Torrent site BT Junkie folds in the face of file sharing clamp down

United States/International

Khurram Aziz - News Editor

The world's fifth most popular torrent search engine, BT Junkie, has closed down operations, citing growing pressure from anti-piracy campaigners as the cause.

A message on the site now simply reads, "This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!"

The site has been in operation since 2005 and has provided torrent links, often of copyrighted music, film and software, to freely download and share.

Unlike sites such as MegaUpload, which was shut down by the FBI last month in the wake of a criminal copyright infringement investigation, BT Junkie never hosted any copyrighted material itself. Instead it shared torrent links which file-sharers could use with Bit Torrent software on their desktops to connect to thousands of other file-sharers around the world, all hosting and sharing the same files.

Bit Torrent file sharing has been much more difficult to clamp down on, due to its distributive nature, than other forms of file sharing. However, there have been a few notable cases which have put the pressure on sites like BT Junkie in recent years.

In 2008, TorrentSpy became the first Bit Torrent search engine to shut down following a civil suit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Then, in 2009, number one Bit Torrent site Mininova threw in the towel after losing a court battle with a Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. However, the biggest court case against a torrent site remains The Pirate Bay whose founders were convicted of criminal copyright infringement in April 2009 and sentenced to one year in prison each. The site was also fined $3.6 million, but remains in operation.

Talking to the website TorrentFreak, BT Junkie's founder said that the legal actions against other file-sharing sites such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in his decision to close operations.

While BTjunkie was never targeted directly by copyright holders, the site was reported to the US Trade Representative November last year. Both the Recording Industry Association of America and the MPAA listed the torrent search engine as a ‘rogue' site that facilitated mass copyright infringement.

BT Junkie is also one of the search terms censored by Google due to its relation to piracy, alongside The Pirate Bay, RapidShare, uTorrent and others.