In a heartfelt farewell message, the founder of Legit Torrents, a pioneering website in the legal torrenting community, announced the closure of the platform after 18 years of non-stop operation. The site, which provided a curated collection of legal torrents, served as a valuable resource for users seeking legitimate and copyright-compliant content. And unfortunately for reasons outside legal, copyright, or ACE takedowns, the site had to close down.
How did LegitTorrents start?
In this farewell letter, the founder gave a small background about how he started LegitTorrenets. According to him, he started the platform back in the fall of 2005 while still in high school. The early days of torrenting were when there were limited options for 100% legal torrent trackers.
With a shoestring budget, the original URL was hosted under “virtenu.dyndns.org/lt” until popularity grew, and a domain was eventually purchased for $0.99.
The founder also stated “The journey was not without its challenges.” and he acknowledged the support of friends and family who contributed to its success. Apart from its technical challenges, the site became a valuable learning experience for the founder. Throughout its lifespan, Legit Torrents facilitated the sharing of numerous legal torrents, which was a specialty among a sea of pirated content. The legal torrents included game updates, open-source software, creative commons-licensed content, and even an album produced by the founder’s friends.
The site also experienced its fair share of challenges. The founder also recalled a take-down notice from “The Web Sheriff,” aka John Giacobbi. The former anti-pirate hero mistakenly tried to take down a legitimate torrent. And that was the only time, LegitTorrents had to face a DMCA notice.
How and why did LegitTorrents shut down?
As the torrenting landscape evolved over the years, the founder made the difficult decision to shut down Legit Torrents. According to the founder, the site’s server was null-routed at the host, and without an easy way to bring it back online, the founder decided to gracefully bow out.
The site’s server was null-routed at the host meant that all traffic to the server was being redirected to a black hole. In other “less technical words” it means that it was essentially being deleted. This was likely done because the server was being used to send spam or host malware.
The null routing was done at the host level, which means that LegitTorrents’s founder did not have the ability to fix it. This made it impossible to bring the site back online, so the founder decided to shut it down.
In addition to these technical reasons, the founder also cited personal reasons for shutting down LegitTorrents. He said that he had a flourishing family and that he no longer had the time to dedicate to the site.
What are some Alternatives to LegitTorrents?
While everybody is sad to see Legit Torrents closing its doors, there are still several alternative websites where users can find legal and public domain torrents for various types of content.
Here are some popular alternatives to Legit Torrents:
- Public Domain Torrents Website: A great alternative to Legittorrents that offers a collection of movies and TV shows that are in the public domain. All the content hosted here is free and legal to download and share.
- Linux Tracker Website: Linux Tracker is one of the most popular Linux torrent sites out there. The torrent site specializes in providing torrents for various Linux distributions and open-source software.
- Internet Archive Website: This website is a vast digital library that offers a wide range of public domain content, including movies, books, music, and more.
- Etree Website: Etree focuses on live concert recordings and allows artists to share their performances in a legal and community-driven manner.
- Jamendo Website: Offers a platform for independent musicians to share their music legally. Users can download, stream, and share music under Creative Commons licenses.
- Librivox: LibriVox is a non-profit torrent website that offers free public-domain audiobooks. Librix uses volunteers to record and create audiobook versions of classic literature and other works.
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