OpenBitTorrent (commonly abbreviated OBT) is an open

BitTorrent tracker A BitTorrent tracker is a special type of server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. In peer-to-peer file sharing, a software client on an end-user PC requests a file, and portions of the requested fil ...

project for the BitTorrent protocol.

Description

OpenBitTorrent's initiative to provide a free, stable service with no ties to indexing sites or even hosting

torrent file In the BitTorrent file distribution system, a torrent file or meta-info file is a computer file that contains metadata about files and folders to be distributed, and usually also a list of the network locations of trackers, which are computer ...

s has been a public success and it has spawned several copies with almost identical services. OpenBitTorrent has been suspected of being a part of, or a side project of,

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 mag ...

, because it was observed early on that both sites used the same trackers. The OpenBitTorrent project has countered by stating that the sites merely shared a tracker cluster operated by DCP Networks and

Fredrik Neij Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij (born 27 April 1978), alias TiAMO, is the co-founder of The Pirate Bay, and the Swedish Internet service provider and web hosting company PRQ. Neij was one of the defendants in The Pirate Bay Trial which began on 16 Febr ...

during a startup period (February through August 2009). On 22 May 2010, the OpenBitTorrent tracker was shut down. This was a result of a case against

by many major Hollywood studios. Later the tracker came back online. OpenBitTorrent is powered by the opentracker software. The Pirate Bay also used the opentracker software, before they shut down their own tracker. From 16 July to 2 August 2012, OpenBitTorrent went offline protesting the lack of adoption of a protocol improvement by the makers of uTorrent, that was proposed by

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 mag ...

co-founder

. As a result of the protest, many people had trouble downloading files on BitTorrent. From 5 December to 30 December 2014, the OpenBitTorrent website and tracker was unreachable, this may have been linked to the arrest of

co-founder

. On 5 May 2015, the OpenBitTorrent tracker was back online although the website still did not display the tracker address. The website was shut down again in July 2017, but came back online for a while in late 2018Openbittorrent.com
Alexa and was unresponsive again in late 2019. In 2020, the website was redirecting to

Opentracker Opentracker is a free (licensed as beerware) BitTorrent peer tracker software (a special kind of HTTP or UDP server software) that is designed to be fast and to have a low consumption of system resources. Features Several instances of op ...

, another torrent tracker. However a year later in January 2021, OpenBitTorrent came back online again with its own tracker and website.

References

External links

* BitTorrent websites Notorious markets {{Website-stub

Description

See also

References

External links