Suprnova.org is down. And no, it's not mis-spelled.

For the uninitiated, Suprnova.org is a website for movies, dramas, games, programs, etc. It is most probably the largest website on the Net. It houses bookmarks to files hosted on other's computers called Torrents.

If you want the file let's say "Friends Collection - Season 10", you open up this program called BitTorrent or several variations of it, you click the torrent. The torrent actually points to a webtracker, that tracks everyone who is clicking the torrent as you, plus the people who have the completed data. The people who have the completed file and just spreading the goodies around are called Seeders. People who are still downloading are just called Leechers.

The difference about this protocol is that it's all mutual, you download random parts of the file, you will auto-upload the random parts of it to the rest and it all goes round and round. Result? Super fast transfer speeds. And unlike other programs like Kazaa which have lots of bogus files(no prize for guessing who's doing it), it's impossible to fake or corrupt the data transfer as it has sophisticated file-integrity checking in place.

Well, this morning this website was shut down along with other several websites. It seems that the RIAA has spoken. Recent articles published in the papers seemed to be the reason for this. Companies which suffered loss of income due to the prolification of this peer-to-peer file sharing program were reported threatening to sue the creator. Well, the demise of this website seems to be a step to stopping file sharing like what happened to the likes of Napster and Morpheous. It's a matter of time before the rest of the websites providing torrents are hit.

BT is such an amazing program. Given the limitations of certain technical aspects of broadband access, the way it works still surprises the geek in me sometimes. Sometimes over a bowl of Katong Laksa or BBQed stingray in Bedok 85, I would rave about how wonderful it is to my friends and recommend them to use it. It has became a daily computer task in my life, always occupying an icon on my taskbar. A demise to this wonder of P2P world would be heart-shattering!