14 DAY TRIAL // Mininova, one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet, as well as one of the oldest, has decided to shut down for good.
According to an announcement posted on Mininova's front page, the forum will shut down next week, while the rest of the site will close down a month later.
"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," reads the announcement.
Mininova was founded by five students from the Netherlands soon after Suprnova closed its doors for good. The torrent website based in Slovenia launched back in 2002 and closed in late 2004 after legal threats. The site now lives again after the domain name was donated to The Pirate Bay back in 2007.
Suprnova was a massive site back in the day, and its demise left a huge hole in the BitTorrent world. Mininova played on its name and managed to become the most successful of the dozens of sites that tried to replace the former massive torrent site.
The downfall
Although it was originally a mere hobby for the students behind the site, it soon became a multi-million business. Legal pressure was soon applied, and copyright holders kept asking for content to be removed. Even though Mininova complied with takedown requests, copyright holders took the site to court.
In 2009, Mininova lost the lawsuit against BREIN, a local anti-piracy group. After complying with the court order which stated that all infringing torrents must be removed, Mininova lost its shine and its user base.
Even though it remained online, the site no longer hosted content that wasn't pre-approved by the admins. Therefore, no illegal content, which is what pretty much make up most of the torrent sites.
Seven years later, Mininova is calling it quits and will shut down for good. Millions of legal torrents were downloaded over the years, but the business was simply no longer profitable.