RARBG was originally Bulgarian, like many other trackers and warez stuff. Eastern Europe - inside EU or outside of the EU - has always been major player in this scene. RIP.<p>I'm still curious how it's possible to run such global illegal operations without being exposed or caught.<p>How is it still possible to remain anonymous on the Internet, considering in this age the thing is very mature and well commercialised?
I keep wondering all the time why torrent search is based on websites (centralized), which can be taken down, etc., while once you have a torrent file or a magnet/hash everything is distributed.<p>Is there a main reason why there isn't (AFAIK, even though I haven't really researched) a distributed search that wouldn't have these problems? Is it a tech problem that literally can't be solved? Or it just hasn't been done? It seems like search is the obvious weak link, since the websites keep disappearing or taken down or blocked by governments and ISPs, etc.
What a shame. They could have asked for donations but me as an Eastern European, I get it -- usually if we get to the point of needing donations we feel ashamed and humiliated and just close shop.<p>I hope somebody picks up the flag. Illegal and copyright-protected piracy aside, there were tons of royalty-free and non-copyright-enforced works of art there and it would be a big hit on humanity's culture at large for all that to be lost.
Probably the largest blow to the torrent sharing community since The Pirate Bay got shut down. The impact of content availability will be noticeable for years to come
That's pretty devastating. This was old reliable for a long time. I could never keep up with the demands from private trackers as streaming made it so I didn't need to utilize them as much.
phenomenal site. while the content is upped by users the fact that multiple rips were found on the same page; SDR, HDR, HDR10, 264, 265, 720, 1080, 2160, dubbed, original, theatrical cuts, director's, producer's etc. was all on the brilliant, dedicated folks of rarbgtor and is what made the site the best in the world. nothing else even approaches it. like OiNk wiithout the drama. i'll remember the time spent there with gratitude and fondness. and I just installed two more 20TB drives, less than 18 hours ago...<p>- js.
o7 thank you for your service, keeping the Internet awesome and anti-corporate.<p>Where one piracy site dies, a thousand spawn from its corpse.<p>Maybe the media companies will eventually pull their heads out of their collective arses and quit their cartel, allowing the existence of legal, paid streaming sites a-la-Spotify with access to 99% of the repertoire. Until then, torrent is how we protest while they create more and more insular streaming services to milk people $9/mo at a time.<p>"Piracy is almost always a service problem." — Gabe Newell<p>(If you need a semi-private tracker that's easy to get into, try TorrentLeech. Also /r/opensignups)
Why don't torrent site owners just release their sites as a torrent file itself? Like a sqlite dump with search indexes?<p>They could either self-update the torrent [1] or just release the new torrent via forums/groups/chats etc. Would bring the costs down to zero.<p>1. <a href="http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html</a>
Two DHT search engines that might be useful:<p><a href="https://btdig.com" rel="nofollow">https://btdig.com</a><p><a href="https://bt4g.org" rel="nofollow">https://bt4g.org</a>
From the released note:<p>> Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES<p>What an absurd tragedy this is. I think it bears mention between all this conversation about sharing torrents.
I guess mirrors would stay unaffected, because they seem to be up right now. Someone will probably clone their torrents. They might not have been the best quality, but they were always better than YIFI (YTS). I always liked that you could search Rarbg using IMDB numbers. Also, their UI was really pleasing to me, plus, there were many userscripts that extended the functionality of the site. I wounder who will fill up their place, because TPB was always the last resort for me. In the meantime Btdig could be a nice transitory place to find all of their torrents.
I mean, it did take a pandemic, war, and rampant global inflation to finally kill it. Testament to the resilience it showed throughout its lifetime. I think it's somewhat poetic that it was unrelated to law enforcement pressure.
Really sad to hear this. I basically built my entire Plex server with RARBG.<p>Anyone have any solid private tracker recommendations for movies and TV shows?<p>After taking advantage of public trackers like RARBG, I feel like it's my time to give back.
Wow that came as a shock. I used to check every couple of days if they had interesting movie I could watch with my wife. I wonder what is the cost of running such a site and I guess they must also earn some money in crypto with all the donation and also the advertisements.
Well, that's the end of something
I have seen several folks on here mention Usenet subscriptions as another option. What I haven't found is any good Usenet tutorial on how to actually get from "I know the name of something I want" to "I have downloaded it".<p>The irony that I used to run a UUCP node on the original version of Usenet does not escape me :-)
Wow. Between Mullvad removing port forwarding 2 days ago ago [1] and now this, easy safe fast torrenting just got a bit harder. Talk about a one-two punch.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36113215" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36113215</a>
First heart break was when Kickass was taken down.. Now this. I am literally too sad over a website than my other life choices lol.. Love you RARBG team, will miss you till death. Good luck in your life's.
Not only they had clean, easy-to-navigate UI, they also produced tons of their own releases. As big fan of saving space, x265 1080p releases from them were taking minimal space with good quality, practically always bundled with subtitles.<p>That's how quality service looks like. Glad I pulled (here legally) all the movies I wanted in my private collection. RIP.
I am not technical so maybe this questions sound stupid. But this topic really interests me.<p>I read that Rarbg was like thepiratebay but safer. I guess that's due to moderation to check which torrents are safe, right?<p>This people had a website that offered a nice UI to find torrents. Did they had ads to make money? So they offered their services to maintain healthy piracy in exchange of money and also to pay servers. (I am not criticize or judging I just want to understand how it worked)<p>Would It be possible to share the same website using a torrent file? Like shipping and actualizing the website and sending to users trough torrent so they can search it locally? Or send a sql database and then create a UI for users to search trough it? Or would be complications because torrenting exposes our ip?
It's absolutely insane how many of these incredibly important torrent sites are just managed and hosted by a rag-tag group of people with the site barely clinging to life.
Sorry to see it go.<p>While we are at it, an honest question: Why should _anyone_ undertake the legal risk, monetary cost and development time burden for maintaining a public tracker?<p>What would release teams gain from setting up encoding pipelines and upholding their networking infrastructure?
I found a replacement is the same as Rarbg <a href="https://torrentgalaxy.to/" rel="nofollow">https://torrentgalaxy.to/</a>
Kinda makes sense the team was (partially) operating out of Eastern Europe and then had some issues with rising costs given the war and inflation.<p>Maybe it will come back in the future when things settle down or a new backer comes in.
Of Interest:<p>RARBG magnet link archive:<p><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/rarbg-over-267000-movie-tv-show-magnet-links-appear-online-230601/" rel="nofollow">https://torrentfreak.com/rarbg-over-267000-movie-tv-show-mag...</a><p><a href="https://github.com/2004content/rarbg">https://github.com/2004content/rarbg</a><p>( released 5 hours ago )
I've been using Jackett for torrents recently. It seems to work really well if anyone is looking for alternatives.<p><a href="https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett">https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett</a>
Elsewhere:<p><i>Iconic Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down, All Content Releases Stop</i><p><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/iconic-torrent-site-rarbg-shuts-down-all-content-releases-stop-230531/" rel="nofollow">https://torrentfreak.com/iconic-torrent-site-rarbg-shuts-dow...</a><p><pre><code> RARBG, one of the world's largest torrent sites, has said "farewell" to millions of users. The site, which was a prominent and stable source of new movie and TV show releases, cited a variety of reasons behind its decision to cease operations. The surprise shutdown marks the end of an era.
Founded in 2008, RARBG evolved to become a key player in the torrent ecosystem.
The site didn’t only attract millions of monthly visitors from all over the globe, it was also a major release hub, bridging the gap between the Scene and the broader pirate public.
... etc.</code></pre>
What is the best alternative? I know usually people use a seedbox + private torrent server. But which private server?<p>RARBG was amazing because it had everything, but still curated the releases for minimum standards of quality. Is there an alternative out there?
Ctrl+F "covid" Phrase not found<p>Seriously, a huge part of the internet is down because the team was taken out by Covid (both death and complications), and no one even mentions this? All the evidence points to the covid complication rate <i>compounding</i> with each infection. Rarbg is only the start of where we can all expect to be in 5-10 years without more serious long-term mitigations (universal indoor air filtration).<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/opinion/last-pandemic.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/opinion/last-pandemic.htm...</a>
Their host charges 250 euro a month for 100 megabits and a one terabyte data cap. At the prices they're paying, I'm surprised this did not happen sooner.
The Motion Picture Association is probably throwing free champagne around the offices and rejoicing about how that was the easiest pirate website takedown ever.<p>Also, if I was the MPA, I would almost look into attrition tactics now, if that were legal. Create dozens and dozens and dozens of junk piracy websites with borked videos. Maybe the first half the movie in 720p, then the audio switches to Spanish and 240p black and white with flickering. Flood the market on every pirate website with the world's worst remuxes. Overwhelm them with junk so that nobody knows what tracker to trust for anything. Maybe even (with permission from rights holders) run some pirate websites with high-quality rips, then burn them to the ground after a year or two just to demoralize.
This is the torrent search engine I've been using lately, works reliably and has a clean UI: <a href="https://bitsearch.to/" rel="nofollow">https://bitsearch.to/</a>
Seeing lots of mentions here in the comments about increased serving costs but the nature of the message sounds more like the community itself has fallen apart / lost people due to covid and war. I can't imagine the effort it must've taken to keep this site running for so long given the amount of traffic, especially during the hellish last few years.<p>I'm sad to see them go but I support their desire to spend time and energy/resources on something else after all they've done
One of the problems of RarBG was that they were dealing with real data. Today to get a popular file from bit-torrent network all one needs is a hash (AKA magnet) - DHT and other distributed announcement protocols will take care of everything else. But the moment you gotta deal with real content - you are in a big trouble both legaly and technically: todays 4K media can take up to ten gigabyte per hour of screen time. No wonder RarBG suffered that much.
>some of the people in our team died due to covid complications, others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all.<p>Long COVID is having a real impact on technical people.<p>There's a reason Google buys COVID rapid testing kits in bulk for any of their onsite events. One of my friends working behind the scenes was gifted a grocery bag full of leftover tests.<p>Governments around the world have largely abandoned us to a disabling virus.
I'm interested in the art-house, non-mainstream genres, mainly produced by independent studios (e.g. one of my all-time favourites is When father was away for business, by Emir Kusturica). Do you have any suggestions for trackers specialised in these types of movies?
I wonder how much it costs to run? I can't imagine it's too crazy.. data can be stored/cached easily and access is random and has some hot spots (recent torrents). Seems like it would be fairly cheap to run?
For those questioning how websites can still illegally operate torrenting movies, the answer is very simple. It costs a lot of money and resources for the FBI and/or other federal agency to prosecute someone, let alone post adjudication costs ie: probation officers. The feds just don't care to waste time with search warrants over a menial crime.
They tried a few years back just simply mailing fines to people. But quickly realized they couldn't prove guilt without spending more money than it's worth.<p>Also movie makers don't care to push the issue with law enforcement anymore. They (unfortunately for law abiding folks) just inflate the price to make up for lost, just like stores do to combat shoplifting.
I could have sworn that rarbg got shut down like 5 years ago... I didn't know they were still operating.<p>Not that I use bittorrent very much personally, I gave that up many years ago.<p>RIP, I suppose.
Hello guys,<p>We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site.
The past 2 years have been very difficult for us - some of the people in our team died due to covid complications,
others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all.
Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES.
Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard.
Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare.
Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket.
After an unanimous vote we've decided that we can no longer do it.<p>We are sorry :(<p>Bye<p>Edit: This isn't me BTW. I just copy-pasted the text from the site.<p>Archived link: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230531105653/https://rarbg.to/index80.php" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20230531105653/https://rarbg.to/...</a>
Related documentary
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard
<a href="https://youtu.be/eTOKXCEwo_8" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/eTOKXCEwo_8</a>
2007 - 2023 RIP<p>Is there a successful tracker founded after 2010? With all these old sites and their experienced crew quitting, things are not looking good for the long term of warez.
The only one that comes to mind is the .si reboot of nyaa.se.
i was always skeptical on people saying that torrentz are a symptom of bad legal streaming services..<p>Well, i recently got myself a videoprojector with an android tv included, and since i happen to have an amazon prime account, i installed the app, which is quite good.<p>And yes, it's true, since i've done that, my torrentz usage has dramatically dropped..