The world’s most popular file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay, is set to drop the files that have helped it become the most infamous Bittorrent hosting portal, removing support for the ageing trackers and embracing Magnet links, it has revealed in a blog post.

According to TorrentFreak, the decision to drop support for the Torrent was decided a couple of years ago but it has taken until 2012 for the website to move to an alternative linking structure. It argued that Bittorrent trackers had been made irrelevant with the introduction of technologies like DHT and PEX.

If you visit The Pirate Bay today, you will notice that the website now offers Magnet links by default. The website still hosts Torrent files but they are no longer offered in the same way as before. According to TorrentFreak, it will take a around a month for the site to drop Torrents completely.

The change will enable The Pirate Bay to save bandwidth and it says that Magnet links are more difficult to block:

Hey all! Quite some time ago we decided to not host torrent files anymore. In following with that decision, we decided to make Magnet links the default option for the Download buttons! We’ve just changed places on the links. Magnet is now default, Download torrent is now where the magnet links used to be. The reason is the same as always: Magnets are now good enough to use, and it’s not as easy to block as .torrent files. Also it saves us a huge amount of bandwidth!

What does this mean if you visit the website? Nothing. Most modern Bittorrent clients support the Magnet filetype and will continue to operate in the same manner.

When the switch is made permanent, the size of the website and its links will ensure the it is a lot leaner, meaning that if a user wanted, they could make a complete backup of the website and transfer it to a USB key — an excellent idea considering many governments are beginning to block access to the website around the world.

Magnet links do take a little while longer to get started, as they have to source the file from other downloaders, but it has clear advantages over its tracker-based predecessor. With The Pirate Bay making the move to Magnet links, we may see a number of other sites doing the same.

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