FlashForward proves a hit on BitTorrent

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25 September 2009 10:31 GMT / By Duncan Geere

FlashForward, a television show just launched in the US from the creators of Lost and based on the book by Robert J Sawyer, has proved a surprise hit on filesharing websites.

At the time of writing, Mininova and the Pirate Bay are both displaying nearly 10,000 people sharing a full HD copy of the first episode, and another 20,000 downloading it. Even more people will have downloaded the file but aren't sharing it.

Both Mininova and the Pirate Bay share the OpenBitTorrent tracker, which was set up in the wake of the news of the sale of the Pirate Bay. It's a tracker that doesn't have an indexing site - it can be used by any BitTorrent website.

The show will be appearing on Five's freeview-only Fiver channel from 28 September - four days behind the US launch. However, the popularity of the series on filesharing sites will inevitably mean that the viewing figures will be impacted negatively. Five offers an on-demand TV service, but it's not clear yet whether the content will be offered free or paid-for.

In the meantime, if you want to get a taste of the show without resorting to a BitTorrent download, then we've embedded a trailer above.

Full tags

Software, Networking, P2P Software, BitTorrent, OpenBitTorrent, Pirate Bay, FlashForward, Mininova, ABC, Five