Nyaa Torrents (named for the
Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat's meow) is a
BitTorrent website focused on
East Asian (Japanese, Chinese, and Korean) media. It is one of the largest public
anime
is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...
-dedicated
torrent indexes.
History
In 2011, some users of the site were sued for
copyright infringement
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
.
The site was a target of a large
DDoS
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connec ...
attack purportedly originating from the
Japanese government in early September 2014.
On 1 May 2017, their
.se
.se, formerly branded as .SE, is the Internet country code top-level domain ( ccTLD) for Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is ...
,
.eu
.eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU). Launched on 7 December 2005, the domain is available for any person, company or organization based in the European Union. This was extended to the European Economic Are ...
, and
.org
The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from ''organization''. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by th ...
domain names were deactivated, with the site's moderators later confirming that the owner took it down voluntarily.
In the following weeks, several
fork
In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...
s, partially based on Nyaa code and database of torrents, were started, each using "nyaa" in its name.
In the official FAQ posted by the community that surrounded Nyaa, it is said that some data between 2016 and May 2017 was lost, and there was not a reputable backup of the Nyaa database for that time period.
In June 2017,
TorrentFreak
__NOTOC__
TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights.
The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchma ...
reported that Germany-based Goodlabs put up a fake version of the .eu site in an attempt to get users to download
malware. The website encouraged users to download a "free binary client" in an attempt to gain access to the victim's computer.
In April 2018,
Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. is an American content delivery network and DDoS mitigation company, founded in 2009. It primarily acts as a reverse proxy between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare customer's hosting provider. Its headquarters are in Sa ...
terminated its services to Nyaa. According to Cloudflare, "The pirate site tried to interfere with and thwart the operation of the company's abuse reporting systems."
In 2020 the site was blocked in India, along with other pirate streaming and torrent websites, after a decision by the
Delhi High Court
The High Court of Delhi ( IAST: ''dillī uchcha nyāyālaya'') was established on 31 October 1966, through the ''Delhi High Court Act, 1966'', with four judges, Chief Justice K. S. Hegde, Justice I. D. Dua, Justice H. R. Khanna and Justice S ...
in favour of the plaintiff,
Disney India
The Walt Disney Company India Private Limited, known simply as Disney India, is the Indian subsidiary of the Indo Pacific region of the American media and entertainment conglomerate The Walt Disney Company and headquartered in Mumbai, Maharasht ...
. The court order provided for "dynamic" blocking meaning that Disney could ask for further bans on websites violating copyrights other than the ones in the order.
In June 2021,
Verizon Fios blocked the website.
In an effort to provide security and to help users access the site, Nyaa released an announcement with recommendations on how to unblock their website. The announcement also warns users against the use of proxy sites, as they can potentially steal information or serve malware.
, the .si fork is the only fork remaining.
Website
The site has
video source rules, for example, DVD video is limited to 1024×576, while UHD is limited to an upwards of 3840×2160p.
This is for maintaining the original quality of the video.
Users cannot add watermarks, or
lower the quality to a worse
video codec
A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...
. "
Shitposting
In Internet culture, shitposting, trashposting, or funposting is the act of using an online forum or social media page to post content that is satirical and of "aggressively, ironically, and trollishly poor quality", an online analog of trash t ...
" consistently may result in a ban. Content restrictions include having only content from China, Japan, and Korea.
Categories
Categories are split into Anime, Audio, Literature, Live Action, Pictures, and Software. Each have their own subcategories, for example Audio is split in
lossless
Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistic ...
and
lossy
In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...
.
Users can also use Filters, which filter out the torrents to no remakes and trusted (uploaders) only.
Entries
Uploads are split into green, red, orange, and grey entries. Green entries are torrents uploaded by trusted users. Red entries (remake) are torrents that match any of the following:
*
Reencode of original release.
* Remux of another uploader's original release for hardsubbing or fixing purposes.
* Reupload of original release using non-original file names.
* Reupload of original release with missing or unrelated additional files.
Orange entries are batches of entire series, and grey entries are hidden torrents.
See also
*
KissAnime
*
EZTV
EZTV was a TV torrent distribution group founded in May 2005 and dissolved in April 2015, after a hostile takeover of their domains and brand by "EZCLOUD LIMITED". It quickly became the most visited torrent site for TV shows.
History
Founding ...
*
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ma ...
*
RARBG
*
1337x
References
BitTorrent websites
Anime and manga websites
East Asian culture
Internet properties established in 2005
Internet censorship in India
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