YouTorrent, the bittorrent meta search engine we wrote about in January, is on the market and has switched to legal torrents only.
TorrentFreak reports that “YouTorrent’s selling points are the great interface, an ad-less design, and its ability to search most of the bigger BitTorrent sites” and since launching in January has grown to a remarkable 10 million uniques per month.
In an odd move, the owners have switched YouTorrent’s meta-search to sites that only list legal torrents, a decision that may well kill YouTorrent’s traffic before the site finds a buyer.
How much the owners are chasing for YouTorrent was not disclosed, however the site has zero income as the owners have never run ads.
For those looking for a YouTorrent alternative now it’s useless, try PizzaTorrent.
What a stupid business move, I would have sold it without taking out the illegal torrents.
-http://mikesmoneyclub.blogspot.com
i agree with #1
Maybe they got a C&D letter and decided to switch to legal stuff and ditch it before they lost everything over something they are not getting any money for?
From a content providers point of view, its a good move.. There is going to be a ton of legal content providers coming online with a large amount of legal content to fill these pipelines. A library of illegal content will simply cause nothing but long term problems. http://abstract10.com and http://videostomp.com will be supplying all torrent sites with “LEGAL” urban content.
This is like saying a High Scale Brothel with great whores is selling the business and now provides escorts that don’t put out. 10MM Uniques to 1MM as soon as they go legal. LOL.
Putting that last in the news story totally sounds like support for illegal downloading.
Why do you so enthusiastically endorse illegal file sharing?
foo: why do the movie studios so enthusiastically prevent us from having the content we want, when we want it, and how we want it, while charging us a fair price? If iTunes movie rentals were available outside the US, I would use it, but alas, it’s not. So I use bittorrent instead, which is just as fast, and has as much (or more) content. It would be stupid to -not- endorse it as the best and easiest way for people to access the content they are actively being denied access to.
mike: foo: why do the car companies so enthusiastically prevent us from having the autos we want, when we want it, and how we want it, while charging us a fair price? If Aston Martins were available were half off I would buy one, but alas, thay are not. So I use the black market instead, which is just as fast, and has as much (or more) selection. It would be stupid to -not- endorse it as the best and easiest way for people to access the stuff they are actively being denied access to.
Yes, I totally get that the labels are stupid a*holes, I understand the difference between copyright infringement and actual crimes, … however, I can’t deny the right of big labels to charge what they want and distribute how they want no matter how disasterous it may be for them in the long run. And, yes, YTorrent is toast.
Those idiots, this is gonna hurt them.
Well, anyone who used it was a bit of an newbie idiot. It indexed public sites, which suck.
Doing this will only kill the site, just checked it out, rubbish now….
#6 file sharing equals progress! Because of it we now have Hulu and Joost and more sites that allow free music streaming!
Everyone does it too - well not me anymore dont need to with the legal alternatives!
Don’t worry. Whoever buys them can switch the site back to illegal torrents.
I’m just gonna come out and say what everyone is thinking.
- Sounds like Duncan Riley supports illegal downloading based on the end of the post.
- Fix your grammar, you motherfucking first grader.
- Duncan Riley is a hack.
Yea, it’s funny that Duncan would practically admit what we already know–that he and (probably Michael as well) downloaded copyrighted materials.
So you would care if somebody offered techcrunch content freely
That’s basically what it sums up too.
You endorse pirating somebody else’s content so technically not allowing people to copy techcrunch content would be hypocrisy
@ steve, I see you “get it” but your first paragraph acts like policing the theft of autos is economically equivalent to policing the theft of digital goods. It is not. Don’t concentrate on “what should be”, but “what is”.
Well demonoid.com is back so who cares about youtorrent.com?
Cool i can still get my linux distros and creative commons movies, educational films made by high school students in the 70s and old cartoons yay!
Least demonoid is around.
Yes I agree, this youtorrent is very useful.
I think the “you” in it’s name was very helpful to promote the site to youtube users.
Why would anyone pay money for a web site that makes zero money? You’d have to be a complete tool.
Sean:
I hope you’re not serious. The site has NEVER RUN ADS…just place ads on it, and you’ll make money.
One hell of a stunt you tube pulled on us. There business model pertaining to their sites users, as described on torrentfreak, “find’em, fuck’em & forget’em.”
I, like so many others, have removed them from my bookmarks and will never ever go back to their site again. And I, like so many others, hope they lose every penny they have invested!
Wankers!
I’ve never used the site (try btjunkie.org) but a truly successful torrent indexing site that was popular and only indexed legal content might be worth much more than yet another site for finding copyrighted content.
April 13th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Maybe they got a C&D letter and decided to switch to legal stuff and ditch it before they lost everything over something they are not getting any money for?
Well, duh….
scrapetorrent.com!!!
scrapetorrent is full of pop up ads and extremely slow. Here are two best ones: nowtorrents.com, and pizzatorrent of course.
This may well kill the site, but I am a fan of the move. There is definitely a need for some good sites indexing all the high-quality *legal* content out there. The fact that most indexers only pay attention to illegal content just gives the protocol a bad name, and I am not a fan of that.
@heddy I was purposely stating the obvious. Maybe you didn’t get that?
Oh, and heddy this question was rhetorical; you don’t need to reply.
Why not sell the company and SUGGEST to the new owners that they COULD switch to legal only.