In rather shocking news, The Pirate Bay (TPB) has shut down its torrent tracker. The search engine remains, but instead of dishing up torrents it will instead serve as a magnet-link repository.TPB cites that the concept of the BitTorrent tracker is dead. “There is no need to run a tracker any more” says their blog. Long-live DHT and PEX — dynamic, decentralized torrenting technologies!

What this actually means for you and I — the implications — is that you need to make sure you have an updated torrent client, like uTorrent or Azureus. Something that supports DHT and PEX. Most of you will already have these technologies enabled by default — you just don’t know about them. In fact, even with this rather dramatic announcement, you probably won’t realise any difference in your download speeds.

Piracy will continue as normal, don’t worry.

It’s simply the end of an era. Perhaps more interestingly, TPB have been talking to other tracker owners and torrent-download sites. They’re pushing for everyone to move away from trackers and towards decentralization.

Whether this is simply a ‘viva la piracy!’ move, or a more sinister strategy by their new owners remains to be seen.

[via TorrentFreak]