[meesterdude]

Actually, there is a difference between hosting the files and just linking to them, and is by no means a "minor technical difference". Although to be fair I think it was done not only to increase portability but also to decrease legal targeting, the latter of which seems like it didn't pan out in the end though may have thwarted some legal efforts along the way.

[coldtea]

>Actually, there is a difference between hosting the files and just linking to them, and is by no means a "minor technical difference".

From the technical side of showing the torrent/magnet links on the TPB page, it's indeed a minor difference.

[darsham]

I think you misunderstand. They never hosted any content, they only linked to it. What we're saying is that the torrent database was upgraded from plain old filesystem storage of .torrent files to a more efficient/specialized database.

[icebraining]

But a torrent was already just a link to the actual content.