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Demonoid

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 92.249.121.125 (talk) at 21:09, 10 August 2008 (→Current status: don't need "the" with Ukraine). 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
OwnerUmlauf
Created byDeimos (retired)
URLdemonoid.com
RegistrationSporadic registration periods for new members

Demonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker that was originated 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 second most used public tracker for over a year,[3] the 403rd most popularly ranked website in July 2007 according to Alexa,[4] and had an estimated 3 million peers in September 2007.[3] The site went off-line on November 9 2007 due to alleged legal threats from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. On April 11, 2008 the site was brought back on-line. 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 because of personal reasons.

Membership

The website features a publicly accessible search tool. Previously, membership had been required to download more than 3 torrents per week or to download torrent files older than a few days. Registration is opened periodically when resources permit. 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]

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 torrent 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 199,629 user submitted torrents indexed as of October 21, 2007.[citation needed]

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

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.com, 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]

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. 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.

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."

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. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the change, the site has since been reported to consistently return HTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error) for a considerable number of registered users, effectively preventing access to the site (and thus making it less attractive as a tracker).[24] [25]

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)
  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. ^ Demonoid FAQ: Why is the registration closed periodically?
  6. ^ "Demonoid FAQ: Stats". Demonoid. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  7. ^ "The Ratio & Demonoid ~ Hot News". Demonoid Forum. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  8. ^ a b c David Shamah (2007-09-18). "Digital World: Internet snobbery". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ 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)
  10. ^ 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)
  11. ^ Thomas Mennecke (2007-07-04). "Demonoid Returns". Slyck.com. Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ 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)
  13. ^ 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)
  14. ^ "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)
  15. ^ 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)
  16. ^ "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)
  17. ^ "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)
  18. ^ 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)
  19. ^ 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)
  20. ^ 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)
  21. ^ 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)
  22. ^ Michael Geist (2007-10-05). "Downloading and Demonoid". Michael Geist. Retrieved 2008-01-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. ^ Deimos (2008-04-10). "Goodbye, people". subdemon.com. Retrieved 2008-04-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. ^ enigmax (2008-06-20). "Demonoid Blocking Countries". torrentfreak.com. Retrieved 2008-08-08. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. ^ 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)

Further reading

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