Spanish researchers at the Carlos III University of Madrid have posted interesting results today in regards to filesharing.
The researchers say a tiny fraction of users are responsible for over two-thirds of all content published, and over three-fourths of all downloads.
Using the names, ISPs and IP addresses of uploaders and downloaders to 55,000 torrents published to Mininova and the Pirate Bay, the group concluded that just 100 users were behind 67 percent of the uploads and 75 percent of the downloads.
Result for: mininova
Last year, The Pirate Bay infamously got “purchased” by little known company Global Gaming Factory for $7.8 million, however the deal never went through.
It appears, (via TF), that GGF had an even more ambitious offer in the works, 20 million euro for giant torrent indexer Mininova.
Today, it was revealed, from sources close to GGF and Mininova including CEO Hans Pandeya, that a deal was set in place for “no less than 20 million euros,” but fell through when Mininova lost its court appeal in the case brought against it by anti-piracy agency BREIN.
“I’m going to buy Mininova too and eliminate all the competition,” Pandeya had told one-time partner Wayne Rosso before the appeal fell through. Clearly however, Pandeya could not have afforded Mininova, as he couldn’t afford Pirate Bay.
Result for: mininova
Anti-piracy outfit BREIN has proudly announced this week that it shut down 393 torrent sites in 2009, with the largest being massive indexer Mininova, which was forced to go legal.
Overall, the group shut down 615 “illegal websites,” with the good majority being torrent trackers.
Additionally, 35 eD2K servers were taken down, 38 streaming movie stires, and 14 NZB (Usenet portals) were part of the group.
TF is reporting that the sites taken down must be very, very small since they received “a grand total of zero emails requesting information on the other several hundred closures.” (Not including Mininova, TorrentVault)
As is always the case with torrent site shutdowns anyway, one goes down and at least one new one goes up to take its place.
