The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

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uTorrent for Windows saw its first public release in September 2005 and soon became the most widely used BitTorrent applications. The client is used by more than 50 million users worldwide and this number continues to rise.

Today, uTorrent version 2.0 was officially released. This new release is built to be more network friendly thanks to the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP) which aims to mitigate network congestion caused by poorly configured BitTorrent clients.

uTP is a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be more network friendly than its predecessor. The current implementation often causes interference with other applications. This is one of the main reasons why ISPs try to slow it down, or even stop it altogether. uTP aims to solve this problem.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management is quite proud of the end result, and told TorrentFreak that most ISPs have also responded positively to the implementation of the uTP protocol.

“In general the ISPs who we have explained the technology to have been quite pleasantly surprised. There are occasional noisy skeptics who think its something evil, but they are generally poor confused souls who are more interested in selling a centralized vision of the internet rather than the distributed egalitarian system we have today,” Morris said.

“I’m excited about uTP finally arriving at a full scale deployment on the internet and I really hope that ISPs take the time to understand the potential benefits to them before they take decisions about how to manage this new class of traffic on their networks,” he added.

Aside from being gentle to the ISP’s networks, uTorrent 2.0 might also have a beneficial effect on the download speeds of individual users. Since there is less congestion, uTorrent users will experience no slowdowns in web-browsing.

Less congestion and a more efficient use of the network may eventually result in faster download speeds, which means that it will be a win-win situation for both ISPs and uTorrent users.

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The decision was the first of its kind in the United States. Targeted was Gary Fung, a Canadian who operates ISO Hunt and other torrent search engines. Fung argued that U.S. laws did not attach to him, and even if they did, that his websites were protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson ruled in favor of the MPAA stating that the “Defendants’ technology is nothing more than old wine in a new bottle.” Fung’s “intent to induce infringement is overwhelming and beyond reasonable dispute.”

The judge said ISO Hunt was no different than Napster and Grokster but used far superior technology which “obviously increases the potential for copyright infringement.”

Fung is considering an appeal to the ruling, “We do think from our preliminary review there are a number of issues for appeal,” said Ira Rothken, ISO Hunt’s attorney.

A hearing on whether Fung must shut his sites or pay monetary damages is scheduled for Jan. 11 in Los Angeles.

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2009 has been an eventful year for several well-established torrent sites, with The Pirate Bay, isoHunt and Mininova all battling in court against the entertainment industries. For the latter, this legal action has resulted in a partial shutdown of the site, a painful decision after years of loyal service.

Understandably, Mininova’s traffic took a huge hit in the last week which is likely to continue in the months to come. For most other torrent sites, however, 2009 has been a successful year with growing visitor numbers all around.

We have compiled below a list of the 25 most-visited torrent sites as of today. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete, Alexa and SiteReport’s World Rank. The number of daily visitors and page views are estimates.

#1 THEPIRATEBAY.ORG - Daily Visitors: 4,467,074 - Pageviews: 26,177,054 (5.86 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #104 - Compete Rank: #787 Visit Site | Full Report
#2 TORRENTZ.COM - Daily Visitors: 2,656,483 - Pageviews: 12,963,637 (4.88 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #180 - Compete Rank: Currently Not Available Visit Site | Full Report
#3 ISOHUNT.COM - Daily Visitors: 2,461,643 - Pageviews: 16,566,857 (6.73 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #186 - Compete Rank: #1,226 Visit Site | Full Report
#4 MININOVA.ORG - Daily Visitors: 1,406,653 - Pageviews: 6,597,203 (4.69 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #96 - Compete Rank: #1,123 Visit Site | Full Report
#5 BTJUNKIE.ORG - Daily Visitors: 1,321,113 - Pageviews: 6,143,175 (4.65 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #403 - Compete Rank: #2,286 Visit Site | Full Report
#6 TORRENTREACTOR.NET - Daily Visitors: 898,167 - Pageviews: 1,796,334 (2 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #391 - Compete Rank: #1,500 Visit Site | Full Report
#7 TORRENTDOWNLOADS.NET - Daily Visitors: 888,663 - Pageviews: 1,581,820 (1.78 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,086 - Compete Rank: #3,477 Visit Site | Full Report
#8 MONOVA.ORG - Daily Visitors: 622,539 - Pageviews: 1,512,770 (2.43 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,736 - Compete Rank: #11,068 Visit Site | Full Report
#9 EXTRATORRENT.COM - Daily Visitors: 594,026 - Pageviews: 2,952,309 (4.97 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,199 - Compete Rank: #5,760 Visit Site | Full Report
#10 BTMON.COM - Daily Visitors: 551,256 - Pageviews: 1,025,336 (1.86 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,754 - Compete Rank: #7,009 Visit Site | Full Report
#11 KICKASSTORRENTS.COM - Daily Visitors: 489,477 - Pageviews: 1,830,644 (3.74 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #2,129 - Compete Rank: #6,178 Visit Site | Full Report
#12 VERTOR.COM - Daily Visitors: 418,194 - Pageviews: 857,298 (2.05 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #2,365 - Compete Rank: #6,821 Visit Site | Full Report
#13 EZTV.IT - Daily Visitors: 408,690 - Pageviews: 948,161 (2.32 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,751 - Compete Rank: #16,064 Visit Site | Full Report
#14 SUMOTORRENT.COM - Daily Visitors: 384,929 - Pageviews: 869,940 (2.26 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,737 - Compete Rank: #6,039 Visit Site | Full Report
#15 ALIVETORRENTS.COM - Daily Visitors: 361,168 - Pageviews: 664,549 (1.84 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #2,555 - Compete Rank: #8,391 Visit Site | Full Report
#16 FENOPY.COM - Daily Visitors: 346,911 - Pageviews: 655,662 (1.89 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #2,494 - Compete Rank: #6,825 Visit Site | Full Report
#17 TORRENTPUMP.COM - Daily Visitors: 342,159 - Pageviews: 1,064,114 (3.11 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,880 - Compete Rank: #10,954 Visit Site | Full Report
#18 TORRENTHOUND.COM - Daily Visitors: 270,876 - Pageviews: 436,110 (1.61 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #3,108 - Compete Rank: #9,589 Visit Site | Full Report
#19 TORRENTPORTAL.COM - Daily Visitors: 266,124 - Pageviews: 548,215 (2.06 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #2,878 - Compete Rank: #8,045 Visit Site | Full Report
#20 DEMONOID.COM - Daily Visitors: 247,115 - Pageviews: 274,298 (1.11 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #1,728 - Compete Rank: #5,927 Visit Site | Full Report
#21 ZOOZLE.NET - Daily Visitors: 218,601 - Pageviews: 655,803 (3,459 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #3,144 - Compete Rank: #71,461 Visit Site | Full Report
#22 SEEDPEER.COM - Daily Visitors: 218,601 - Pageviews: 375,994 (1.72 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #2,912 - Compete Rank: #7,548 Visit Site | Full Report
#23 TORRENTZAP.COM - Daily Visitors: 194,840 - Pageviews: 490,997 (2.52 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #5,252 - Compete Rank: #22,348 Visit Site | Full Report
#24 YOURBITTORRENT.COM - Daily Visitors: 190,088 - Pageviews: 321,249 (1.69 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #8,541 - Compete Rank: #20,391 Visit Site | Full Report
#25 SEARCH-TORRENT.COM - Daily Visitors: 171,079 - Pageviews: 501,261 (2.93 per visitor) - Alexa Rank: #4,831 - Compete Rank: #132,233 Visit Site | Full Report

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In October TorrentFreak covered the launch of TorrentFly. The site was created by the owner of NowTorrents and was launched because NowTorrents had been penalized by Google. The old site was then forwarded to the new one to make sure all old users would start using the new domain.

However, not all users were too happy with the changes. The owner told FreakBits that many users were not too keen on the new site, and after about a month he has now decided to put the old NowTorrents back online.

“I do not expect Google to pick up on NowTorrents again, I have put the site online only to please the users who missed it a lot,” he said.

Users now have the option to choose between NowTorrents and TorrentFly. Both websites use the same search back-end software, only the layout and user interface is different.

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Kickass Torrents has partnered with httpTorrents to offer this fantastic service.

“The integration with httpTorrents gives users the option to download the files directly without having to use a BitTorrent client. Music tracks can also be streamed directly from the site itself. The service works in a similar way to most other files hosting services such as Rapidshare, but only works with torrents and doesn’t allow users to upload files themselves.

The owner of the site told TorrentFreak that direct http downloads may be useful to users who have restricted access to BitTorrent, such as those whose ISP or firewall blocks or slows down transfers. There are currently 4000 files available as a direct download, but this number is growing rapidly.”

Im not quite able to see how this can be done legally, but as a free market economist, and a lover of getting things cheap/free, i dont really care too much.

Below I have made a little walkthrough for how to use the site and download the files on it, via HTTP.

Downloading HTTP Files on KickassTorrent.com

Begin by navigating to : http://www.kickasstorrents.com/direct-download/ for the full list of files that currently offer direct download.

You will be greeted with this window;

Click on one of the results, to be taken to that files page:

Notice the download options, click one of these to download the corresponding file via HTTP:

After clicking download you will be taken to the httpTorrent page to download the file, httpTorrent works exactly like Rapidshare and Megashares, the simply host files on their server.

All you do is click on ‘Download’ under the free account heading and voila. The file begins to download, at a not too shabby 160kb/sec.

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• Vuze BitTorrent Client Boosts KickassTorrents' Visitors | TorrentFreak
• Vuze BitTorrent Client Boosts KickAssTorrents' Visitors
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• KickassTorrents – A Fast-Growing Torrent Indexer

Views 1227 times by 37 visitors

The rookie BitTorrent indexer KickassTorrents has been growing steadily since early 2009, but in the last few weeks the site has seen a surge in daily visitor numbers thanks to the BitTorrent client, Vuze.

Unlike most other BitTorrent applications, Vuze has a search feature that returns results from torrent sites within the application itself so users don’t have to use their web browser. With the latest update of Vuze, KickassTorrents was added to the search.

Luckily, the owner of the site was contacted by Vuze beforehand to warn him about the traffic spike that was ahead, and to request some changes to the search template so it could be easily integrated into the client. This warning was indeed necessary, as the site received an additional 100,000 unique visits a day through Vuze.

These are impressive numbers indeed, but not that surprising if you consider that Vuze has more than a million active users that use the client at any given hour of the day. According to Vuze’s Director of Marketing Chris Thun, two thirds of these users utilize the built-in search functionality.

“Our search is a pretty popular feature with over 65% of monthly Vuze users leveraging the convenience and speed of Vuze search. My guess would be that we’re driving a fair amount of traffic to these sites,” Chris told TorrentFreak. Vuze users can download the torrents directly in the client, or visit the website the torrents are listed on.

Vuze’s integrated search currently uses Mininova and KickassTorrents. The latter replaced BTjunkie in the most recent update of the client. “We liked KickassTorrents’ clean design and layout, and liked the quality of the results coming from their API integration,” said Chris when explaining Vuze’s decision.

“BTJunkie is still an option for users, as it can be added to their default list of search sites simply by clicking ‘add/edit’ in the filters on the right side of the Vuze search results page. In fact, a wide variety of sites can be added to personalize the Vuze results,” he added, referring to the dozens of Vuze search templates that are available online.

There is no doubt that Vuze’s listing of KickassTorrents as the default search engine is a huge deal for the site. BTjunkie on the other hand wasn’t even aware of the fact that they were delisted. With millions of visits every day, a few thousand visits can go easily unnoticed.

Views 4458 times by 166 visitors