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| date = [[2009-09-01]]
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| accessdate = 2009-09-15
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}}</ref> A statement from the website said, "We might have to shut down everything to fix and prevent further damage," and that it could be "days maybe, until we can change the power ."<ref>http://news.softpedia.com/news/Demonoid-Is-Facing-Hardware-Troubles-Downtime-Expected-120896.shtml</ref> The website went offline to all regions on September 14, 2009, and is still down as of September 26th. A statement posted on the main page reads, "Maintenance: We will be back as soon as possible, but this will probably be a prolonged downtime. Thank you for your patience."<ref name="demonoid">Demonoid.com: [http://demonoid.com front page].</ref>
}}</ref> A statement from the website said, "We might have to shut down everything to fix and prevent further damage," and that it could be "days maybe, until we can change the power ."<ref>http://news.softpedia.com/news/Demonoid-Is-Facing-Hardware-Troubles-Downtime-Expected-120896.shtml</ref> The website went offline to all regions on September 14, 2009, and is still down as of September 24th. A statement posted on the main page reads, "Maintenance: We will be back as soon as possible, but this will probably be a prolonged downtime. Thank you for your patience."<ref name="demonoid">Demonoid.com: [http://demonoid.com front page].</ref>


== References ==
== References ==

Revision as of 23:00, 24 September 2009

For the metal band, see Demonoid (band).
Demonoid
Type of site
Semi-public torrent tracker
OwnerUmlauf
Created byDeimos (retired)
RevenueDonations, Advertisements (Banners)
URLdemonoid.com
RegistrationSporadic registration periods for new members, invitations

Demonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym "Deimos" and "Zajson". The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It was the second largest,[1][2] and is the most popular, semi-public tracker,[3] and was ranked the 499th most popular website overall in December 2008, according to Alexa.[4] Demonoid's torrent tracker had an estimated 3 million peers in September 2007.[3] The site had over 252,427 torrents indexed as of May 3, 2009 (torrents uploaded prior to August 4, 2005 were removed to free server resources).

The site went offline on November 9, 2007, reportedly due to legal threats to their service provider, from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. The site then came back online on April 11, 2008. The homepage announced that the site had a new administrator, and that the old one (Deimos) had left for personal reasons.

Demonoid went offline to all regions on September 14, 2009, after it was reported that they had experienced a number of computer problems stemming from power outages.[5] The site is still down as of September 24, with a statement on the main page reading, "Maintenance: We will be back as soon as possible, but this will probably be a prolonged downtime. Thank you for your patience."[6]

Registration

Registration is periodically opened to the public, when resources permit an influx of additional members. At other times, the only way to join Demonoid is to be invited by a current member. Members have the ability to invite others using invitation codes they can generate from their accounts at the website. Invitation codes are limited, and the ability to generate them is randomly given and removed from members' accounts periodically.[7]

The website once featured a publicly-accessible search tool, but membership is now required to search for and download torrents, except a limited number of very recent torrents.

Features and policies

Demonoid features RSS with different feeds for each of its torrent categories, and their sub-categories.

Demonoid tracks and displays users' upload/download ratios (the difference between how much a member "shares" and how much they "take"), but currently takes no action against users with low ratios (members who take much more than they share).[8] Demonoid previously banned users with low ratios, but stopped doing so due to the ratio system being inaccurate for some users, such as those with dynamic IP addresses.[9]

Demonoid disallows the uploading of pornographic material and viruses.

Twelve cease and desist letters to users of Demonoid were found in a July 2007 study by Slyck.com.[10]

In the Netherlands

On June 26, 2007, Demonoid went down for hardware failures, supposedly unrelated to concurrent legal issues.[11][12] 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 (BREIN) filed a subpoena against Leaseweb, demanding that Demonoid be taken down[11][13] with a penalty of €50,000 per day otherwise.[14] 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.[14] It is unclear whether Leaseweb treated this in the same manner in which they appealed for another client, Everlasting.nu.[14][15]

Planning for this, Demonoid moved to Laval, Quebec, Canada to avoid BREIN's jurisdiction.[16] The time needed to relocate was speculated to be the real reason behind the downtime,[11] with BREIN describing it as a game of hide and seek.[17]

In Canada

On September 25, 2007, the Demonoid website, forums and trackers went off-line.[18][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[19] until October 2, 2007. The explanation as widely speculated[20] was that they had received a letter from a lawyer for the Canadian Recording Industry Association threatening legal action.[19] Demonoid began blocking Canadian traffic,[21] a strategy similar to that taken by isoHunt and TorrentSpy in blocking American traffic to avoid RIAA complaints.[19][22] 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.[21][23] 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.[21] 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."

Recent history

On April 10, 2008, Deimos stepped down as the administrator of Demonoid, citing a number of reasons and "distraction with real-world issues"[24] 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.[25] [26]

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

In June 2008, Torrentfreak reported on an unexplained issue that prevented access to the site from the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, Ukraine, Isle of Man, Mexico, Venezuela and India.[27]

On September 1, 2009, Torrentfreak reported that a few days of downtime was likely to be imminent, due to RAM and hard drive damage suffered by the servers during power outages.[5] A statement from the website said, "We might have to shut down everything to fix and prevent further damage," and that it could be "days maybe, until we can change the power ."[28] The website went offline to all regions on September 14, 2009, and is still down as of September 24th. A statement posted on the main page reads, "Maintenance: We will be back as soon as possible, but this will probably be a prolonged downtime. Thank you for your patience."[6]

References

  1. ^ a b "Musikverband schießt BitTorrent-Seite ab". Der Spiegel. 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ a b Christophe Dutheil (2007-09-27). "BitTorrent : Demonoid baisse le rideau". VNUnet.fr. Nielsen Company. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Cite error: The named reference "VNUnet" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Ernesto (2007-09-24). "The 5 Most Popular BitTorrent Trackers". TorrentFreak.com. Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Thomas Mennecke (2007-07-11). "Leaseweb Reveals Owner of Demonoid.com". Slyck.com. Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ a b enigmax (2009-09-01). "Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Could Go Dark For Days". torrentfreak.com. Retrieved 2009-09-15. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b Demonoid.com: front page.
  7. ^ Demonoid FAQ: Why is the registration closed periodically?
  8. ^ "Demonoid FAQ: Stats". Demonoid. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  9. ^ "The Ratio & Demonoid ~ Hot News". Demonoid Forum. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  10. ^ Drew Wilson (2007-07-23). "Busted! A Look at BitTorrent Copyright Complaints". Slyck.com. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ a b c Ernesto (2007-06-27). "Anti-Piracy Organization Tries to Shut Down Demonoid". TorrentFreak.com. Retrieved 2007-09-25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Thomas Mennecke (2007-07-04). "Demonoid Returns". Slyck.com. Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ Janneke Scheepers (2007-07-12). "Leaseweb buigt opnieuw voor Brein" (in Dutch). ZDNet. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  14. ^ a b c Thomas Mennecke (2007-07-11). "Leaseweb Reveals Owner of Demonoid.com". Slyck.com. Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ "Leaseweb sluit weer torrentsites" (in Dutch). Planet Internet. 2007-08-28. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  16. ^ Tristan Péloquin and Sonia Sarfati (2007-07-17). "Le 7e Harry Potter piraté?". La Presse. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ "Dutch Torrent site take-down turns cat and mouse". The Inquirer. 2007-06-28. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ "Torrentsite Demonoid opnieuw offline lees voor" (in Dutch). NU.nl. 2007-09-25. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  19. ^ a b c Nick Farrell (2007-10-01). "Demonoid p2p site returns from dead". The Inquirer. Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  20. ^ Aldo Ascenti (2007-09-28). "Oscurato il torrent Demonoid". VNUnet.it (in Italian). Nielsen Company. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  21. ^ a b c Chris Williams (2007-11-09). "BitTorrent site Demonoid.com downed by Canadian record industry". The Register. Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  22. ^ Christophe Dutheil (2007-10-01). "BitTorrent : Demonoid est de retour". VNUnet.fr (in French). Nielsen Company. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  23. ^ Michael Geist (2007-10-05). "Downloading and Demonoid". Michael Geist. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. ^ Deimos (2008-04-10). "Goodbye, people". subdemon.com. Retrieved 2008-04-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. ^ enigmax (2008-06-20). "Demonoid Blocking Countries". torrentfreak.com. Retrieved 2008-08-08. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  26. ^ Antonio Carneiro (2008-06-20). "Demonoid bloqueado no Brasil" (in Portuguese). newserrado.com. Retrieved 2008-08-08. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  27. ^ http://torrentfreak.com/reports-demonoid-blocking-countries-080620/
  28. ^ http://news.softpedia.com/news/Demonoid-Is-Facing-Hardware-Troubles-Downtime-Expected-120896.shtml

Further reading

See Also


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