The past month has been a busy one for popular torrent file host The Pirate Bay. First, TPB announced that it would be making "magnet links" the new default download file for content hosted on the website (instead of the usual torrent file). This is because magnet links are safer and also take up less bandwidth than .torrent files. Next, the website was moved from a ".org" domain to a ".se" extension in order to avoid a possible shut down by the United States government. This was done shortly after the Swedish Supreme Court ruled that The Pirate Bay's founders would not be given rights to an appeal process in a long-standing lawsuit.

Today, The Pirate Bay announced that it will not be hosting torrent files for any torrent that has over ten (10) peers beginning February 29, 2012. This would essentially remove the ability to download a .torrent file for a majority of the content hosted on the website.

In following with our decision to skip .torrent-files in the nearby future one of the biggest steps will come on the 29th of February. We will stop serving .torrent-files for all torrents that has has more than 10 peers from this date.