What Is Magnet Link?

A hash in place of a file

A magnet link is a short string, beginning with "magnet:", that identifies a torrent by its infohash rather than by a downloadable file. A typical link carries the hash, often a display name and sometimes a list of trackers. Clicking it hands the string to a BitTorrent client, which uses the distributed hash table and any listed trackers to find peers, fetches the torrent's metadata from those peers, and then downloads the content itself.

The hash is the part that matters. It is derived from the torrent's metadata, so every copy of the same torrent produces the same hash, no matter which site publishes the link.

Why piracy sites switched to magnets

Hosting torrent files means storing them, and stored files can be seized, notified and counted. A site that publishes only magnet links stores nothing but text. It is cheaper to run, easier to copy to a new domain and quicker to rebuild after a takedown, since the full catalogue is just a list of hashes and names. That is why most public index sites now lead with magnet links and many offer nothing else.

What a magnet link does not contain

A magnet link is not a copy of the work. It contains no audio, video or text from it. The display name is chosen by whoever made the link and can be wrong, misleading or deliberately attached to malware. Nor does a magnet link prove that anyone is sharing the content right now: the swarm behind it may be large, tiny or gone.

For these reasons, a page full of magnet links usually raises questions about linking and facilitation rather than direct hosting. How those questions are answered differs between countries and between platforms' own policies.

Writing a notice about a magnet link

A notice should rest on more than the link. Good practice is to resolve the magnet, retrieve the metadata, join the swarm and verify pieces of the content against the protected work, then record the infohash alongside the page URL and a timestamp.

The infohash makes the evidence portable. When the same release reappears on a mirror site or a new index, the hash confirms it is the same torrent and the earlier verification still holds, so the new page can be reported without repeating the whole exercise. Notices then go to the site publishing the link, its hosting provider and the search engines that list the page.