Pirate Bay Gets Rid of Torrents, Serves Magnet Links

The Pirate Bay completed a huge transition from being a host of .torrent files to a host for magnet:// links. The people behind the site believe the move was essential to make Pirate Bay "future proof". For instance, when replaced with magnet:// links, the entire site can be squeezed into a 90 MB "portable site" archive, which can be used to play chicken with the authorities. "It (the transition) shouldn't make much of a difference for the average user. At most it will take a few more seconds before a torrent shows the size and files," The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak today. "Just click the red button instead of the green one and all will be fine," it added. Magnet links, instead of sites hosting .torrent files, make the bit-torrent system vastly more decentralized. Those with the looming question of "Magnets...how do they work?" can refer to this article by Wikipedia.