We usually bring you good news on new torrent trackers launching or existing trackers opening sign ups, but this time around we have some bad news. World’s largest textbook torrent tracker has shut down and it ain’t coming back, according to the admin ‘Geekman’.
Textbook torrents was probably the only site of its kind; a torrent tracker dedicated to tracking thousands of text books on a wide range of subjects . This was what Geekman posted several months back when we first posted about the tracker and mistakenly called it an ‘E-Learning tracker’:
Okay, I really have to say this. Textbook Torrents is not an e-learning/documentary tracker. It is textbook-only. From the site rules:
"A basic rule of thumb to determine if something is acceptable: if you can find it in the courses section of your local university bookstore, it's fair game."
Thanks for the publicity, though. We get a steady trickle of redirects from this post. ;)
From humble beginnings, Textbook Torrents rose to popularity during mid 2008. This of course caught the eye of book publishers who apparently did not know how file sharing worked. Textbook Torrent’s host was threatened and the site went down suddenly as the host terminated the services offered to the site. It however soon resurfaced with a different host much to the joy of site members.
Now, in October 2008, Textbook torrents has shut down its doors for good. Site admin, whose identity was not a secret unlike that of many other tracker admin’s, had no other choice than to shut the site down since book publishers were going to personally sue him for assisting copyright infringement. Textbook Torrents had more than 100000 registered members at the time it shut down and the loss would no doubt be felt strongly.
Currently, we can’t think of another tracker which can replace Textbook Torrents. There will however be new Textbook trackers popping up soon after this shutdown, in true hydra style. Whether the new entrants can rise as high as Textbook Torrents remains to be seen. For now all we can say to Geekman is, “Thanks for the past 2 years and thanks for helping people share - R.I.P. Textbook Torrents”.
