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Demonoid

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bistromaths (talk | contribs) at 01:06, 25 December 2007 (Undid revision 180043284 by 76.98.202.86 (talk)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For the metal band, see Demonoid (band).
Demonoid
File:Demonoid.jpeg
Type of site
Semi-private torrent tracker with sporadic registration periods for new members
OwnerDeimos
Created byDeimos
URLhttp://demonoid.com/
RegistrationYes

Demonoid was a website and BitTorrent tracker set up by an anonymous Serb known only as Deimos. The website indexed torrents uploaded by its members. These torrents could then be searched and the content shared using the peer to peer BitTorrent protocol. Demonoid was also one of the largest BitTorrent trackers, with its torrents being indexed by almost all major BitTorrent search engines such as IsoHunt, BTjunkie and Mininova.

According to the site itself, Demonoid is offline due to action from the CRIA, with a placeholder page carrying a brief explanation outlining the situation. To keep the Demonoid community together, an internet forum was created and made accessible via the placeholder page.


Membership

The website featured a publicly accessible search tool. Previously, membership was required to download more than 4 torrents per week or to download torrent files older than a few days, but the requirement was later removed. Registration was opened periodically when resources permitted. Users had the ability to create a limited number of invitation codes to send to others during closed registration periods.[1]

Demonoid tracked and displayed users' upload/download ratios but took no action against users with low ratios.[2] Demonoid previously banned users with low ratios, but stopped doing so due to the ratio system being inaccurate for some users.[3]

Features

Demonoid categorized torrents under either Anime, Applications, Audio Books, Books, Comics, Games, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Music Videos, Pictures, or TV. Many categories had various subcategories or divisions that allowed a search to be more specific.

Demonoid featured RSS with different feeds for each category and sub category to keep users aware of the latest torrent posted on the site. These RSS feeds linked to the Demonoid page and not directly to the torrent file. RSS plugins for the various BitTorrent clients were 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 199,628 user submitted torrents indexed as of October 21, 2007[citation needed].

June 2007

On June 26 2007 Demonoid went down for supposed hardware failures, though earlier their ISP Leaseweb had been ordered by the Dutch police to take down the website[citation needed]. Later, the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN filed a subpoena against Demonoid’s ISP in which they demanded that the site be taken offline.[4]

September 2007

On September 25 2007 the Demonoid website, forums and Bittorrent trackers went offline. On September 29 2007 the Demonoid trackers came back online, although the main site remained offline. On September 30 2007 at approximately 18:00 GMT the main site came back online. The official explanation as stated on Demonoid was as follows:

"We received a letter from a lawyer representing the CRIA, they were threatening with legal action and we need to start blocking Canadian traffic because of this. Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience.[5]

Over the next few days the website continued experiencing intermittent downtime until coming back to full functionality on October 2, 2007. Visitors from Canadian-based IPs continued to be redirected to the same downtime message which cited legal threats from the CRIA as the reason for the block. This is in spite of the open question of the legality of music file sharing in Canada.[6] Despite Demonoid's claims, the CRIA has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

November 2007

On November 09 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 online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding."

On November 15 2007 the placeholder page was updated stating:

"We have brought online a forum in order to help the community stay together. This forum is not file sharing related in any way, it's just a mean to help the community stay together - please read the forum rules before posting.

You can visit the forum by clicking here."

[7]

On November 29 2007 Deimos posted the following on Subdemon outlining the real problem as to why the site is offline.

"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."

Note: Both domains Demonoid.com and Demonoid.cc are offline and redirect to a placeholder located at the Subdemon domain.

References

  1. ^ Demonoid FAQ: Why is the registration closed periodically?
  2. ^ "Demonoid FAQ: Stats". Demonoid. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  3. ^ "The Ratio & Demonoid ~ Hot News". Demonoid Forum. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  4. ^ Ernesto (2007-06-27). "Anti-Piracy Organization Tries to Shut Down Demonoid". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 2007-09-25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ http://www.demonoid.com/ Demonoid 30th Sept 2007
  6. ^ "Pyrrhic Victory for Downloaders in Music Industry Appeal". Ross & McBride. Retrieved 2007-11-14.
  7. ^ "Demonoid website". Retrieved 2007-11-16.
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