com - a social network site comprising on one person - You. I agree, the You prefix is sadly overYou’sed !
How will this site get taken down soon? It seems like the exact same thing as torrentz.com except a lot cleaner and faster. If I’m not mistaken TorrentSpy actually hosted torrent files as well which made them distributors of illegal content. This site seems like a standard link service and I don’t think it will get taken down quickly but who knows. Plus, if I were the MPAA I would much rather take down the Mininovas and Pirate Bays rather a meta search engine.
Off the subject of this post, but did you forget about the “TECH PRESIDENT”. I never saw any mention of it and I believe you can still vote even the it has expired.
N3il89
maybe so, or at least I hope so
hahaha, aren’t the feds going after the other sites such as Pirate Bay?
How long until the deadpool?
@3 - really? it’s one drop from the ocean –
http://www.mixive.com/?range=Y.....E2IPOD.com
per the superset of http://www.mixive.com/?letter=you
which’s actually already half year old…
yikes, one of their top searches is “methamphetamine”
This could easily be Media Defender’s latest attempt to catch would-be pirates. Proceed with caution.
“How long until the deadpool?”
Who? Google?
What does the term “bald” mean in the torrent title description?
Finally! A good Torrent search!
Dugg!
BaLD is a scene group, just like pukka and alliance and diamond and camera.
Which is the law under which they take down this kind of sites? I mean.. isn’t those just links? can you do something illegal just by putting a link?
I don’t know much about laws but I can’t get a quick answer on my mind about how they justify taking this kind of sites down… and lets say .. not google for linking to youtorrent…http://www.google.com/search?q=youtorrent
Torrentz.com has been doing this for ages, without the unnecessary javascript.
Zuggu (#16) my point exactly in comment #12, in case someone missed it.
Steal Away folks ! After all, isn’t everything meant to be FREE? chumps
“…yes, there is legal content on BitTorrent…”
Care to quote percentages? Ah, never mind. Besides, it’s instructive enough to see that your example is for a movie that just premired this weekend.
i like rlslog.net instead
john
diamondrings411.com
ISOHUNT has a very nice ranking algorithm that takes search term placement, number of seeds/leeches, and age into account. YouTorrent has no such algorithm, but is very pretty, and gets to add to the name confusion of utorrent/microtorrent/youtorrent.
And you! You ENCOURAGED their foolishness by LINKING to them! Thanks for nothing, assholes.
this wont end in the deadpool
Torrent sites like piratebay make alot of money from advertising , selling branded goods ie t-shirts etc .
Its a good business to be in. Now if you aggregate all results your going to be getting even more traffic that most of the other torrent sites ( why look at various sites when you can search on one ).
Great article duncan.
———-
http://www.xenbet.com
Duncan,
you write this as if the reason it has been featured is because it sorts results in order of number of seeders - ermm, you can do that on other sites like isohunt etc., just click the column heading you want to sort by.
There is so much spam out there these days that you need to use a site that allows user comments on the files - so not isohunt, yes btjunkie for example - because it doesn’t take long for people to report that files are fake. Not sure if youtorrents has that (or, more importantly, whether it as enough of a community to report fakes)
I don’t understand how bittorrent trackers like this get shut down but a site like songza and other mp3 search sites don’t? Isn’t it the same premise? A search engine with no hosted files? Can someone please explain?
Common lets give it a try before it’s gonna fly
nhick
http://www.itrush.com
well, FIRST of all , no one hosts more copyright infringing material than youtube ( especially when they first went live pre-google ) … I dont know how they didn’t get shut down?
@5
“If I’m not mistaken TorrentSpy actually hosted torrent files as well which made them distributors of illegal content.”
Isnt a torrent file just an index of various hosts that contain data? I mean a torrent file is nothing more than a search result. The RIAA makes me sick. I can’t comprehend how they get away with this stuff in other countries.. I mean in the US , sure but in countries with sane, un-purchased legislation??
Very cool info, faster downloads will lead to more efficiency in work life.
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
Horray to RIAA and MPAA. It’s nice to shut down pirating thieves.
Nothing New!
Look at http://www.isohunt.com . This site is out there for a long time already.
Site for metasearching torrents with good description of files, ranking of s/l etc.
Better than youtorrent.
I do not use torrens at all, an than, I have no problems with downloading etc.
I don’t need to have the local file I just want to stream the content as seen on joox.net.
Also, streaming is not illegal!
At risk of beating an old argument too death, doesn’t google index torrent sites?
http://www.google.com/search?h.....tnG=Search
I don’t think the war on piracy can be won. They have been pressurising the Swedish government on PirateBay for years now and it’s still on. And all the other sites who index torrents without getting so political about it are mostly left alone. It’s like the war on drugs in that the only way to win is to shut down demand. And how exactly are you going to do that? I just hope that people will keep buying media they like and supporting the authors, and I think they will.
no posts today! come on guys, it’s sunday, let’s get moving over there
there are people all over the world waiting for a post, so lets satisfy those readers already!
this is real time news, remember, something most have happened today!
don’t get complacent, or you you will be replaced by an algorithm
It too hard to shut it down all the sites. For example, Naples Garbage.
Here in the U.S. You have number mafias funded sopranos TV show, peer to peer startups, child porngraphy ring, telemarketing, controling contruction, operating banks, and sharing weapons with terrorism & african militias, war crimes, etc..
There’s no way they can stop Torrent’s revenue stream.
I’ve been out of the loop but how does Hulu.com get to air TV shows without getting shut down?
Ummm…the owners of Hulu actually own the shows they air?
if its not on the scene already its fake
Duncan, LoL world’s first? you must be new to the torrent scene
http://www.scrapetorrent.com has been doing this for a while, with a much better designed GUI
ps anyone notice their front page spelling error? “comparision”
I’ve used YouTorrent before and have had a lot of good luck with it. It’s just a search engine free of distracting shit for people who just want to look for torrent files.
@NIGEL: As for a community of users to comment on individual torrents in order to peg them as safe or fakes, these links (because it’s a SEARCH ENGINE) take you to the torrent sites that DO have those types of communities. So if you see a torrent you might want to take, the link takes you to Mininova, Pirate Bay, etc. where users are more than happy to warn you if necessary.
@MUHAMMED: That’s very unlikely. Just use something like Peer Guardian to protect your IP anyway.
@EVERETT: Hulu.com is an NBC project.
It works. Give YT a chance.
What I find tragic about all this is that there is a perfectly LEGAL way for companies like You Torrent to operate in cooperation with RIAA and MPAA; and, yet, for some reason I am unable to fathom, the LAWYERS for both these professional associations apparently are not willing to to talk about or even contemplate the architectural (Web)options that are out there for them. Relying on amended copyright law, meaning extensions to copyright, are pointless. Neither MPAA nor RIAA have the model(s) they require and they WILL NOT (in my experience) entertain proposals from third parties. What a downright shame! DH
you are probably the worst techcrunch writer ever
why do you write the same shit about sites getting shut down… why would a torrent search engine be shut down before the sites it indexes
torrentz has been doing this for at least a year, no problems
i think this is the first dumb post ive read in techcrunch
is it just me or anyone else thinks so too?
“There is so much spam out there these days that you need to use a site that allows user comments on the files - so not isohunt, yes btjunkie for example - because it doesn’t take long for people to report that files are fake”
Thats the reason why I prefer http://www.torrents.to
You wrote: (yes, there is legal content on BitTorrent)
There are some sites devoted to staying within the law, like LegalTorrents.com - they have been down for about 3 months doing a site rebuild.
And yes, this was a shameless plug.
LOLAttack, you are right, Web is full of You… sites. Or Massive attack
just kidding. anyway, the point is, torrent business is also the biggest burglary business isn’t it? And all the torrent users are theoretically robbers, so you don’t care about this and you just amazed on the web site name?
“Finally! A good Torrent search!
Dugg!”
How about Scrapetorrent? it’s been around for ages.
Some of those torrents are listed as Spam on torrentspam.com
http://www.torrentspam.com/ind.....chTorrents
(sorry for the plug :-))
We need a better Spam filtering/checking system using bittorrent using DHT, other than just waiting it out because people are are going to download this crap (high seeds != ‘good’), some private trackers have better quality torrents with less seeds.
Its a vicious circle of crap.
Normally, I don’t admit to my very infrequent piracy, but YouTorrent actually helped me with a school project. I needed to watch a certain movie for my english class, and couldn’t find it at any of the local library branches. I tried a specific BitTorrent site, and was confused among the various files they offered. YouTorrent presented them clearly.
On a side note, I’ve learned that the more you allow your client to upload, the more download bandwidth you’ll get. Piracy is addicting (not really).