Demonoid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
For the metal band, see Demonoid (band).
Demonoid
URL demonoid.com
Type of site Semi-public torrent tracker
Registration Sporadic registration periods for new members, invitations
Owner Umlauf
Created by Deimos (retired)
Launched April 21, 2003
Revenue Donations, Advertisements (Banners)
Current status Online

Demonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym "Deimos". The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It was the second largest[1][2] and is the most popular semi-public tracker for over a year,[3] the 499th most popularly ranked website in December 2008 according to Alexa,[4] and had an estimated 3 million peers in September 2007.[3] The site went offline on November 9, 2007 due to alleged legal threats from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. On April 11, 2008, the site was brought back online. A news announcement was posted on the homepage announcing that site had a new administrator due to the departure of Deimos, who reportedly left the position due to personal reasons.

Contents

[edit] Membership

The website used to feature a publicly accessible search tool, but now Membership is required to search for and download files. Registration is opened periodically (mostly on the first Friday and Saturday of each month) when resources permit due to large server size. Users have the ability to create a limited number of invitation codes to send to others during closed registration periods.[5]

Demonoid tracks and displays users' upload/download ratios but takes no action against users with low ratios.[6] Demonoid previously banned users with low ratios, but stopped doing so due to the ratio system being inaccurate for some users with dynamic IP addresses.[7]

[edit] Features

Demonoid categorizes torrents under Anime, Applications, Audio Books, Books, Comics, Games, Miscellaneous, Movies,[8] Music,[8] Music Videos, Pictures or TV. They disallow the uploading of pornographic material and possible viruses from the files uploaded.[8] Many categories have various subcategories or divisions that allow a search to be more specific.

Demonoid features RSS with different feeds for each category and sub category to keep users aware of the latest torrents posted on the site. These RSS feeds link to the Demonoid page and not directly to the torrent file. RSS plug-ins for the various BitTorrent clients are not able to directly download the torrent file and begin the file sharing.

Although Demonoid removed torrents over a year old on August 4, 2006 to free tracker resources, the site had over 252,427 user submitted torrents indexed as of May 3, 2009.

[edit] Legal issues

Twelve cease and desist letters to users of Demonoid were found in a July 2007 study by Slyck.com.[9]

[edit] In the Netherlands

On June 26, 2007, Demonoid went down for hardware failures, supposedly unrelated to concurrent legal issues.[10][11] Demonoid's ISP Leaseweb had been ordered by the Dutch police to take down the website.[citation needed] Later, the Dutch anti-piracy organization Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland filed a subpoena against Leaseweb, demanding that Demonoid be taken down[10][12] with a penalty of €50,000 per day otherwise.[13] Leaseweb, after delaying as long as possible, divulged to BREIN the name, address and banking information of the registered owner of Demonoid and signed the cease and desist demand.[13] It is unclear whether Leaseweb treated this in the same manner in which they appealed for another client, Everlasting.nu.[13][14]

Planning for this, Demonoid moved to Laval, Quebec, Canada to avoid BREIN's jurisdiction.[15] The time needed to relocate was speculated to be the real reason behind the downtime,[10] with BREIN describing it as a game of hide and seek.[16]

[edit] In Canada

On September 25, 2007, the Demonoid website, forums and trackers went off-line.[17][1] They came back four days later with the exception of the website, which came back the day after. Over the next few days, the website continued experiencing intermittent downtime[18] until October 2, 2007. The explanation as widely speculated[19] was that they had received a letter from a lawyer for the Canadian Recording Industry Association threatening legal action.[18] Demonoid began blocking Canadian traffic,[20] a strategy similar to that taken by isoHunt and TorrentSpy in blocking American traffic to avoid RIAA complaints.[18][21] Visitors from Canadian-based IPs would be redirected to the downtime version of the website, which contained an explanation of the legal threats. However, it was still possible for Canadians to visit the website at this time using proxy servers. Additionally, while the website may have been blocked in Canada at the time, the tracker was still readily accepting Canadian IP addresses.

The threats are in spite of the open question of the legality of music file sharing in Canada.[20][22] The CRIA has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement despite Demonoid's claims.[2]

On November 9, 2007, the website was shut down, with a placeholder page stating, "The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site on-line. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding." According to the IRC channel, the trackers themselves were not affected.[20] Six days later, the placeholder page was updated with a link to a new forum, unrelated to file sharing, for the community. On November 29, 2007, Deimos posted on that forum a problem preventing the site from coming back up:

"Money is an issue, but the real problem at the moment is finding a suitable place to host the website. There has been no luck there. And there's some personal stuff I need to take care of that takes most of my time at the moment, and that does not help."

[edit] Current status

On April 10, 2008, Deimos stepped down as the administrator of Demonoid, citing a number of reasons and "distraction with real-world issues"[23] as the cause. He also stated that he has "handed the reins over to a new administrator - a close friend of mine, which I trust completely and has the knowledge and time to take care of the site." Over the course of the next few days, RSS feeds for the site came back online and by April 16, 2008 a mass email was sent out to all Demonoid users to advise that the site was "finally back online." The servers are located in Ukraine.[24] [25]

The page had stated:

A few months ago, the site administrator (known as Deimos), lacked the time necessary to maintain this website. And for personal reasons, Deimos decided to resign his position as a member of the site staff.

Before leaving, Deimos picked a new site administrator from among his friends. The old moderator team remained unchanged and will continue helping with the site. The Demonoid team will try to keep everything running just as it always has been.

The trackers and website seem to be working properly, and should any issues arise, they will be taken care of as soon as possible. If we work on any problems over the next few days, the site might be going on and offline. We apologize in advance if this should happen.

Welcome back and enjoy!

- Umlauf
Demonoid site admin

Also, there was an unexplained issue that prevented access to the site from the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, Ukraine, and India.[26] On February 7th, 2009, the website became accessible from the Netherlands. As of March 2009, users in Belgium and Brazil can access the website again. And as of 9th April 2009 the site is accessible in India, too.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Musikverband schießt BitTorrent-Seite ab". Der Spiegel. 2007-09-26. http://www.spiegel.de/dertag/pda/avantgo/artikel/0,1958,508009,00.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  2. ^ a b Christophe Dutheil (2007-09-27). "BitTorrent : Demonoid baisse le rideau". VNUnet.fr. Nielsen Company. http://www.vnunet.fr/fr/vnunet/news/2007/09/27/demonoid-baisse-temporairement. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  3. ^ a b Ernesto (2007-09-24). "The 5 Most Popular BitTorrent Trackers". TorrentFreak.com. http://torrentfreak.com/5-most-popular-bittorrent-trackers-070924/. Retrieved on 2008-01-20. 
  4. ^ Thomas Mennecke (2007-07-11). "Leaseweb Reveals Owner of Demonoid.com". Slyck.com. http://www.slyck.com/story1533_Leaseweb_Reveals_Demonoidcoms_Owner. Retrieved on 2008-01-20. 
  5. ^ Demonoid FAQ: Why is the registration closed periodically?
  6. ^ "Demonoid FAQ: Stats". Demonoid. http://www.demonoid.com/faq.php#st_1. Retrieved on 2007-10-26. 
  7. ^ "The Ratio & Demonoid ~ Hot News". Demonoid Forum. http://fora.demonoid.com/index.php?topic=933162.0. Retrieved on 2007-10-26. 
  8. ^ a b c David Shamah (2007-09-18). "Digital World: Internet snobbery". The Jerusalem Post. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411425786&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  9. ^ Drew Wilson (2007-07-23). "Busted! A Look at BitTorrent Copyright Complaints". Slyck.com. http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1547. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  10. ^ a b c Ernesto (2007-06-27). "Anti-Piracy Organization Tries to Shut Down Demonoid". TorrentFreak.com. http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-organization-tries-to-shut-down-demonoid/. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. 
  11. ^ Thomas Mennecke (2007-07-04). "Demonoid Returns". Slyck.com. http://www.slyck.com/story1524_Demonoid_Returns. Retrieved on 2008-01-20. 
  12. ^ Janneke Scheepers (2007-07-12). "Leaseweb buigt opnieuw voor Brein" (in Dutch). ZDNet. http://www.nu.nl/news/1249300/50/rss/Torrentsite_Demonoid_opnieuw_offline.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  13. ^ a b c Thomas Mennecke (2007-07-11). "Leaseweb Reveals Owner of Demonoid.com". Slyck.com. http://www.slyck.com/story1533_Leaseweb_Reveals_Demonoidcoms_Owner. Retrieved on 2008-01-20. 
  14. ^ "Leaseweb sluit weer torrentsites" (in Dutch). Planet Internet. 2007-08-28. http://www.planet.nl/planet/show/id=118880/contentid=872198/sc=feedb0. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  15. ^ Tristan Péloquin and Sonia Sarfati (2007-07-17). "Le 7e Harry Potter piraté?". La Presse. http://www.cyberpresse.ca/article/20070717/CPARTS02/707170431/6730/CPACTUALITES. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  16. ^ "Dutch Torrent site take-down turns cat and mouse". The Inquirer. 2007-06-28. http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/06/28/dutch-torrent-site-take-down-turns-cat-and-mouse. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  17. ^ "Torrentsite Demonoid opnieuw offline lees voor" (in Dutch). NU.nl. 2007-09-25. http://www.nu.nl/news/1249300/50/rss/Torrentsite_Demonoid_opnieuw_offline.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  18. ^ a b c Nick Farrell (2007-10-01). "Demonoid p2p site returns from dead". The Inquirer. http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/01/demoniod-p2p-site-returns-dead. Retrieved on 2008-01-20. 
  19. ^ Aldo Ascenti (2007-09-28). "Oscurato il torrent Demonoid" (in Italian). VNUnet.it. Nielsen Company. http://www.vnunet.it/articles/printView/it/vnunet/news/2007/09/28/oscurato-torrent-demonoid. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  20. ^ a b c Chris Williams (2007-11-09). "BitTorrent site Demonoid.com downed by Canadian record industry". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/09/demonoid_cria/. Retrieved on 2008-01-20. 
  21. ^ Christophe Dutheil (2007-10-01). "BitTorrent : Demonoid est de retour" (in French). VNUnet.fr. Nielsen Company. http://www.vnunet.fr/articles/printView/fr/vnunet/news/2007/10/01/bittorrents-demonoid-de-retour. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  22. ^ Michael Geist (2007-10-05). "Downloading and Demonoid". Michael Geist. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2277/125/. Retrieved on 2008-01-23. 
  23. ^ Deimos (2008-04-10). "Goodbye, people". subdemon.com. http://www.subdemon.com/forum/index.php?topic=17566.0. Retrieved on 2008-04-10. 
  24. ^ enigmax (2008-06-20). "Demonoid Blocking Countries". torrentfreak.com. http://torrentfreak.com/reports-demonoid-blocking-countries-080620. Retrieved on 2008-08-08. 
  25. ^ Antonio Carneiro (2008-06-20). "Demonoid bloqueado no Brasil" (in Portuguese). newserrado.com. http://newserrado.com/2008/06/20/demonoid-bloqueado-no-brasil. Retrieved on 2008-08-08. 
  26. ^ http://torrentfreak.com/reports-demonoid-blocking-countries-080620/

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links


v • d • e
BitTorrent
Companies
People
Technology
Clients
BitTorrent (original client) · ABC · BitComet · BitTornado · Deluge · KTorrent · Shareaza · OneSwarm · Transmission · µTorrent · Vuze (formerly Azureus) · All Clients (comparison)
Libraries
Search engines
BTJunkie · Demonoid · isoHunt · LokiTorrent (defunct) · Mininova · myBittorrent · OiNK (defunct) · Seedpeer · ShareReactor · Suprnova.org · The Pirate Bay · TorrentSpy (defunct)
Metasearch engines
Related topics
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonoid"
Personal tools