As if not getting that Black Friday deal on your brand-spankin’ new Playstation 3 wasn’t bad enough, here I am to do my best and add to the heartbreak.

As the saying goes though, don’t shoot the messenger.

The Mininova.org admin team announced on their blog yesterday that they would be complying with last August’s ruling of the Court of Utrecht that Mininova acts ‘unlawful.’

For those of you who are not familiar with Bit Torrent, it has become an extremely popular way of downloading everything from e-books to albums. Sounds great, but the caveat is that most of the files being shared are guilty of copyright infringement.

Sites try to get around this by posting disclaimers reminding everyone that the files themselves are not hosted on the site.

The method of downloading differs from a service like Napster or Limewire because the user does not directly download a .mp3 or .avi, etc. file; but rather finds a .torrent file through search sites and then the file(s) download through a Bit Torrent client to the user’s computer.

Therefore, the loophole that the site do not host the files themselves is technically true – the sites do not host anything except the .torrent files.

The ‘health’ of a given .torrent file is measured in Seeders and Leechers. Seeders are those who have the completed file on their computer, and are sharing it with the rest of the world. Leechers are those who are downloading the file currently and do not have it completed.

Got it? Good.

So where does that put Mininova.org now? The site has decided that they will continue to exist but only distribute content which is legally owned by the uploader. To any independent band out there, this is good news. Especially with the 47 million monthly visitors Mininova says that they get.

The list of qualifications to upload are:
* You are (or your company is) the copyright owner or publisher of quality content.
* You would like to distribute your content for free.
* You agree that you will not upload DRM-protected content or spam.

If this is something that could benefit you or someone you know, visit http://www.mininova.org/apply

Even with this new change of service that could be a good thing for some, judging by the almost 8,000 comments on the Mininova blog post about their forced decision to comply with the court’s ruling, Bit Torrent users will surely be upset about this for quite some time.

Read the letter from the Mininova admins about their new copyright policy, and check out the thousands and thousands of comments in response to the announcement.

While you are at it, here is the initialMininova announcement about their court case, just 3 months to the day before their announcement yesterday about the changes in site policy.

Finally, if you feel like spending some quality time with BabelFish or your Dutch dictionary, here is the official ruling about Mininova by the Dutch court

Editor’s Note: Although you may now know the in’s and out’s of using Bit Torrent, we do not encourage any type of illegal downloading. Visit your favorite music retailer and support the artists.

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