Searches at several BitTorrent sites show that pirated copies of Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 have already leaked to the Internet, just a few weeks before the company is expected to officially release the beta version of the OS.

The postings began on Friday, when two Windows 7 Build 7000 listings appeared on the Pirate Bay BitTorrent website, while by Saturday afternoon, one torrent on Pirate Bay featured 1,800 seeders and 8,500 leechers.

Seeder is a term that defines a computer on which the complete file has been downloaded from the torrent website, while leecher translates as a system on which only part of a file has been stored.

According to users that have posted comments on the web, the torrent circulating on the Internet is a disk image of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate, Build 7000, which is the version Microsoft is scheduled to release as Windows 7 beta.

Currently, the torrent websites that are offering Windows 7 for download have listed it as one of a  2.44GB size.

This is not the first incident of the like having at its center Microsoft’s new operating system, since after the company unveiled an earlier version at its Professional Developers Conference back in October, that edition was also posted on BitTorrent only hours later.

Microsoft has announced a beta release for Windows 7 in January, but it failed to offer an exact roll-out date, even though recently, info posted on the company’s website suggested that a very likely launch date was January 13.