The World’s Oldest Active Torrent Turns 18 Soon
The world's oldest active torrent file turns 18 years old this month and it's still being seeded by dozens of people. "The Fanimatrix" torrent was published in 2003 when BitTorrent was still a relatively new protocol. At the time, the torrent's creator saw it as the only affordable option to share the Matrix fan film with the world.
The oldest surviving torrent we can identify is a copy of the Matrix fan film “Fanimatrix.” The torrent was created in September 2003, which means that it will turn 18 this month. A remarkable achievement.
The film was shot by a group of New Zealand friends. With a limited budget of just $800, nearly half of which was spent on a leather jacket, they managed to complete the project in nine days.
While shooting the film was possible with these financial constraints, sharing it with the world was a bigger challenge. At the time there were no free video-sharing services and YouTube had yet to be invented.
Hosting the film on a private server wasn’t an option either. Bandwith was still very expensive, especially in New Zealand. If the project was to be a success, the friends would have to pay many thousands of dollars extra to distribute it.
