OpenBitTorrent

OpenBitTorrent
Web address openbittorrent.com
Slogan An open tracker project
Commercial? No
Type of site
BitTorrent tracker
Registration No
Available in English
Alexa rank
negative increase 424,489 (Jan 2015)[1]
Current status Online

OpenBitTorrent (commonly abbreviated OBT) is an open BitTorrent tracker 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 files 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, because it was observed early on that both sites used the same trackers.[2] The OpenBitTorrent project has countered by stating that the sites merely shared a tracker cluster operated by DCP Networks and Fredrik Neij during a startup period (February through August 2009).

On May 22, 2010, the OpenBitTorrent tracker was shut down.[3] This was a result of a case against The Pirate Bay 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.[4]

From July 16 to August 2, 2012, OpenBitTorrent went offline protesting the lack of adoption of a protocol improvement by the makers of uTorrent, that was proposed by Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij. As a result of the protest, many people had trouble downloading files on BitTorrent.[5][6]

From December 5 to December 30, 2014, the OpenBitTorrent website and tracker was unreachable, this may have been linked to the arrest of Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij. [7]

As of February 22, 2015, the OpenBitTorrent tracker is unreachable. The website remains online, but the OpenBitTorrent tracker address has been removed.

See also

References

External links