aXXo

aXXo is the Internet alias of an individual who released and standardized commercial film DVDs as free downloads on the Internet between 2005 and 2009. The files, which were usually new films, were popular among the file sharing community using peer-to-peer file sharing protocols such as BitTorrent. A download-tracking firm BigChampagne foundin a sampling period in late 2008that almost 33.5% of all movie downloads were aXXo torrents. aXXo encoded files to approximately 700MBthe same capacity as a compact disc.

In November 2007, aXXo deleted all of their files released after September 7, 2006 from The Pirate Bay protesting that the site was allowing harassing comments to be added to their torrents by "possible members of MPAA".

On December 15, 2008, aXXo's thousandth movie upload, a copy of the Kiefer Sutherland horror film Mirrors, appeared on an Internet forum for the Darkside Release Group.

On March 11, 2009, aXXo stopped uploading new files after releasing Punisher: War Zone. For a while, they logged into Mininova until the site switched to only hosting torrents that were Content Distribution free or torrents with no copyrights.

On April 19, 2009 aXXo made their last known comment on message board "Darkside_RG", in response to rumours that they had stopped posting on Darkside_RG. They stated:

Format information aXXo would convert a commercial DVD movie into an.avi file of approximately 700MB size; this.avi was then used to create a .torrent file, which would then be uploaded to Bittorrent trackers, after which the movie in question would be available for download. On file sharing websites, aXXo files attracted large followings with more than a million users downloading aXXo files each month. Files released by aXXo followed the naming convention "Name.Of.Movie[year]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo.avi", For years, aXXo had been warning followers to “beware of bogus sites and lamers” in the.nfo files which accompany their torrents.

About a year after aXXo signed off in 2009, a group called YIFY began uploading similar torrents focusing on efficiency and small sizes.