I happened to pop over to Mininova to get something for the weekend. All my searches came back empty. Then I noticed the banner at the top of the page and clicked on the latest blog post.
It’s a familiar story, and one I’ve followed, all the way back to Napster in ’99. Ahh, happy days. The social interaction of the early Napster was half the fun, being able to browse each other’s collections and chatting about shared interests. Then came Limewire, WinMX, and Shareaza — that last one ended in a particularly bizarre situation, when the site was hijacked by an organization linked to the RIAA that proceeded to distribute infected files.
Now I’m curious to see how quickly a new sharing service rises, as it surely will.
Update 091201: Lifehacker provides a useful list of alternatives to Mininova.
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In case you need a good replacement, http://isohunt.com/ has always served me right (although ironically, I found myself going to mininova more and more, lately, when some torrents took too long to appear on isohunt)…
I had the same experience, Dave. I found Mininova’s torrents to be more reliably active. Isohunt appears to be more comprehensive but often disappoints with fewer seeds and higher risks of malware. Still, they’ve fought the law more successfully than Mininova, proving once more the theory of natural selection and the survival of the fittest.