RIP Suprnova.org

Sunday morning was the start of an odd feeling, one that I still have. It's one of being disconnected, of having your way of life pulled out from under you, and not anymore knowing quite what to do. For over a year now we've had one single source of multimedia content, and while it did go down occasionally, one was always confident that within a couple days you would once again have the world at your fingertips. Now, that portal is gone, and it feels empty.

I am, of course, referring to the recent death of suprnova.org, the internet's preeminent portal to torrents. Whether one was just grabbing the episode of Lost she missed the previous day, or browsing the list of new torrents to see what was new and interesting to people, suprnova provided a common meeting place for internet users to share material. With bt one didn't have to worry about spoofed files, disconnects from servers, queues, or viruses. If a torrent had any seeders left, that meant the file was worth it.

The loss is especially significant when it comes to tv shows. I relied on suprnova to be the universal connection between me and all the shows I watch. Have you been forgetting to watch The Wire (HBO)? No problem, download this season's eps and catch up. Did you never get around to watching Farscape (SCIFI) when it was on? BT the whole series and the followup miniseries. I subscribe to these channels, I don't feel this is in any way theft. What it was, and may still be, is a new way of accessing information, a new way of living, a new manner of convenience.

In the wake of suprnova's death, there have been many internet discussions about what to do now. Do we return to the days of old, where newsgroups and irc were the only real way of obtaining large files? Irc fserves and xdcc is a mess---what search capability one has through sites like packetnews is extremely poor, and one is frequently disconnected from servers during transfers. As for news servers, most isps have terrible retention, and mine at verizon is capped at about 40kps. This is not to mention that usenet is a horrible mess, where spam can overtake any good group, and large postings are split over multiple days. Tv rips on it tend to be shit quality.

What about more recent p2p progs? Should we all be 100 gig warez whores and join the snotty DC++? Personally, I don't want to have that much warez/porn/music on my computer on an open network, and I hate fucking file snobs. Kazaa, or even one of its safer clients like K++, connects to the lackluster kazaa network, where selection is limited, good files masquerade as porn, and as of Jan 2004 45% of progs had a virus or trojan.

All these alternatives have been discussed, but frankly I think the majority of us have tried these in the past and were fed up. The introduction of BT was such a revolution that many of us will never go back. So, in the vacuum left by the death of suprnova, we will all watch for a new site to emerge. Torrentspy very well may be that Next Big Thing, we'll have to see. But to be sure, the replacement for suprnova will be just another version of suprnova.