CyberWar: Pirate Bay abandons torrent file links for Magnets

he Pirate Bay has completed its shift to using Magnet links rather than .torrent files, a move that will make it more difficult to see who has downloaded files using the site.

The site introduced Magnet links back in 2009, and had recently made them the default option for downloading material. On Tuesday, The Pirate Bay said it was no longer linking directly to .torrent files at all.

The Pirate Bay will no longer use .torrent files, favouring Magnet links instead. Image credit: TPB

"The reason is simple: [links to .torrent files are] just a waste of space and our time," The Pirate Bay said in a blog post. "Instead we're giving you Magnet links. It's simpler for us and no more hassle for you. It's more resilient than .torrent files and it uses much less bandwidth for those who want to mirror."

Magnet links fulfil much of the same function as .torrent files, in that they tell the user's BitTorrent client to start downloading a certain movie or album. Whereas the downloader's BitTorrent client would use a tiny .torrent file to calculate a hash, or fingerprint, of the files that are to be downloaded, the Magnet link is just a plain-text string that already contains that hash.

Because they are just text strings, Magnet links are even easier to distribute than .torrent files — they can just be cut-and-pasted. The difference for The Pirate Bay's users is that, instead of downloading .torrent files from the site, they now click on or copy the Magnet link.

"Since the magnet links are just a hash, it's on every single torrent detail page, so no-one knows that you actually downloaded a file or not," The Pirate Bay (TPB) wrote. "This means that no-one can block torrent files without blocking data within a webpage."

Of course, blocking TPB's webpages is quite possible, at least to some degree. The UK's High Court decided last week that the site was infringing on copyright, which was a likely precursor to ordering ISPs to block it.

"Countries, particularly in EU, seems to moving towards total censorship so we do all we can to avoid our users ending up with less freedom," the post read.

The downside of Magnet links as that they often make for slower downloading than is possible with .torrent files. This is because the download client needs to use the hash to retrieve metadata from the network, in order to see what files match.

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