Chennai: It was a normal Friday morning, or so it seemed until the social media went into a tizzy over the shutdown of torrentz.eu, the largest torrent search engine. “Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines,” the site said. But when someone tried to search for a torrent file on Friday, the message read, “Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.” Would you say, “Thank God it’s Friday’ or grieve the death of another popular pirate who let us poor souls wade into the net for content to download without hitting the thin purse in our pockets?
It is no secret that countries and many film production houses have been in a drive to shut down all sites that possess /distribute pirated content. Just 14 days after the shutdown of KickAssTorrents (kat.cr) and arrest of its alleged mastermind, the sudden closing of Torrentz.eu, ‘The Google of torrents’ comes as shocking news to many. Torrentz, a meta-search engine, did not host any content, but linked to various popular torrent sites. It enjoyed 13 years of popularity among active internet users.
This is not the first time that authorities have cracked down on torrent sites. Yify, a popular torrent site, known for HD and Full HD Blu-Ray rips of movies in small sizes, was shut down in 2015 after the New Zealand based owner reached a private agreement with movie studios to avoid a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
