BitTorrent fans everywhere have reason to rejoice as
SuprNova.org, once one of the best BitTorrent trackers on the web, is set to
return after its closure in late 2004. Shuttered due to an increasing legal
threat, SuprNova remained under the control of Andrej Preston a.k.a. Sloncek and
was used to host a variety of projects, including an amateur internet radio
station, p2p news site, and an ill-fated BitTorrent client named eXeem.
While Sloncek will not be master of the new SuprNova.org,
the good news is that those duties will conditionally be filled by The Pirate Bay: SuprNova’s new owners must return the site to
its former glory, and if the scattered SuprNova community returned then the
site would be “like visiting an old friend.”
In an interview with Slyck.com, Sloncek details his plans and how SuprNova simply did not fit
in to his life. “I grew up a bit … I have paid attention to my social life,” he
writes. “I thought [to] myself that SuprNova is going to be dead forever, and I
have even written myself, that SuprNova will never return as a torrent site.
But things changed in real life and in my head.”
The new SuprNova, according to The
Pirate Bay cofounder Peter “brokep” Sunde, will be geared for beginners. “It will
be easier to use than most sites out there and we want everybody to be able to
use it.” For those that don’t know how to set up BitTorrent, there are plans to
embed a java client directly into the site, allowing users to begin downloading
immediately with no installation and no download.
Further, the new SuprNova will no longer have a tracker
component, placing the site closer in league with other torrent indexers like
isohunt.com. “We will be the first indexer site where you can find stuff even
though people want the stuff removed,” says Sunde.
Sunde denies rumors that SuprNova would launch as early as
this week, instead saying that “it will launch as soon as we’re done with the
site. As you know, we’re not very conventional. We party, we have girls over …
and we do this in our spare time. It was supposed to launch in February really
so we’re a bit slow.”
As for Sloncek, it appears that he does not want anything
more to do with SuprNova. “I’m going to go study abroad, actually in [the] film
industry and I do not want to be associated with it anymore. I still support
the concept … but I do not have time for it anymore, [nor] do I want to be
associated to it until I’m in [the] USA.”
The domain has
already been transferred to The Pirate Bay, but currently displays only a
single line of text: “sweet. we should put a countdown here. so check back
soon.”