Suprnova.org, deemed a Universal BitTorrent source, was a web site which distributed descriptor files for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Many of these torrents described could potentially have been used for copyright infringement.

Suprnova did not host any of the shared files, nor did it operate any BitTorrent trackers. All it offered were the ".torrent" meta files which would tell a BitTorrent client where it could find the BitTorrent tracker. The client could then go to the tracker to find peers to obtain the file from. Suprnova would connect to the tracker periodically to obtain statistics for display on its web pages, so visitors could determine how popular a file was, and how likely it was that they could obtain a complete copy of it. The two important statistics were "Seeds" and "DLs". "DLs" was the number of participants currently uploading and downloading the file. "Seeds" was the number of participants who had the complete file available for download. The number of seeds was important, as if there are no seeds left or the last seed leaves the network, all other participants would have most likely been unable to finish the file.

As well as the torrent files themselves, there was a set of forums for visitors, where people talked about various subjects, and requested different files that they'd like to see people upload. This resulted in a greater sense of community spirit than on the self-contained networks such as FastTrack and Gnutella.

Suprnova.org had a problem with two similarly named scam sites, Suprnova.com and Suprnova.net. These sites have the same layout as suprnova.org but require a usage fee (Suprnova.org did not).

As of late November 2004 a French company, RetSpan, has been seeking legal action against SuprNova. 1 (http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=602)

Recent rumours across internet communities had been discussing the possibilities of a P2P application project that Suprnova.org owners were in the process of developing. Based on the torrent network, the new project dubbed Exeem, would dispense of the need for 'tracker' websites as typically required for BitTorrent networking, and instead embed trackers into all of the users of the Exeem software. The software, thus, would serve as an index, a sort of online 'yellow-pages' which would point users to the direction of other users with the desired file. This is said to reduce the loads on tracker hosting networks, as well as further decentralizing the Suprnova community.

As of December 19th, 2004, at around 5PM (GMT+1:00 Slovenian time), a message was displayed on Suprnova's front page stating it has officially closed down. Some speculation states this is due to its poor server and constant downtime, whilst others speculate that Suprnova had been receiving legal warnings, which was the underlying reason of its shutdown.

Later, Sloncek, the lead administrator and owner, revealed on Suprnova's IRC channel that his site was shut down because neither he, or the other administrators will want to continue to fight against the legal warnings which they have received.

At the time of writing, Suprnova has been taken down, and the site is no longer reachable. Amazingly, this unexpected event took place in the span of merely 12 hours.

Size

• As of July 2004, it listed approximately 60,000 torrent files.

As of late December 2004, it no longer listed torrent files because it was shut down (indefinitely).'It will be remembered as one of the greatest BitTorrent sites of all time'

External links

• An early fan reaction to the news of SuprNova's closing (http://mike-b.deviantart.com/journal/4103616/)
• Suprnova Lite PHP: A low bandwith Suprnova.org mirror (http://project-2501.net/php-scripts/suprnova-lite/)
• Unofficial RSS feeds (http://varchars.com/rss/)
• Relatively Complete Suprnova Mirror (http://bi-torrent.com/)
• The Unofficial SuprNova.org Closure FAQ by SilentDragz (http://www.silentdragz.net/suprfaq)