Mininova - A Not-So Satirical Tracker Review
June 15, 08 by sharky 10,388 views
We held our tongue in check with our recent review on ThePirateBay - mostly out of respect. For mininova, we’ll be a little more candid and brash. It’s not so much as a personal disdain for mininova - heck, we all started out somewhere - it’s more about how detrimental the site is to its users and the BT community. How many countless people have received one of those RIAA pre-litigation letters and been forced to cough up thousands of dollars, all stemming from the use of mininova? That’s a statistic you won’t hear about. Mininova turns BitTorrent into a living joke, and is the quintessential example of how the best filesharing protocol in the world can be twisted and mangled beyond reproach.
Mininova - Rankings and Demographics
With an Alexa Ranking of 52nd overall, they’re hobnobbing with some pretty high-rollers. Mininova is to BitTorrent what McDonald’s is to food. We all know it’s not good for us, but we’ve all been there. 33 million people who visit mininova each month can’t all be wrong, can they? No, they’re not wrong - just not private-tracker smart. A single BitTorrent site this expansive loses it’s scalability, and torrent moderating becomes an impossible task. 0-seed torrents remain listed for months on end; malware runs rampant; music is poorly home-ripped (or uploaded from Limewire); video files are jumpy or don’t play; money & ad scams are around every corner. But the readership is beginning to wane - below is a look at the most recent Alexa stats. Does this have anything to do with the explosive popularity of private trackers, or is it just because Summer has returned to the Northern Hemisphere, and people would rather be outdoors?
The ‘Summer Theory’ makes sense, once you take into consideration mininova’s demographics. If Quantcast’s website benchmarking holds true - according to their statistics - mininova is full of children. There’s more 12-17 year olds on mininova than anyone else. They really ought to start teaching proper P2P & BitTorrent in school.
Ever taken a look at the advertisements on mininova? They’re continuously bombarding their target audience with gambling ads. Not only do we now have a bunch of kids (or subsequently, their parents) getting DMCA notices and RIAA legal pressure, but a new generation of young gamblers. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the fact that, if allowed, Winston-Salem, Raleigh-Durham and Richmond would love to be able to prop up their ads, too. Unfortunately for them Tobacco advertising is becoming increasingly restricted around the world.
If mininova was to offer a sliver of a redeeming quality, it would be in their addition of Content Distribution via the "Featured Torrents" category. When used appropriately it’s a great tool for music artists and writers to freely distribute their content and gain exposure. Whether the motive for offering this service is parallel to Limewire’s recently added "Music Store" (perhaps to shirk future trouble) is unknown. But even the featured section is not exempt from spam, SEO tricks and website self-promotion; being at the tryst of the reason for many of the torrents.
Enough of the pre-torrent prattle. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to The Review.
Mininova - Comments in Each Torrent
An innovative feature of Mininova is the incorporation of individual user comments in each torrent. Here you’ll be able to witness specific negative feedback about a release. This is great for users who prefer to see a scam coming before actually downloading a torrent. While it’s not a necessary feature for private trackers whose users are able to automatically assume a torrent is "good" in the first place, and not have to check first with the general consensus. It reminds me of cliff-jumping into a river - a bunch of guys standing around waiting for the first one to do it.
Aside from the obvious bitching about phony torrents, you’ll also be able to read moans and groans from there being just one seed for 5,000 waiting leechers. This is the actual thread from the recently released "Drillbit Taylor[2008][Extended Survival Edition]DvDrip-aXXo" torrent:
Viruses/Malware in mininova Torrents?
Are you a micro-terrorist who enjoys wreaking havoc by spreading viruses and pestilence throughout a public tracker? Then you’ll feel right at home at mininova, a place where anyone and everyone can upload whatever the heck they want, and spread it around among unsuspecting downloaders. People do it just for kicks - it requires very little computer knowledge, yet the results can be very effective. Just ask Limewire and eMule users.
That’s not just crazy-talk - it’s a reality if you choose to download software or games from a public tracker. Here’s a look at today’s comments found inside an ironic torrent - "NOD32 Antivirus". You know you’re on the wrong site when you download an antivirus program and it contains the virus. I can only chuckle.
Commenter #4 — A torrent on mininova with 7,000 seeds? Hah! That should have been a tipoff for a bad torrent.
Commenter #5 — I feel bad for that poor schmuck who had to reformat his computer. At least he got it back up in good time in order to warn other lamers. But fixing the torrent? Not likely. Better solution? Avoid the site.
Mininova - Perfect for Dialup Users
Mininova is great for dial-up users, because you’ll never get any good speeds out of the torrents, regardless. So why go out and pay mad dollars for premium high-speed access if you’re gonna use mininova to download, anyways? Save your hard-earned cash and dump in a 56K modem, cuz you won’t know the difference. A TIP for mininova fans: Go out and get yourself an expensive seedbox and see if this helps your download speeds. Although I doubt if even a 1GB line is going to help you when there’s 4 seeders and 2,962 leechers.
Mininova - Torrent Searching
I guess someone at mininova thought it be a good idea to color-coordinate the words in each search query result. I’m not sure how this can be useful, besides for making my eyes hemorrhage. It kinda reminds me of those annoying IRC channels that still haven’t outlawed all those colors.
Oh yeah, like most public sites, there’s a boatload of redundancy in the search results, as well. 201 search results for "Alvin and the Chipmunks"?! How many possible "good" torrents could there possibly be for one movie? It’ll take a keen eye to avoid those passworded-torrents, my friend - you better put on your shit-goggles. It’s going to take you almost as much time just to find the right torrent as it will to download it to completion. Nah, it’ll still take you days to download it.
Mininova shows Private Tracker torrents, as well
Mininova shows private tracker results, as well. We find this feature to be pointless, because: - if you have an account at that private tracker, in all likelihood you’ll be downloading the torrents from that website, instead. And if you don’t have an account for that private tracker, then the torrent listing is utterly useless to you - you’ll never be able to connect to the other users. Those torrents are going to take a really, really loooong time to download.
And that leads us to mininova’s misconstrued statistics about seeds and leechers. Surely the torrents marked with a red "P" have a higher seed/leech ratio - just take a look for yourself (Since people on private trackers actually seed their torrents). So why should those tracker stats be incorporated into mininova’s overall seed/leech stats? It’s not a clear reflection of what’s going on in the public trackers - it just buffers all the hit & runners.
Do you like to Hit & Run torrents? Go ahead, it’s condoned
If you like to H&R torrents, you’re more than welcome to do it at mininova - so does everyone else. I recommend you be selfish as hell, and download the torrent just until it finishes, and then promptly delete it from your BT client. That way you’ll save your precious 56K bandwidth for fapping to those lame Natalie Portman pictures you’re waiting in line to download on the next torrent.
Mininova Forums
The first rule of the mininova forums is: there are no rules - the second rule is…well, you get the picture. Wait a minute; there are some rules. It’s too bad the same can’t be said for uploading to those abominable public trackers. No holds barred there!
Post the ‘Fake Torrents’
On a private tracker, it’s rare that a fake torrent would even make it to the site - let alone last. Public trackers - this is not the case. To combat fake torrents mininova has set up a Forum thread for that alone. You’ll be able to run through dozens of daily posts that report all the bogus torrents. Feeling adventurous? There’s a whopping 356 pages dedicated to them!
Not only that, but real working torrents will get deleted just for being reported as fake. Confused? So am I. I guess Dad taught those moderators to hit first, ask questions later.
Mininova Forums - Password-Protected RAR files
What could possibly be more frustrating than spending days and days downloading a movie or game, and in the end you find out it’s password-protected? I can totally relate - no, wait, I can’t. This won’t happen on a private tracker, but is a common occurrence around mininova. To alleviate the pain, they’ve created a Forum thread for Password Lists for their lame torrents. You’ll be able to wade through 231 pages of muck in search of that rar password for the latest botched release of "The Incredible Hulk CAM". Wouldn’t you just prefer to have the IP address of that clown who uploaded the scammy torrent instead? I know I would. Now that would be a popular thread - the IP addresses of the uploaders!
Mininova Lawsuits & You
Like every other large-scale public tracker (TPB, Isohunt), mininova is being sued. Why on earth would anyone willfully wish to involve themselves with a public BitTorrent site that is on shaky ground at the best of times? I haven’t the foggiest idea. For me, when the alarm bells are ringing I’d prefer to not associate my IP address with copyright infringement litigation. Have we not learned from the past? You can read the whole story at http://blog.mininova.org.
Mininova — Final Thoughts
To sum it up, mininova is a place where they worship "aXXo" as if he created the BitTorrent protocol himself. If you find a private tracker that hosts "aXXo" torrents, run and hide (and close your account). Any private tracker that has any self-dignity wouldn’t be caught dead with inferior aXXo torrents in amongst the real releases. And if aXXo is the most popular releaser on mininova, what does that tell you about the users?
So to all 33 million of you diehard fans who visited mininova last month: may there be even more of you in the next. Because if you’re on mininova, that means you’re light years away from my accounts at ScT and iTS. Amen to that.
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01 • rock Says: 15.06.08 at 3:32 am
it is very clever on your part to give an example of an axxo torrent which was uploaded just 1 hr ago to show how less seeders, second point about gambling ads, i have seen many private bittorrent sites with gambling ads, first which comes to my mind is the torrentleech, yes there are ads on public trackers which ‘cogs’ the precious bandwith,, but let me guess how much it cost to get an invite to sct , correct me if i am not wrong 20 dollers, and add 30 dollars for monthly seed box rent, for that kind of money , i can wait for it to be uploaded on public tracker max by 12 hrs and wait for swarm to be created for another 4-5 hrs and i can download at my full speed of 2 mbps on a new movie torrent, and if displaying ads is a crime what about inbox being filled by donation request like every other day, You talk about fear of riaa , well trade a a/c of private bittorrent on forum like that of its, they would after you and ban you and if the romours are right they would share your personal email and ip with other sites so that you are not again seen anywhere again, then if i am not wrong wasn’t oink an private bittorrent site and there ex-uploaders where arrested, ALL i want say is private trackers are as safe or as vunereble as any public tracker, an elitist tracker like ptn can be attacked, and was in not to distant past, i am a proud member of many private bittorrent sites , but i would also say when ever i need any software which i cannot find on private site i use a public tracker like tpb, they have a purpose and they are fighting a battle for all of us against the copyright police, and i have more respect for people who seed on public tracker because they are doing it selflessly not like on private bittiorrent where people including me use it for bragging rights.
02 • Andrew Says: 15.06.08 at 8:32 am
Rock you make some excellent points.
03 • Treadstone Says: 15.06.08 at 4:55 pm
I agree with some of your comments but lets not get up our own arses when you talk about private trackers as Rock stated how many of oinks uploaders are expecting a knock anytime soon
04 • bobby Says: 15.06.08 at 9:15 pm
you should never need a public torrent site…
if you dont have at least one private site, out of the THOUSANDS which doesnt have the app you want, go usenet at worst!!
and paying for invites?? mmh…NOT?! meet people…i got sct/sa/scl all free just from asking from friends.
Torrentleech, while using gambling ads, sure does not have a user base of 12 year olds. And bragging rights?? Ive had a 1gb seedbox and now a 100/100 box with scene topsite axx, and i do not seed for bragging rights, i seed so others can get files at faster speeds.
ANY place that nOObs worship aXXO releases is a joke in itself. Yes, mininova keeps all those p2p people outta my beloved sites, but overall is complete waste of time.
05 • Blaenk Denum Says: 15.06.08 at 9:38 pm
Haha Sharky, you put out really great criticisms and they were all well articulated. Honestly though I do agree with Rock on many points. Out of all of the public trackers, I do like this one the most, though I should point out that it’s not really a tracker last time I checked. I agree that it’s just a step up from the filth that is LimeWire and sometimes TPB, and sometimes equally as bad or worse. However, when you have the knowledge it can actually be pretty useful. One thing that definitely can’t be argued is the fact that seeders on public sites such as Mininova (Who of course are seeding on different trackers, since, again, Mininova isn’t a tracker) are the most self-less. These guys don’t do it for fucking bragging rights and/or reputation as others do on private sites, these guys do it because they want to. I mean, when you look at the community that is Mininova, despite all of the mess and ignorance there seems to be over there, you can kind of sympathize for them. Here they are being stupid, ignorant, and messy, but they still strive to look out for each other, taking their time to comment on torrents, seed torrents, post on (What may seem to us as pointless) threads trying to help spot fakes or give out passwords for password protected downloads, at least, I do.
On that note, I can’t really sympathize for people who bitch on public trackers about slow speeds, password protected downloads, fakes, etc. because after a while I kind of expect them to learn. I mean, you’re not going to download a torrent whose only file is one big RAR archive and expect the probability of that archive being password protected to be 0%; in fact it’s very likely that it is.
In all honestly though, I do find myself visiting Mininova sometimes. I’m not part of any elitist trackers like you are or anything (ScT, FTN, PTN, etc. etc.) but I am part of some pretty general purpose trackers which contain many things but even then sometimes I won’t find things there. It’s like Demonoid. A lot of elitists bitch about Demonoid being a mess (Kind of like Mininova I guess), but the good thing about these trackers if that though you definitely might not find every single little thing, 0DAY with instant pre-times, you will find extremely rare collections of things, regardless of the quality (I’m not saying it’s bad quality, but emphasizing the fact that you shouldn’t care because it’s the only place where you’ve found such collection of whatever it is). One might argue that that’s what specialized trackers are for, and sometimes it is, but usually they’re too tied up in red-tape to just share the content, for example, the only copies anyone has of a collection might be below the standards of the site, or something to that effect. Not to mention that getting into said specialized-site is usually a difficult task in itself. After all these intricacies the initial goal to just fucking share is lost.
I’m not complaining about private trackers, usually they do fulfill my wishes. However, it’s not rare for many people to sometimes resort to public trackers due to availability or even, ironically, speed issues. Sometimes (Just to illustrate that it can and has happened, many times) I will see things on Mininova for example with a sizable swarm and decent speeds way before it’s even up on the private trackers I’m part of or if it is, before those have a sizable swarm or let alone decent speeds.
I agree with many of your points though, and I really do get ticked off sometimes at ignorant noobs posts’ but I’ve learned to simply ignore them. Just yesterday I found three torrents of 8 GBs+ (Old 90s cartoons) only on Mininova, after having searched other trackers. They had a decent amount of seeders too because it is accessible to the public, many people can share. But damn, it could go slow as fuck and I wouldn’t care or complain because it’s the only place I found it. The only place I didn’t look (Because I’m not a member) and they could’ve been at was BitMeTV, but it’s pretty difficult to get in and I hear it’s even more difficult to maintain a decent ratio. I understand that private trackers have rules in place to enforce decent speeds, avoid duplicates/fakes, etc., but there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed yet many private, or elitist as I like to call them, trackers do. Some trackers have systems in place to at least help maintain a decent ratio, such as through seed points, others just give you the finger in an attempt to try to build a reputation of being 1337 by being a hard ass.
Damn, that’s long, sorry -_-
06 • carpefile Says: 15.06.08 at 10:46 pm
I don’t belong to any private trackers, and don’t actually visit any public ones either, but I manage to get whatever I’m after without fakes and/or viruses.
I utilize a combination of utorrent, bit che, ipfilterx, and a few good scene release sites, along with some common sense and BINGO! the world is my oyster.
Using this combo, I haven’t received a dmca notice in over 2 years.
I’m no hit’n'runner but no seeding philanthropist either, I seed 1:1 and I’m good with that.
I know all about the benefits of using private trackers, but I’ve just never been a “club joiner”, hate their stodgy rules and pecking order, staff that thinks they are e-gods or whatever.
And the biggest reason of all, I’ve never wanted my p2p activities and location packaged up in a nice tidy list of stats and filenames and ip addresses.
The best place to hide a grain of sand is on the beach.
07 • bobby Says: 15.06.08 at 11:55 pm
“I know all about the benefits of using private trackers, but I’ve just never been a “club joiner”, hate their stodgy rules and pecking order, staff that thinks they are e-gods or whatever.”
Your obv on the wrong sites my man. Beside some ultra-leet sites, which ovc you dont belong to, some private sites have the nicest and most friendly staff imaginable. What you put in is what you get out of privates.
08 • Blaenk Denum Says: 16.06.08 at 1:55 am
I spent 25 minutes writing a long ass post and it never showed up, fuck this -_-
09 • a/s/l Says: 16.06.08 at 4:52 am
wow i thought this was a good blog until you decide to delete perfectly legitimate comments.
010 • sharky Says: 16.06.08 at 8:27 am
I apologize for the deleted posts if there’s some that didn’t make it all the way through. A bunch of stuff got stuck in the “Akismet” spam-filter (for various reasons) - you wouldn’t believe how much there is in just one day.
011 • bobby Says: 16.06.08 at 9:56 pm
OK…ill give it up to the content dist system…going to actually use very soon…thats good part…ill give that to it..
BUT….bitching and COMPLETE noobs are the reason i express so much anger there…just going into the forums make me wanna blow my brains out….
012 • scene_god Says: 22.06.08 at 2:31 pm
what a great article, except its all b.s.
1. demographics and rankings - who cares???!
2. advertising - its hardly obtrusive, and again who cares??!!
3. content distribution - again, who cares, no one is even sharing this crap
4. comments - the reason mininova is #1, yes some kiddies do spam, but this is the best feature of mininova to let users know what is good or not
5. viruses and malware - i’ve used mininova for years and never downloaded or installed virus/malware. you’d have to be a complete idiot for this to happen (same as rar files, why download in first place??!”! noob)
6. download speed - unless you’re a scenester worried about 0day torrents, mininova speed is fine, wait a day or two for seeders to build up
7. Hit and run - no one likes hit and runners, but what is worse is private sites with ridiculous rules and ratios that are impossible to maintain, or private sites where the bastards think you’re going to pay for ratio status, yeah right!!
to sum up, not everyone can get (or even cares) about precious scene invites and wants to bother trawling through site after site of private trackers which don’t have shit as far as content, they just go to mininova to get everything they need from users who aren’t doing it for MONEY OR STATUS, just the benefit of bt community. Go ahead and pay for silly seedboxes, invites, and ratio status, i’ll be doing just fine on mininova and demonoid. i’ve been a member of countless private sites and in the end never find what i need and can’t stand their attitude and stupid rules and end up going back
013 • Andrew Says: 22.06.08 at 7:56 pm
Personally I’d rather pay to leech than pay for a seedbox, much easier and it does really help the tracker with lack of leechers.
014 • Kos Says: 30.06.08 at 10:04 pm
You just have to learn to use Mininova, it’s easy and you’re clearly focusing on the negative parts.
For example, be spesific when you search for files, find the torrent with the best seed/leech ratio, glance through the comments (look for the serious comments, not the childish ones, if there’s any) and lastly look at the name of the uploader. If the release is from “eztv” for example, it’s all good news, and a safe download.
Follow those rules, and you’ll do just fine
the amount and variety of torrents you find on mininova if far better than any private site.
015 • jake Says: 10.07.08 at 3:19 am
The big public sites have their place. Although a poor choice for high-risk material like pre-release movies, and often dangerous as well as slow for popular downloads, these public sites are usually much better than private sites for finding rare files.
Generally, it’s best to download a file from the smallest community which has it available. Hard-to-find files may require BTjunkie or even eDonkey network.
Emule tends to be even better for rare files, with a vast selection found nowhere else, if you don’t mind waiting a week or two downloading.
016 • Diji1 Says: 20.07.08 at 6:57 am
I guess everyone’s entitled to their opinions - but I sort of found the whole article a little pointless. I’ve never actually used mininova other than through torrent-finder & torrentscan, however I use Demonoid & TPB a lot as well as a select number of private “high level” trackers.
If you ask me it depends on what I want/need in terms of quality, content, preferences etc. as to where I go. Eg. If I’m after apps TPB, mininova, Demonoid will do fine … if I want TV I’ll go private (cos that’s my fave thing to download: private = first, quality & sometimes speed being better).
Beats me why you’re laying into axxo - the guys been providing reasonable content for nothing for years, quite often pre-release. Most of his releases are good quality for what they are (ie. mass releaser, anything goes in the name of speed). The guy seeds over 500 torrents at Demonoid (let alone the other BT sites) - those comments were a bit undeserved.
I guess in the end this article seems to miss the point: for many users, mininova is useful - if that’s what they want, good luck to them.
Certainly for apps I couldn’t be bothered searching 2+ private trackers, that’s for sure!
017 • Captain Falcon Says: 03.08.08 at 4:33 pm
I don’t download much besides Anime and Music, and since I’m a member of Boxtorrents and What, I don’t have much use for sites like TPB and Mininova unless I want a big file.
018 • murda Says: 13.09.08 at 7:01 am
wow what an attack, 1st lets start with fake torrents, we all know demonoid dont we, and yes they battle with fake torrents all the time, torrentleech scenetorrents swap-haven all the same, so its not just indemic to private sites
2nd i run a public site that has over 400k torrents on it, you want to go though each to see if there fake? and you kidding me, its impossable at the best of times, let alone when you have more torrents uploaded in a day that you can look at…
as for law suits lol, well i guess we better not use any damn site, most have been sued or are in that process, taken down whatever the case may be
just think you bag a site that would kill you to run, so unless you run a site as big as that, stfu…
019 • user Says: 18.10.08 at 11:35 am
I have never read a more elitist, subjective review of anything in my life! I have also read the review filesharefreak did for TPB and the same goes for that. I have never used a private site yet have found everything I need on public sites like mininova and TPB. If i wanted to pay to download something, i would buy it legitimately…
Of course you need to use your brain and read the comments before you download something- these will more often then not provide a good indication of the quality of the torrent. Besides, there is usually a huge number of torrents available for any given search term- sorting through them to find a good one only takes a few minutes.
As for this joke of an article…
I find it hard to believe that this is even posted on the pretense of being a serious review. Is filesharefreak on the payroll of some conglomerate of Private bit torrent sites or something? Dont give up your day job sharky…
020 • mr_azri Says: 26.03.09 at 1:36 am
Nice article and i feed your posting