btjunkie.org voluntarily shut down

In the wake of the Megaupload sting btjunkie voluntarily shut its doors for fear of a similar fate.

Isn't this natural for all sites that facilitate piracy? They can't stand up forever, they come and go, to avoid the wrath of justice.

Damn, I was very fond of that torrent site.

Please don't make posts telling people how or where to find pirated material and warez. (Several posts removed.)

Edit: And since this thread is becoming no more than a discussion of how to use torrents, I'm closing it.

I always thought torrents were full of virii. How do you guys who use them avoid getting your PCs infected?

Torrent files themselves have no virii. The contents on the other hand, are another matter.

Sometimes they consist entirely of "pure" content files (documents, music, movies, pictures, archives etc.) and sometimes they contain OS-specific executables.

Only in the latter case you can have a potential for infection, and then only IF you use the OS that this executable targets (let's not fool ourselves, this means a Windows .exe in 99.9999999% of the cases) AND you actually execute it AND you're unlucky enough for your AV software not to catch it when executing, if it didn't catch it when it actually finished downloading (BTW, you ARE using AV software under Windows, right?).

But that's true of every data source, including file sharing, Kad, eMule, direct http or even stuff on a floppy, tape or a CD-ROM. If someone is just downloading a video file, why should he get viruses (unless they fool you into downloading a fake virus-infected torrent client or some "download accelerator", or manage to induce a drive-by download and arbitrary data execution through your browser, that is).

By and large, if you have a legitimate torrent client, a normal .torrent file that you didn't have to download 100 dialers and toolbars to get to and (optionally) an AV software that doesn't suck, you should be alright.

That is, without making any assumptions on the legitimacy of the stuff you are trying to download. But in general, the more illegitimate it is, the more "dirty" it gets trying to even download the .torrent file.

Interesting. Following your point about most malware being created for a Windows-based OS, my bandmate always brags that he has almost no chance of getting infected since he uses a Mac laptop. But he's mostly after mp3s of rare/unknown bands, so that probably lowers his chances of infection even more.