Nyaa is down

[antvasima]

More information here:

https://torrentfreak.com/anime-torrent-site-nyaa-goes-down-after-domain-name-deactivation-170502/

[WarOmnimon]

...well, this is VERY scary.  Looks like Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters and Tenchi Muyo! OVA 4 are gonna be unfinished in terms of English sub releases, which is bad because neither of them are licensed.  Toei is trying to get Appmon licensed, but OVA 4... yup, we got @#$%ed because of Ai failing.  AGAIN.  (Keep in mind, that's likely why OVA 4 hasn't been licensed.)  That makes me double sad, and anyone else who is watching anything without a licensed release is pretty much out of luck now too, and not just Appmon and Tenchi OVA 4 - keep in mind, there are several other series that either don't have a western license and / or never got one.  Good examples are Kamen Rider Ex-Aid which I'm also currently watching (VERY fun and well written series for video game people especially, even if you're not the most well versed Kamen Rider fan on the planet - it's likely going to be the series I always recommend to potential first time Rider fans after it's over), as well as every anime for ToHeart after the original series (Remember My Memories and everything involving TH2 never got licensed for western release).

And yeah, as the article states, the .SE domains refuse to budge over copyright strike based stuff unless an actual court order is sent out.  So we know it is either a court order or possibly a DDoS.  Either way, unlicensed series are not gonna be easy to find subs for now, and that hits us in particular VERY hard because of OVA 4.

[antvasima]

Maybe Tokyotosho will link to some other sites instead?

[Ryo-Okay]

I doubt Ai has anything to do with ova 4 not being licensed.

[WarOmnimon]

Maybe Tokyotosho will link to some other sites instead?

Here's to hoping.  But on the other hand, I'm feeling nervous still.  I've already seen several fansub groups go back to using IRC / XDCC as their means of distribution because of this.

I doubt Ai has anything to do with ova 4 not being licensed.

Ai itself, no... but the fact that it completely bombed in Japan and didn't get licensed (In fact, it is the first iteration of Tenchi as far as the anime goes to NOT get licensed - we even got WoG and Sasami MGC, don't forget) is likely THE biggest key factor here.  Hence why I blame it for OVA 4 not getting licensed.  Had Ai not bombed (Or better yet never happened), I'd betcha that at least Crunchy and / or Funi would have licensed OVA 4 for an official subbed release by now, similar to how they had Dragon Ball Super subbed officially with the license before production on the dub began.

[BlackAeronaut]

Guys, there's others out there.

BakaBT will gladly host anything that's not licensed in the US.

Also, all the rest of Tenchi Muyo Ryo-ohki is available on BakaBT.  I feel they'll accept an incomplete torrent pending the release of the rest of the OVA, given that it's going to be several months between releases.

Right now, though, they're down for maintenance and will be down for a while.

https://twitter.com/BakaBT/status/859402452117979137

But once they're up?  I'll show you their Tenchi Torrents.

[WarOmnimon]

Guys, there's others out there.

BakaBT will gladly host anything that's not licensed in the US.

Also, all the rest of Tenchi Muyo Ryo-ohki is available on BakaBT.  I feel they'll accept an incomplete torrent pending the release of the rest of the OVA, given that it's going to be several months between releases.

Right now, though, they're down for maintenance and will be down for a while.

https://twitter.com/BakaBT/status/859402452117979137

But once they're up?  I'll show you their Tenchi Torrents.

^ Truth.  +1 to BlackAeronaut.    My concern here is that several fansub groups have already defaulted to returning to IRC / XDCC as their means of distribution, not that there aren't other trackers, because, well... as pointed out, there are indeed other trackers.  The problem is that even though there are other trackers to fill the void left by Nyaa, the fansub groups don't want to use them for whatever reason.

[AstroNerdBoy]

My understanding is BakaBT is private. I think this is the one site that requires an invite, but I'm not sure.

As to where to torrent something, that could be done anywhere in theory. Supposedly, this site has the Nyaa database through April 5 and are working on recreating Nyaa. Right now, they have a makeshift site.

https://nyaa.pantsu.cat/

[BlackAeronaut]

BakaBT is kinda-sorta private.  Thing is they like people to maintain positive ratios on their tracker - spend too much time with a low ratio and they block their IP.  Bear in mind, it's not for a ratio on a specific torrent, but your overall upload-download ratio with the tracker.

You can get away with downloading a couple of torrents through the tracker, but it's always best if you stick around to improve your ratios.

It's really not too hard.  Get an account (it's no harder than getting an account here).  They have a listing for torrents that are either high in traffic or in high demand for seeders.  Seed one of those for a while and you'll be good.

They're still down at this moment, unfortunately.  They're saying they'll be back.  Worse comes to worse, they'll get a new host.
https://twitter.com/BakaBT/status/860194400030384129

[shades of blue]

Tho it's filled with idiots uploading inferior releases of many titles, animetorrents.me is another tracker to fill your needs til something better comes along.

[BlackAeronaut]

If they don't have the releases you like, then maybe you should try offering them?  Seriously, the staff at BakaBT are incredibly picky over the releases they accept, basing the criteria mainly on the quality of the rip and encode as well as the quality of the translation.  They also like to have several different versions, such as SD, 720p, 1080p... you get the idea.

So, if a group has offered a 1080p version of their release, but not a 720p or an SD version because they're elitist like that.... that's on the group, not BakaBT... or the fact that no one at BakaBT has offered it.  Or maybe their translation just plain sucks, or they got crap-ass encodes...  yeah.

They're still down for some reason.  The staff isn't revealing much, but the tweets paint something of a picture...
https://twitter.com/bakabt?lang=en

[shades of blue]

I was not referring to BBT.

[BlackAeronaut]

Oh jeeze.  Sorry. 

EDIT:
Good news!  Baka is back up and running!  But it seems they've run afoul of copyright trolls...

As many of you are now aware, starting yesterday you were faced with a login screen when you tried accessing BakaBT.
This time it is not a prank, we are forced to change our model to a private tracker, and to remove our public component.

The reason for the change is a targeted assault by a copyright agency. Despite our cooperation and ban of the reported titles, they kept spamming our hosting provider with C&D letters because their botched algorithm of detection will report any title that may or may not even be their property, only having a similar name. Their responses were even more amusing claiming rights to images on descriptions, despite the content being made unavailable. Fair use, who ever heard of that.

However, their actions have caused a side effect where our provider, spineless as they always are, gave us an ultimatum to remove our domain from their IP.
It is still uncertain whether or not we will be forced to relocate servers altogether, so if we become inaccessible later today, it means we are most likely relocating.

Sign ups are currently closed, so if you are currently without an account or your account has been pruned, you will be unable to use BakaBT from now on.
There will be a system set in its place, either invite or applications or something similar a bit down the line.
Password recovery will also be included sooner rather than later.

Additionally, please do not post/forward this information to social media and other sites until this matter is handled.
We will post an update on our official channels when we have secured our position and fully resolve the situation.

~Duki3003

Update: While the services are up, we are experiencing some technical difficulties with backups, making them go haywire and commit seppuku, so unfortunately for the second time we had to restore the website to a previous working version, so all data and changes made in the meanwhile were lost. We're working to resolve this situation.

Update 2: We still haven't determined the exact cause what was causing our services to impload during backups, but we have narrowed it down to possible issues with our hard drives. Unfortunately we will have to rely on our new provider's support department to handle this. Therefore expect some more downtime periods during maintenance in the following days.

Update 2: Our provider has confirmed there is an issue, possibly regarding hardware, and they will try to offer some solutions tomorrow. So expect some more downtime.

Update may10th: We're up. Everything seems to be running fine. We'll monitor how things go.

Same bunch that brought down Nyaa maybe?