Sometime during the last 24 hours there was a mass deletion of aXXo torrents from The Pirate Bay's tracker. It appears that a dispute between aXXo and The Pirate Bay about how to best handle alleged MPAA torrent meddling got way out of hand - with aXXo deleting lots of his torrents and leaving The Pirate Bay.

An estimated one million people download aXXo rips every month, so although there are conflicting opinions in respect of the quality of his work, there can be no dispute that he’s very popular indeed. While some see him in an almost religious light, others have been quick to take advantage of his popularity for nefarious purposes.

Today, aXXo fans visiting his page on The Pirate Bay were in for a shock, summed up this Pirate Bay user:

C01eMaN – 2007-11-07 00:19 CET:

Whats going on with tpb, all of axxo’s vids are disappearing, any1?

One by one, all torrents released after 7th September 2006 were deleted. But why?

A message on the Pirate Bay comment section seems to sum up the situation and this version of events has been confirmed by aXXo himself, in a couple of places.

hunter1980 – 2007-11-07 12:23 CET:

**************************NOTE************************** Since the Piratebay staff doesn’t care for their VIP uploaders, then aXXo decided not to use TPB and he deleted his own torrents. aXXo was constantly exposed to assaults and harassments from possible members of MPAA. Their strategy was to harass aXXo by posting absurd and accusing comments on aXXo’s torrents. The latest assault incident was especially noticed on aXXo’s last torrent ‘The Simpsons’.

Hunter1980 and aXXo were involved in direct argue with possible members from MPAA. Unfortunately, this strategy was a success. The strategy was based on rumors and the intention was to spread rumors and all this have had a negative side effects on naive people ( downloaders ). Since PirateBay did not take any action towards ‘Organized attacks’, aXXo decided to delete his torrent on TPB. aXXo is continuing posting his torrents on mininova or other torrent sites since they care for their VIP uploaders. ***************************END*************************

In a show of protest, Hunter1980 says that he has also deleted all of his torrents from Pirate Bay.

The aXXo world isn’t going to end with the deletion of torrents from The Pirate Bay because they can be found on a number of other torrent sites but it’s never nice to see disputes in the torrent community, especially between great ‘brand’ names.

The deletions have sparked quite a lot of debate on various forums. Some people are angry at The Pirate Bay for allegedly not giving enough support to aXXo while some are wondering if deleting lots of torrents is an appropriate response. Others feel that all uploaders should get the same treatment at The Pirate Bay and that aXXo shouldn’t get special attention. Maybe the Pirate Bay crew simply don’t have time to give anyone special treatment?

Interestingly, not many people seem to be pointing the finger at those who may have made the metaphorical bullets for others to fire – the “possible members of the MPAA” deemed to have taken the original actions which ultimately lead to this (hopefully temporary) breakdown in communication.

If the original MPAA plan was to reduce the availability of aXXo torrents by taking direct or indirect action against them at The Pirate Bay, that sadly seems to have worked, albeit via a strange turn of events. Or maybe it’s nothing to do with the MPAA after all and this is just one big misunderstanding?

Either way, hopefully this aXXo head will be re-attached to the Pirate Bay section of the BitTorrent hydra before it becomes completely severed. Undivided, unconquered.