From Paul Gil,
Your Guide to Internet for Beginners.
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(continued from "The Top 5 Best Torrent Search Engines")

As of April 12, 2007, the most popular Bit Torrent search engine sites are listed below. This list is selected from hundreds of reader email suggestions, and is updated weekly. You are welcome to submit your suggestions for inclusion into this list.

This list is in random order. Special thanks to the many About.com readers who help keep this list current via their email submissions.

Warning for new users: while P2P file sharing technology is completely legal, many of the files traded through P2P are copyrighted. Unless you live in Canada where users are shielded from P2P lawsuits, then downloading P2P files may put you at risk for a civil lawsuit in any other country. These lawsuits are usually class-action suits, filed against groups of users who blatantly copy and distribute copyrighted materials. Recently, the MPAA, the RIAA, and the governments of England and Australia took several thousand users to court, demanding that they pay thousands of dollars in copyright infringement penalties.

Your Internet Service Provider may, at their discretion, release their logs of your downloading activity to potential copyright plaintiffs. The more megabytes you download, the more you risk being sued by copyright protection groups. Please know this risk before you use any of the following Torrent search engines below.


Related: Peer Guardian anonymity software - conceal your identity from prying eyes.
Related: How to speed up your BitTorrent client download speed

1. Mininova.org has 170,000 torrents indexed as of April, 2007. Mininova is the successor to Suprnova, one of the original big torrent databases of the Web.
   
   
2. Torrentspy.com offers over 420,000 torrents in its database, the largest torrent index that is readily available to the public. Enjoy it while you can.
   
   
3. TorrentTyphoon.com (a unique bittorrent meta-search engine that searches several of the most popular sites. Unfortunately, it does not do a good job categorizing the torrent files themselves)
   
   
4. Torrentscan.com (a "meta-search" engine, which is a search engine that searches other search engines)
   
   
5. Demonoid (a personal favorite of many About.com readers, Demonoid is also a major tracker database that supports thousands of swarms around the globe)
   
   
6. The Pirate Bay (Pirate Bay, by readership size, is the most popular torrent search site today. Pirate Bay has an immense database of 360,000 torrents, the third largest database after Isohunt and Torrentspy.)
   (May 31, 2006: The Pirate Bay has been shut down by Swedish authorities. Details are available on the Pirate Bay home page.)
   (June 2006: The Pirate Bay has restarted operations, now that the police have duplicated the PB hard drives for forensic purposes. Enjoy this database while it is still around, folks!)
   
   
7. Isohunt.com (another longtime favorite of About.com readers)
   January 22, 2007: Although Isohunt was suddenly shut down by its original ISP before the weekend, the administrators have relaunched the service on a new ISP with new hardware. There are still problems, but Isohunt does live for the time being. The MPAA lawsuit is slated for a March summary judgment, so make sure you use Isohunt now, while you still can.
   January 8, 2007: Isohunt has nearly 400,000 torrents in their database. Also noteworthy: any Isohunt torrent listed as "ISOhunt release" means that it is a file verified by the administrators...a nice feature to help you locate authentic torrents and not fake files. On a sad note: Isohunt is being sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for copyright infringement. If you want to use this tremendous Canadian site, you better use it while you can.
   
   
8. Scrapetorrent.com is another torrent meta-search engine that is gaining popularity.
   
   
9. Torrentbox.com FYI: like Isohunt, Torrentbox is being sued by the MPAA as of February 28, 2006. The days for this fine search engine may be numbered.
   
   
10. Torrentreactor.to (Torrentreactor has made a comeback from a hijacking and an uncooperative hosting service. They have moved to a different server setup and a Tonga country domain outside the USA. Read the details on their home page.)
    
    
11. Torrentmatrix.com
    
    
12. ByTorrents Meta Search
    
    
13. Torrentportal.com
    
    
14. Snarf It! (born from previous Suprnova influences)
    
    
15. BTjunkie
    
    
16. Torrentz.com (special thanks to reader, Jonathan R., for this link)
    
    
17. Torrents.to
    
    
18. LegalTorrents.com (As the name implies, this is a database of public-domain content. Thanks to Anand S. for this URL.)
    
    
19. Thinktorrent.com
    
    
20. FileList.org
    
    

Special mention: eztvefnet.org (eztvefnet.org is a robust resource of television show torrents.)

Special mention: ShareTV.org (ShareTV is dedicated to sharing television episodes and entire TV series. Find "24", "Heroes", and "Lost" episodes here. Special thanks to Chris R. for telling us about his web site.)

Special mention: Torrent-Finder.com (This site has been submitted recently by three readers as their personal favorite torrent search engine. It "meta- searches" 159 torrent sites as of this writing. Special thanks to Dina, Suresh, and ChaOSthEory for this submission.)

The next 15 torrent sites are continued here...


Other Related BitTorrent articles:

• Editor's Choice: 5 Best Torrent Search Engines
  
• Torrents 101: How BitTorrent Downloading Works.
  
• The Best BitTorrent Client Software of 2007.
  
• Meet Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent open source code.
  
• Overview of P2P copyright legalities.
  
• Tip: How to speed up your BitTorrent client download speed
  
  

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