Considered as one of the largest BitTorrent sites on the Internet and pioneer of peer-to-peer sharing, Mininova recently announced that it is pulling the plug for good. Mininova's forum site will close next week, and the rest of the site will be fully closed a month later.
The Mininova team posted what could be its last message on the site's homepage which reads, "On April 4th, 2017 Mininova.org will be shutting down. After this date, content distribution torrents will no longer be seeded. Uploaders are advised to make copies of their content."
According to TechWorm, Mininova was founded in 2004 by four Dutch students. It was launched in 2005 as the successor to the Supernova torrent portal which was taken down after an exhausting legal battle. Following its launch, Mininova quickly became one of the most successful and largest torrent portal on the Internet.
However, the site's success was marred with legal difficulties. In May 2009, Dutch copyright enforcement agency BREIN started a comprehensive legal battle against Mininova. The site's run came to a screeching halt when it lost a legal battle against copyright owners in December 2009. This forced Mininova to remove all infringing torrents on its service, leaving the site completely wiped of any content.
Following the legal dispute, Mininova continued its operation as the first fully legal torrent portal. The site allowed everyone to upload content provided that they are pre-approved by publishers
As for the founders of Mininova, they have moved on as the company aged over the years. More than a decade after the site went live, they have parted ways and have ventured on different projects.
One of the co-founders who goes by the name of Niek told TorrentFreak, "Overall we're happy that we have been a part of the history of the internet."
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