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Demonoid Tracker Is Back Online

Posted by kdawson on Sun Apr 13, 2008 02:06 AM
from the score-one-for-the-mole dept.
The Internet
Crymson4 writes "We discussed the shutdown of the Demonoid torrent tracker last fall. For those who don't already know, Demonoid is back up. Looks like they found a new host for the Web site and the tracker is functioning properly as well. For those with old accounts, all the old data has been saved. It's almost as if they never left."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Demonoid Torrent Tracker Shut Down by CRIA 222 comments
An anonymous reader writes "As of Tuesday, 25th September 2007, Demonoid is currently down, with no prior warnings from any moderators of the site. Both the main torrent page and the forum (fora) are no longer accessible. It is still possible to ping and trace the IP address of the site and it locates itself as in Canada. As of 6:45pm EST on 9-25-07, SSH and SMTP services are no longer active. Torrentfreak.com has since reported this is due to legal actions from the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) who ordered Demonoid's ISP to shut down the site."
Submission: Demonoid website / tracker back online. by Crymson4 (1018850)
[+] Use BitTorrent To Verify, Clean Up Files 212 comments
jweatherley writes "I found a new (for me at least) use for BitTorrent. I had been trying to download beta 4 of the iPhone SDK for the last few days. First I downloaded the 1.5GB file from Apple's site. The download completed, but the disk image would not verify. I tried to install it anyway, but it fell over on the gcc4.2 package. Many things are cheap in India, but bandwidth is not one of them. I can't just download files > 1GB without worrying about reaching my monthly cap, and there are Doctor Who episodes to be watched. Fortunately we have uncapped hours in the night, so I downloaded it again. md5sum confirmed that the disk image differed from the previous one, but it still wouldn't verify, and fell over on gcc4.2 once more. Damn." That's not the end of the story, though — read on for a quick description of how BitTorrent saved the day in jweatherley's case.
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Demonoid Tracker Is Back Online 50 Comments More /

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  • Wha? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoshJ (1009085) on Sunday April 13 2008, @02:09AM (#23052382) Journal
    Okay, seriously, what's the point of invite-only registration? I see right now, it says you have to be an invite, but it also says (on the "got an invite?" page) that they open registration to the public once a month. If they're trying to keep the MAFIAA out via invite-only reg, then why the hell would it ever be open to the public at all?

    • Re:Wha? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13 2008, @02:15AM (#23052400)
      Its a pure traffic problem, once a month the delete all the idle accounts and let new people join, the invite systems means its fairly easier for you to get in if you want anyway.

      though off the top of my head i can also see how a 'closed' system could be a legal defence, your not distributing to the public everyone is a member of your 'private' club.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by RKBA (622932)
        So what day of the month do they allow new memberships? How does one get an invitation?
        • One asks :). I'd email you one but you haven't listed it. Perhaps reply to this with it and I can (though I understand if you're unsecure doing so, etc)

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by SacredByte (1122105)
            I would be careful to only give them out to people I trust, as it is my understanding that, should someone you invited get banned, you will as well.

          • Re:Wha? (Score:5, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13 2008, @05:31AM (#23053098)
            Thanks! My email is: investigations@mediasentry.com.

            I cannot wait to start torrenting those warez. I'm going to collect hundreds of MP3s! Information wants to be freeeeee!

    • Re:Wha? (Score:5, Informative)

      by chasingsol (743706) on Sunday April 13 2008, @02:16AM (#23052406)
      Demonoid has always been a public tracker, but other features of the site require an account (including uploading). You don't need to be a member to use it, just a member to access other stuff.

    • Re:Wha? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Madalienmonk (1255494) on Sunday April 13 2008, @02:22AM (#23052428)
      It's private to stop Joe-hit-and-run from just leeching without sharing, people have to share to a ratio on Demonoid (usually 1:1).

      • I don't know about this 1:1 ratio thing of which you speak, but I am sure glad to be able to resume leaching from Canada. They blocked the country due to legal threats quite a while ago, and now seem to have forgotten to do so again. Will see where that goes.

        If you ask me it is the protocols job to get leaches to contribute not the sites. After all the site serves ads regardless...

        • Re:canada back online (Score:4, Informative)

          by number11 (129686) on Sunday April 13 2008, @11:17AM (#23054620)
          I am sure glad to be able to resume leaching from Canada. They blocked the country due to legal threats quite a while ago, and now seem to have forgotten to do so again.

          Traceroute shows they're not in Canada anymore. The web server is in the Ukraine, the domain registration is in Brazil. So I'd guess that those legal threats are no longer a problem.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by shark72 (702619)

            Not if the site operator resides in a country that's a signatory to the Berne Convention and is providing access to folks in those countries.

            I'm aware that it's a popular myth that hosting your site in some other country will exempt you from the laws of the country in which you live. And, sure enough, lots of folks have tried it. But it's generally not the case.

            If this is boggling anybody, conduct a thought experiment by substituting "information freedom fighter sticking it to the rich and greedy copyri

            • Re:canada back online (Score:5, Insightful)

              by number11 (129686) on Sunday April 13 2008, @01:52PM (#23055498)
              I'm aware that it's a popular myth that hosting your site in some other country will exempt you from the laws of the country in which you live.

              Of course not. But it makes it a lot harder to pursue. Dealing with your own government is numbingly frustrating as it is. Now consider having to deal with governments that are not your own, and that may not have the same priorities. So, let's see. You need to jump through the hoops of Brazil's government to compel a "privacy guard" type registrar to give the name of the domain holder. That turns out to be a mail drop in Vanuatu. Call around and try to find someone who speaks Bislama, because while you're pretty sure that whoever answers the government phone in Vanuatu understands English, they're being pricks about it. Give up on that approach, which is just as well because even if you had found someone who spoke Bislama and filed the necessary paperwork in that language with the Vanuatu Justice Ministry, it would have turned out that the mailing address is vacant lot in Amsterdam, and the email address is a free account in South Africa.

              So, go after the server in the Ukraine (even though you're pretty sure the operator is backing everything up by FTP to somewhere else, and can start up at a new location on 24 hours notice). Call around to find someone who speaks Ukranian, and someone else who has a petty cash fund big enough to pay the bribe that's going to be required. On second thought, say "what the hell" and give up, you joined the force to catch bank robbers, not to play bureaucratic games in languages you don't understand, for the benefit of some company that isn't even in your country.

              Besides, what makes you think the site operator is Canadian?
        • I'd like to know what your response is to research that indicates that copyright periods are currently far too long to maximise content production(In a nutshell, artists can coast off of their previous work).

        • Re:All file shareres are leechers (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cp.tar (871488) <cp.tar.bz2@gmail.com> on Sunday April 13 2008, @04:31AM (#23052862) Journal

          I don't understand this hatred of 'leeching' amongst file sharers. You know that you are ALL leeching right? You are leeching off the honest people who actually BUY the music, BUY the movies and BUY the software.

          ... and who then post the music, the movies, the shows and the software freely on torrents.

          No longer quite so honest in your book, huh?

          Anyway, ethics is relative and subject to change, and so are business models.
          As far as I'm concerned, it is better to let everyone adapt to new conditions in the world than to try to reverse them.
          Besides, it has been proved that torrents don't hurt music sales in the least; quite the contrary, in fact. Software companies have also profited from the increased mindshare (private users may pirate the software, but when they use it for business, they buy the software they are familiar with instead of something else).

          Aside from all that, the ratio requirement is there so that information would continue to flow — it only happens when everyone gives at least as much as they get. And that's why it is called sharing.

        • Re:All file shareres are leechers (Score:4, Informative)

          by mpe (36238) on Sunday April 13 2008, @04:40AM (#23052892)
          I don't understand this hatred of 'leeching' amongst file sharers. You know that you are ALL leeching right? You are leeching off the honest people who actually BUY the music, BUY the movies and BUY the software.

          Quite a lot of the content here is likely to originate from people who bought the whatever and uploaded it. Another major source is where the content was broadcast to a significent chunk of the planet.

          without them, the stuff would not get made,

          This is the "every pirated copy is a lost sale" theory. Which has been completly debunked. Quite simply the vast majority of the people involved are not "potential customers" in the first place.It's also very possible that the "pirate" version, which tends to be "Available worldwide and DRM free", will be the only version available to people. Possibly for months/years even forever.

          • Re:All file shareres are leechers (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13 2008, @08:19AM (#23053702)

            [In reply to: "without people buying stuff, it would not get made"] This is the "every pirated copy is a lost sale" theory.

            No, it's not. Ever heard of TV shows getting cancelled because of bad ratings, movie sequels being made because the original sold well, artists being dumped by a label when their latest album bombs, et cetera? It's not hard to see that the creation of media is influenced by people going out and paying for it. That also means that people going out and buying stuff contribute significantly to the diversity of media available for downloading. If you only download and never buy, you are profiting from the availability of materials that is paid for by paying customers.

            That has nothing to do with "every pirated copy is a lost sale" (or "without IP no art would be produced"). It's just pointing out that when person A buys albums and person B downloads them, A contributes more to the production of future albums than B. How you can miss the point so completely and still be modded "4: insightful" is beyond me.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Pretzalzz (577309)

              [In reply to: "without people buying stuff, it would not get made"] This is the "every pirated copy is a lost sale" theory.
              No, it's not. Ever heard of TV shows getting cancelled because of bad ratings,
              How does whether I download or watch it on tv effect its ratings? I'm not a neilson family. That is of course the dirty open secret of television ratings.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by rfunches (800928)

              What about CDs that are no longer in print (and impossible to find second-hand), or hard-to-find DVDs that are encoded for a region other than yours?

        • "? You are leeching off the honest people who actually BUY the music, BUY the movies and BUY the software. without them, the stuff would not get made,"

          so your saying if i download enough RIAA label music and hollywood movies i'll send the fuckers broke and they will have to stop making their dribble? excellent!

    • Re:Wha? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Andtalath (1074376) on Sunday April 13 2008, @03:20AM (#23052614)
      The point is the avoid leeches, not to avoid legal shitbags.
      • Demonoid is one of the few private trackers that doesn't ban on bad ratio. You can leech all you want, and the only thing that will suffer is your pirate karma.

    • Okay, seriously, what's the point of invite-only registration?
      It's pure marketing. If you have to wait 15 days for your friend to give to an invite to this "exclusive" tracker, chances are you're going to think it's this great thing and you'll talk about it and use it more than you otherwise would.

    • Re:Wha? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by p0tat03 (985078) on Sunday April 13 2008, @03:39AM (#23052684)
      I'm not sure about Demonoid, but my preferred tracker is also invite-only for a good reason: ratios. The tracker stays fast because people are forced to give back. The thing works on a credit system - downloading costs credits, uploading gains credits. To avoid people signing up over and over for free credits, EVERY single account that is opened needs to have credits donated from an existing member, such that credits never magically materialize out of nowhere. It's a good system - and the only tracker I've ever been on where I can always max out my pipe at all times.

  • Private tracker. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13 2008, @02:16AM (#23052408)
    One of the things that made/makes Demonoid so great is that the unwashed masses aren't permitted to ransack and abuse the system in the same way that they are at TPB.

    You need invite only registration if you really want to be able to enforce ratios. Otherwise people just create disposable accounts, leech to the cap and never seed.

    On Demonoid, people seed or their ratio goes to shit and they can't DL.

    Anyway, I'm glad it's back. TPB is great, but it doesn't always cover all the bases for me.

  • no catch? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by B5_geek (638928) on Sunday April 13 2008, @02:18AM (#23052418)
    After all the fuss & muss (with no court-based legal rulings) how are they back up?

    They did not goto court (the innocent admins would have shouted it from the roof-tops), they must have had an out-of-court settlement. Considering all the old account are still available, this stinks of a setup.

    I am from Canada, and as we are aware there are several laws that 'allow' me to d'load. There is even one that I can think of that allows me to upload. BUT that said, I will not log back into demonoid, I will not create a new account.

    I will continue to use the private trackers that I am currently on, and most importantly continue to use Piratebay to search.

    • Re:no catch? (Score:5, Informative)

      by chasingsol (743706) on Sunday April 13 2008, @02:23AM (#23052434)
      The new server is located in Ukraine, so unless there's a very elaborate international conspiracy here, I doubt it's a setup. The original admin isn't from Canada or the USA (or Europe for that matter). The original servers were located in Amsterdam, then they moved to Canada before being shut down, and now they've moved again. Not at all unusual for torrent sites, even huge ones like The Pirate Bay.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by B5_geek (638928)
        Don't confuse my tone of pessimism, I _hope_ they are back.

        Just wary, and paranoid.

        hehe paranoid of demoniod.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Ironix (165274)
          I logged into the newly functional demonoid using my old account and it works fine. Now unless they gave away all their users old account data, I doubt it is some kind of honey-pot or such thing.
  • ...but Demonoid did. I think this indicates a subtle but meaningful change.
    • Actually Suprnova did come back but under new management.
      • I should've been more precise. Suprnova was never directly re-instantiated, it basically became a brand because people were already familiar with the name.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by soilheart (1081051)
      A "subtle" difference is also that demonoid never was taken down because of the pressure on the admin (as I've understood it) but because the host didn't want demonoid on their servers anymore. Since then deimos have said that it probably would come back as he never had a problem with having the site.

    • ...but Demonoid did. I think this indicates a subtle but meaningful change.

      Though it's possible that the idea behind pirating has evolved from a "free stuff is sweet" idea when it first started to a "free stuff is sweet + stick it to the RIAA/MPAA/similar entities" idea, I think that would probably be looking over a number of much less ideological and much more IRL/priorities/personal reasons not to restart it consequential to whoever was administrating the site.

      That being said, on a completely OT side point, though I (mostly) dislike the new skin of /. (I have the beta skin

  • Recent news about IndieTorrents.com, an invite-only tracker that is pretty extensive as far as range and number of independent music etc, is shutting down. Planning a comeback, however.

    # 2008-04-12 - I have some sad news to announce to all of you. IT will be closing down on Sunday. We hope to rise from the ashes like a fiery phoenix some day in the future but for the time being our run of free hosting has come to an end. It has been a great ride and I have had so much fun doing this. I will miss this an
  • LONG LIVE RAPIDSHARE!

  • Oblig. Ackbar quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eudial (590661) on Sunday April 13 2008, @04:59AM (#23052972)

    It's a trap!

      ~ Admiral Ackbar.

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