The operators of Pirate Bay are standing trial in Stockholm next week. Yikes, I know, but here's the scariest part: if Pirate Bay falls, it could be big trouble for BitTorrent as a whole.


P2P researchers crunched the numbers and found that the Pirate Bay's eight servers are responsible for tracking over 50% of the internet's torrents. Should the Pirate Bay be shut down, the burden then placed on the next-largest BitTorrent trackers would likely overwhelm them, causing a chain reaction that could bring the whole torrenting infrastructure to its knees.




It is unlikely, of course, that BitTorrent as a protocol will fail. Someone will rise up to take the place of the Pirate Bay, and trackerless torrents are also in the works. But right now, the entire ecosystem depends on a single site, whose operators are about to go on trial for copyright violations. Nevertheless, all eyes should be on Stockholm next week if you're a torrenter. You can watch the Pirate Bay trial live thanks to Swedish public TV.

And as many of you commenters are pointing out, this of course does not include private trackers, but when considering the ecosystem as a whole, private trackers represent a tiny slice of overall mainstream torrenting traffic. [Torrent Freak via /.]