Every year hundreds of new torrent sites are launched, but only a few of these manage to rise to the top. Take.fm is one of these newcomers, and since it has something unique to offer it is likely to stick around.

Take.fm is a torrent indexer, meaning that the site does not operate its own tracker. Those browsing through the site will immediately notice that it’s unlike any other indexer. The site is developed by the owner of Coda.fm, a music site that launched last year. Similar to Coda.fm, the looks and unique features of Take.fm set the site apart from most of the competition, this time focusing on the movie niche.

TorrentFreak got in touch with the owner of both sites to find out more about his newest project.

“As I did before with Coda.fm, I wanted to create a new kind of movie torrents site, open for everyone and one that offered a user experience comparable to the best e-commerce websites,” Take.fm’s owner told TorrentFreak. “We don’t have to get used to a third-rate user experience just for dealing with torrents. I tried to build a website that I – and hopefully all the torrents community – would enjoy using.”

Visitors to the site will indeed notice that the site looks more like a movie store or rental site than the average torrent index. The movies are presented nicely and users can browse through different genres and list movies based on popularity and the date they were added. Although the site has just launched, there are already over a 1000 titles listed, all verified by the site’s members.

“The website went online only a few hours ago, so the movies available now are the ones that a few invited users uploaded during a closed beta period. We have now approx. 1400 movies and 1900 torrents. As happened with Coda.fm, we expect to build a great user base, with many contributors that could help us to greatly increase our catalog.”

Although the browsing experience is neat, the features we described earlier can be found on most other torrent indexers as well. What really sets Take.fm apart from other sites is the presentation and features of the movie torrent pages. Here users can find all the info they need on a movie torrent, including a description, IMDB rating, a review and details specific to the release such as the quality, release group and audio and video specs.

To top it off, users also get a list of recommended titles for the movies they browse. This is similar to the recommendation engines that e-commerce sites such as Amazon have, and with enough contributors this could help users to quickly find related content of interest.

Although all of this sounds great, the movie industry wont be cheering the site on. They would argue that it assists in copyright infringements, which are against the law in most countries. Especially since all the files on the site are manually verified, anti-piracy groups might be inclined to take swift action to shut the site down. The Take.fm owner is aware of this risk, but is not planning to back down.

“Yes, we expect a lot of legal actions against us, the kind that we already endured with Coda.fm, but with more pressure. However, they couldn’t stop us before, and they won’t succeed now either. I really believe in what we do, and we will do anything it takes to stay online, as long as we have users that enjoy our service.”

People unconcerned or unaffected by the legal issues are being encouraged by the site’s owner to help out and join the team. “We just launched and we need collaborators that could help us to increase our catalog and build a community. I would like to use this opportunity to invite users that liked our vision to collaborate, uploading movie torrents and applying for moderators,” he said.

All in all we have to say that Take.fm is truly an amazing site, much like its sister site Coda.fm. A site that immediately captures one’s imagination. We have little doubt that this one will be around for a while, if it manages to stay out of legal trouble that is.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

In May this year the Swedish Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier ruling by the District Court which prohibited two Pirate Bay founders, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, from operating the site. The pair faced a 500,000 kronor ($70,000) fine for non-compliance.

Late last month, Peter Sunde – The Pirate Bay’s former spokesman – received the same treatment.

Sunde said that he was surprised by the ruling and told TorrentFreak that he found it “interesting” that the Court felt it could judge him even though he doesn’t live in Sweden and the site is located abroad. He immediately said he would appeal the decision.

An appeal has now been lodged against the ban which carries the same 500,000 kronor penalty for Peter as it does Gottfrid and Fredrik.

“His involvement with The Pirate Bay has always been limited to the political issues which emerge. A ban would constitute the same thing as a political gagging,” explains Sunde’s lawyer in documents submitted to the court.

The banning order is an interim ruling in force until the appeal of the criminal case against all four defendants in the original trial is settled in the autumn. In the meantime the site remains fully operational.

Article from: TorrentFreak.