Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Apparently Back Online 134
Freshly Exhumed writes "TorrentFreak has broken the news that after more than a year of downtime the Demonoid tracker is back online. The tracker is linked to nearly 400,000 torrent files and more than a million peers, which makes it one of the largest working BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. There is no word yet on when the site will make a full comeback, but the people behind it say they are working to revive one of the most famous file-sharing communities. As the single largest semi-private BitTorrent tracker that ever existed, Demonoid used to offer a home to millions of file-sharers. Note that this is apparently the original Demonoid and not the d2 site that claims to be using the Demonoid database."
Sounds safe (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
I'll get right to downloading and shop on Silk Road while I wait.
You would not sound sarcastic and an ass if perhaps you knew that in the future it will not be as easy for a central authority to take down websites at a whim.
You may want to look at what Namecoin [wikipedia.org] is.
Certificate fingerprint (Score:2)
How deep does the rabbit hole go? (Score:5, Funny)
How deep does the rabbit hole of government hijacking go? The government could be running a man-in-the-middle attack on all five of your senses to keep you in a honeypot that is the only existence you've known since birth. How can anyone be sure that this isn't the case?
Do you think that's air you're breathing now? [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Well I live in the present, and "not as easy" is hardly a ringing endorsement anyway. But thanks for letting me know someone has reinvented decentralized DNS. That's certainly an idea that has never been tried before. Mentioning that as somehow relevant to a Tor hidden node being compromised leads me to believe you don't understand the topic anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Mentioning that as somehow relevant to a Tor hidden node being compromised leads me to believe you don't understand the topic anyway.
Nice try. Only you forgot that it was actually you who brought the cryptocurrency subject up, when you proclaimed that "you will shop at Silk Road while you wait for your download", perhaps in an attempt to be the funny guy of this hour by throwing an unspecified 'joke' in the form of general mockery against 'all things cryptoanarchy', most probably because of your personal distaste and/or fear for them.
See how simple you are to figure out?
Re: (Score:2)
Nice try. Only you forgot that it was actually you who brought the cryptocurrency subject up, when you proclaimed that "you will shop at Silk Road while you wait for your download", perhaps in an attempt to be the funny guy of this hour by throwing an unspecified 'joke' in the form of general mockery against 'all things cryptoanarchy', most probably because of your personal distaste and/or fear for them.
Wow. The joke was that Silk Road was compromised and user data was gathered. Implying that the new Demonoid was likely compromised and being used as a honeypot as well. Bitcoin has exactly zero relevance to that. Considering Demonoid doesn't even involve currency I don't know how you're failing to grasp that.
See how simple you are to figure out?
That's rich from a guy who responded to being told he doesn't understand something by doubling down hard on not understanding. Never go full retard.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. The joke was that Silk Road was compromised and user data was gathered.
What I mistakenly thought was that the joke was on cryptocurrency --hence my reaction. Now then, I apologise for my tone.
Never go full retard.
Actually it's 'never go full retard, man'. Know your memes! I believe you are not quite ready to give up your regular job and become a comedian.
By the way, thanks for collaterally pointing out to me that I can become borderline psychotic with bitcoin if I do not keep it together.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Trackers like demonoid dont need plenty of bandwidth.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would the NSA give a fuck about torrenting?
Don't be an idiot.
Re: (Score:1)
Are you serious? Have you not read about the numerous lawsuits [cnn.com] brought against torrent users. I worked for a university where we received requests weekly to find who downloaded a file and delete it. Seriously that is just one link, a simple google search will show you just how much the government enforces what lobbying media companies tell them to.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Sounds safe (Score:5, Informative)
DNS was decentralized at first as well (at one point Microsoft was getting blackholed so often that had a $50k bounty for the contact info of anyone running a DNS server, not exactly public knowledge). At some point the US government decided DNS was actually important, and the DHS got involved and so on.
I can't tell if you are joking or not. But for anyone else reading along who takes what you wrote seriously -- it is total bullshit. DNS has always been hierarchal with root servers under the control of a central authority. There have been bugs that could be exploited to corrupt lookups, but it has never been decentralized.
Re: (Score:2)
Fair point, but the point remains that there are already several established decentralized alternatives, if you don't like a centrally-managed DNS. Systems like TOR, where you pretty much need to take down the server itself, or freenet's serverless approach.. While such things are slow, they'd work fine for a site that hosts trackers, not content.
DNS managed by a central authority serves the needs of large business well, and isn't going away. Want something else for stuff that large businesses don't like
Re: Great news (Score:5, Informative)
Are you NSA?
GP is a karma whore, not (necessarily) NSA. Very easy to identify as they post "the slashdot line" without saying anything substantial.
Re: (Score:3)
There are legitimate uses for torrents, but demonoid wasn't about distributing Linux iso's or other open source projects. It was about pirating movies and music.
Re:Great news (Score:5, Insightful)
There are legitimate uses for torrents, but demonoid ... was about pirating movies and music.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Demonoid had a large collection of abandoned works - music, tv shows, movies, magazines, books, etc that were simply not commercially available. Some were orphaned works where the copyright owner was unknown and so could never be legally distributed again, some where works where the copyright owner just didn't think it was worth it to distribute and some were works that were too risky to distribute commercially - like fan edits of movies and other works that the owner could not afford to go to court to prove their right of fair use. Piracy of those sorts of works serves a legitimate public interest.
Re:Great news (Score:4, Insightful)
Vigilantism works so well in general that I'm glad to see you applying it to copyright law.
Nobody is claiming that piracy is about punishment.
It isn't even close to vigilantism.
Re:Great news (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather work within the system to get it changed rather than just violate it because I disagree with it.
Breaking the law because you disagree with it is part of the system. Pot would never have been legalized if it weren't for all those people smoking it in violation of the law. Same thing with anti-miscegenation laws, sodomy laws, removal of the national 55mph speed limit, repeal of prohibition, etc. There are countless examples.
A typical response to that point is to claim that disobedience doesn't count if you don't do it publicly and get arrested. But practically all of the examples I've given were not done publicly - it took wide-scale private law-breaking for people to become comfortable enough with the concepts in order for the handful of court challenges to be successful.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you believe that waiting for a traffic light to change when absolutely no one is around is wrong? If so, then go ahead. I know lots of people who do just that at desserted intersections. I've driven through a few towns that have taken that into account and set lights like that to flashing yellow after midnight.
Re: (Score:2)
Until police realised that red light cameras make the most money for them in just that situation.
It's widely rumored, and probably true, that many cities actually shortened the yellow phase in order to increase accidential red-light violations. More fines that way.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you believe that waiting for a traffic light to change when absolutely no one is around is wrong? If so, then go ahead. I know lots of people who do just that at desserted intersections.
Like what, covered in cherry pie and ice cream?? O.o
Re: Great news (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Great news (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Great news (Score:5, Insightful)
"There are legitimate uses for torrents, but demonoid wasn't about distributing Linux iso's or other open source projects. It was about pirating movies and music."
Actually, no. If you wanted hit movies or music, Demonoid was among the last places you would look. It might have what you were looking for, but probably not.
Demonoid's forte was along the line of more obscure works, like hard-to-find books and such.
Re: (Score:2)
There are legitimate uses for torrents, but demonoid wasn't about distributing Linux iso's or other open source projects. It was about pirating movies and music.
Actually... based on WHY people download movies and music, it's about circumventing geodiscrimination and format-monopolies. If I want to see the latest episode of a tv-show for instance, I have no legitimate way of doing so short of travelling to the US and watch it on tv. I could sign up to a streaming service using a fake name and address and use a VPN service to watch it, but that's grey area at best.
Why won't they allow me to buy a downloadable episode? - I want to buy! - I have the money right here! -
Re: (Score:3)
This is great news because for the last few years the media has done their best to demonize torrents and related activity as nothing more than a pirates' leisure time activity
Lets be real here. If I were to look up usage of torrents by volume and by category (legal video, legal software, illegal video, illegal software), what do you suppose the spread would be? Would you be willing to wager that legal activity was even more than 10%? Because I wouldnt.
Re: (Score:2)
"Would you be willing to wager that legal activity was even more than 10%? Because I wouldnt."
In the U.S., it doesn't matter. IANAL, but legally speaking, the amount of illegal vs legal activity is irrelevant. It only has to have genuine legitimate uses to remain legal. Anything else would constitute punishing law-abiders for the actions of others.
See the Betamax decision [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
The scope of that case was greatly lowered by a subsequent one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_Ltd [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
"The scope of that case was greatly lowered by a subsequent one:"
I disagree. That case was about inducement to infringe, not the legality of copying.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought we were talking about the media demonizing a ostensibly innocent protocol, not where the law stands.
Torrenting has legitimate use, but Demonoid was truly for pirating.
Re: (Score:2)
"Torrenting has legitimate use, but Demonoid was truly for pirating."
Nope. I happen to know that Demonoid carried legal content, because I personally used it for such.
And please get your terminology straight. Copying for personal use is NOT "piracy". Piracy is a legal term, and it involves copyright infringement for profit.
Re: (Score:2)
Piracy is a colloquial term that is thrown about and as im not in a legal context I dont care terribly whether you term it infringement, theft, or piracy. Fact is that the vast majority of the content on demonoid was there without the approval of its rights holder.
I really dont have stomach for people who try to defend behavior thats about on the same level as shoplifting candy bars by saying "but no look Ubuntu is on demonoid too!"
Re: (Score:2)
When you use the term "piracy" improperly, you do the copyright trolls' work for them.
"I really dont have stomach for people who try to defend behavior thats about on the same level as shoplifting candy bars by saying "but no look Ubuntu is on demonoid too!""
I'm not trying to "defend" behavior. But on the other hand, I'm not trying to conflate non-criminal behavior with criminal behavior, as you are doing.
Re: (Score:2)
Does that include the WoW updater? It's a torrent client, but Blizzard doesn't label it as such. Presumably they don't want to be associated with 'shady' technology like torrents.
Re: (Score:3)
No, because they dont want to admit that they are offloading the cost of distribution to the customers who are paying for it.
no surprise (Score:2)
Yo-ho, Yo-ho (Score:2)
Yo-ho, Yo-ho, a pirate's life for me!
I remember a disk copier for the Commodore 64 that used to display a flaming golden skull while playing pirate themed music. I didn't own a computer at the time, and my buddy had, of course, pirated the pirate software. :P
Re: (Score:2)
The sad thing is, though I download 2-3 movies a week, I haven't watched one to completion since last summer. They're just *lame*.
I couldn't even stomach sitting through the latest "Star Trek", and I consider myself a Trekkie, having watched all the original movies and every episode of every series.
There are lots of really good special effects in the movies nowadays, but it seems they've forgotten about the SCRIPT and the STORY.
Re: (Score:2)
Ever stop to think that could be because script and story are just as good on the torrented copy, but special effects look better on the big screen?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I think that's the problem. No matter where you view the movie the script and story are still crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, sure, but people still see the movies. The studios are still focused on what sells tickets and discs, being still blind to making money through online distribution for the most part, and people will pay to see big budget special effects.
Hell, modern action films are just discordant short action clips that don't even explain what's happening in the scene, let alone tell a coherent story where you care if the heros win, and people still pay to see the effects. Or, rather, or more likely to pay to see
Re: (Score:1)
I never said that the industry wasn't making money. Just that I thought they were producing crap. I've only been to the theatre a handful of times in the past decade because of the poor quality of product. But then I want a good story when I see a movie or watch a TV show.
Torrents have completely changed my viewing habits. I try out lots of things and when I find something that I really like I usually buy it. I say usually because there are a few shows from New Zealand that I would have loved to suppo
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, my point was just that the industry only cares about money, and a quite unfortunate effect of torrents is that it makes incoherent effects movies the center of the target, because they're now selling only what people who can see a movie for free on their iPad would pay to see one for.
The worst part is: if the studios would embrace an iTunes-like model for movies, making it easier to pay than torrent (assuming you didn't mind paying), that incentive for crap movies would be greatly diminished.
Re:Yo-ho, Yo-ho (Score:5, Insightful)
Buddy, if it's not worth watching for free, it sure as hell isn't worth paying for.
Re: (Score:2)
It's because of the effects. The cost of making a movie has grown ridiculous - audiences demand big-name actors, sophisticated effects and on-location shooting. That means movie-making is a big investment, and a studio isn't going to gamble their money on a high-risk project. They want something with a good track record of financial success. That's why most major movies now are either franchises, sequals, or stick to well-trodden genre formulae.
demonoid.com still using invalid certificate (Score:2)
Technical Details
www.demonoid.com uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed.
The certificate is only valid for americanstoner.net
(Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issuer)
American Stoner? I guess it'll be a real buzz-kill if the copyright cops get them for possession with intent to distribute.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe it's a U.S. based copier supply company.
Re: (Score:1)
Could they provide ink refill for a pen I got from penisland.com?
Y u no install SNI? (Score:2)
demonoid.com [...] happens to be hosted on [a] server [that] doesn't seem to support SNI.
At least on the client side, every major desktop web browser supports SNI except for Internet Explorer on Windows XP. With security updates for Windows XP ending in three months anyway, why aren't more web server administrators installing SNI to use valuable IPv4 addresses more efficiently? (Disclosure: I moved my web site from another shared host to WebFaction about a year ago primarily to get SNI.)
Re: (Score:1)
You are a PIRATE! (Score:1)
Demonoid sucked... (Score:1)
It had all the problems of being a 'public' site. Shit seed ratios and all that low speed public leechers stuff. Crap descriptions. The same useless crud uploaded 50 times when a current active good version existed. No comments on the QUALITY of the files. Just completely useless "thanks for uploading" repeated for pages.
Along with all the drawbacks of being a 'private' site. Requires logins. Don't say anything to anyone important or you might find your account banned. Don't mouth off. Don't ex
Re: (Score:2)
Demonoid had a treasure trove of rare files you could not find on other public OR private trackers let alone on USENET. So no, Demonoid was like no other file sharing site on the web. And the community is what made Demonoid great. Who care about the latest LOST or Intelligence tv episode ? But then you were looking for some rare comic or ebook the D was the place to go. I still have a lot of torrent files from Demonoid. Could never bring myself to delete them hopeing for a day when the tracker would come ba
Re: (Score:3)
Demonoid had a treasure trove of rare files you could not find on other public OR private trackers let alone on USENET. So no, Demonoid was like no other file sharing site on the web. And the community is what made Demonoid great. Who care about the latest LOST or Intelligence tv episode ? But then you were looking for some rare comic or ebook the D was the place to go. I still have a lot of torrent files from Demonoid. Could never bring myself to delete them hopeing for a day when the tracker would come back online again. It seems that day has come. Long live the D and its superb community.
Exactly this. Demonoid was like a torrent Library of Alexandria, and the whole human race was made poorer when it went down. It'll still be a long while before I'll trust the new one though.
Re: (Score:2)
And plenty of obscure things that you couldn't buy if you wanted to. I agree, now we are stuck with 'top 40' type sties. ( or going underground )
But all that said, i don't trust them. This may be 100% legit, and the original founders have come back to life but at this stage of the game, i doubt that has happened.
Re: (Score:1)
If demonoid was such a treasure trove of rare and awesome files. And the community was just so great.
Then all those files should still live on and be perfectly downloadable today thru DHT.
Are they? No?
So the community wasn't that great. Nobody cared to seed after they couldn't get credit for doing so anymore.
And the files were not that special because nobody gave enough of a crap about them to continue seeding them into the DHT swarms.
Trackers are obsolete. As are dedicated sites that can be shut down a
Who cares? (Score:3)
The tracker is the least important part of demonoid. The interesting bit was their website that had such a great catalog of stuff AND such a great system for search it.
SUB CATEGORIES! Oh man. There were so many sub categories. Which meant if you wanted something you could search just that sub category. Honestly, Amazon.com often has an inferior search system to what old Demoniod had.
If the resurrected the site but kept the tracker offline it would be nearly as good as the old days... assuming anyone ever used the new demoniod again.
Re: (Score:1)
Amazon.com often has an inferior search system to what old Demoniod had.
That there is a fine example of damning with faint praise.
Re: (Score:2)
To the contrary, amazon's search system is itself better then most.
The point is that Demonoid actually had far and away the best search site for torrents. Nothing has come close to it before or since.
D2 Site claims.. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it knew my old login and password. So at least part of the database was there.
Still, no way to know any of these things are not an *AA honeypot now.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it? Both Demonoid and The Pirate Bay have received direct blessing from music artists and film-makers and featured their work as promos on their front pages. The question is: Why on Earth are you trying to speak for everybody else? You clearly don't hold the only correct opinion.
Re:What can we do to stop this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
The "parent" you are responding to talks about "illegal" file sharing - that is, file sharing of content where the copyright does not allow it. Since you licence your files under CC, most are probably not "illegally" shared. But not every artist uses CC.
Just as developers that use GPL code and folks that use CC licensed material must adhere to the copyright conditions associated with GPL and CC, so must they adhere to the copyright conditions that are associated with other types of copyrights.
You can't have
Re: (Score:2)
You can't have it both ways: "you must follow my copyright rules but I don't have to follow yours".
Of course you can. You are confusing the form of a thing with intent of a thing.
Stuff like the GPL and CC is about increasing free access, copyright is about limiting free access. The fact that the principles of copyleft are currently implemented on modern copyright law does not validate modern copyright law, it just means that under the current set of circumstances it was the most practical way to get it done.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've done that once, on some code that infringes a software patent. Such things don't bother me here in the UK, but I didn't want to attach a license granting rights to what is likely illegal in the US.
It's one of the most popular programs I've written - probably because Microsoft later released a utility of similar purpose under the same name. I'm sure most of the people coming to the website for it are looking for the Microsoft one. It's got more functionality.
Accidental infringement of copyright (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just as it made no difference for George Harrison, as he released My Sweet Lord in 1971, which didn't have the CC license.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They also pay to come to your shows. ( assuming you play live )
And as you say, some of us out here do support our 'artists', at least the ones that don't try to screw us.
Re:What can we do to stop this? (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is: what can we do to permanently remove illegal filesharing from the web? It's offensive to everyone who creates digital media for a living that these kinds of sites operate with impunity.
First of all, if you are someone who creates digital content and is starting out, this is an amazing boon since it can get your work out to potentially a large audience without any middlemen.
If you are one of those big corporate digital media creators, then create alternatives where buying digital content is preferable to getting them from filesharing networks!
Movies and music downloaded from "official" sources have lower quality than from filesharing. Software, ebooks and other DRM riddled stuff are less restrictive and easy to use downloaded from filesharing.
Last of all, as a lawmaker, don't make copyright essentially last forever. After time, creations become culture and let people share old stuff. Demonoid was great because it had a large repository of stuff that was mostly of historical, nostalgic or cultural interest. Yes, there is still a few drops of blood to be squeezed from old stuff but let it go free so it adds immensely to cultural wealth.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Simple. You just have to understand that what you're trying to restrict is the duplication of numbers; that numbers can be duplicated perfectly and trivially by computers; that many people want to duplicate those numbers; that many people are sharing those numbers all the time; that it takes time and effort to identify where the numbers are being shared from; that each time you remove a site which faciliates the location of that number, or a list of people who are sharing the numbers, it'll get replaced imm
Re: (Score:2)
The question is: what can we do to permanently remove illegal file sharing from the web?
Tho you are a troll, ill answer you question anyway: Revamp copyright laws so its NOT illegal for non-profit sharing to occur.
Now back to troll, i do hope you are one of the 'victims' and everything you do is shared 'with impunity'.
Re: (Score:2)
This idea keeps coming up, but is fundamentally broken, since it is always possible to make profit indirectly by trying to damage your competition. If copyright were revamped as you propose, a larger company that may want to do financial damage to a smaller competitor could resort to distributing that competitor's work entirely on a non-profit basis, relying on their much larger distribution network to effectively circumvent the sma
Re: (Score:2)
Re: What can we do to stop this? (Score:1)
copyright that isn't in the names of the actual human creators is null & void.
Practical problems with a single human author (Score:3)
copyright that isn't in the names of the actual human creators is null & void.
This is not currently the law in Slashdot's home country; I'm assuming it's a proposed reform of copyright. In such a system, who is the author of a work whose creation involves thousands of people, such as a feature film or a AAA video game? And what happens to the copyright should this author die a day after the work is published?
Re: (Score:1)
I couldn't agree more. Seems like all the advocates of copyright infringement are those who've never created anything worth paying for.
Right. As someone who sells software on the side as a small home business, I can tell folks here that this kind of thing feels quite different when you're the copyright holder. I first found a cracked version of my software on the Internet over ten years ago. It used a fairly simple registration keying system at that time, and probably wasn't too hard to crack. But when I developed that system, it never occurred to me that anybody cared enough about my small-volume software to even try to crack it.
Who
Re: (Score:2)
But it still feels like being raped.
Have you actually been raped? If not, I'm not sure why you presume to know what it feels like, and I'm not at all sure why you'd think it feels like "someone failing to hand me money I believe I've earned". (Engaging a prostitute, taking advantage of their services, then refusing to pay, is the closest sex-related analogy I can come up with. And of course that's not rape, so I'm not sure why you'd expect it to feel the same.)
Or is this one of those things where someone can't persuade people's rational minds