We’ve all used torrents before, and if you haven’t, then you’re a little back in time with regards to file sharing on the Internet:

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amount of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and it has been estimated that it accounts for approximately 27-55% of all Internet traffic as of Feb 2009. ~ wiki

Some of the biggest torrent engines are:

• The Pirate Bay
• Mininova
• Seed Peer
• Torrent Hound
• Torrent Reactor

Mininova has always been one of the biggest, sharing millions of files from movies to music albums to applications, most of which are illegal copies bundled with cracks and serials, which is obviously illegal.

After a court order pushed towards Mininova, Mininova has deleted all infringing torrents and has said that it’s going legal only:

The case went to court in June and a few weeks later the verdict was announced. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringements, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.

This is a massive move in the world of torrents and I won’t be surprised if a number of other torrent engines follow suite shortly.