Downloading

[Late]

Demonoid's been down for nearly a week now, following a DDOS attack, and it's starting to get annoying/worrying. I believe a handful of other sites went at the same time.

If it's not back in a few days I'm going to have to start looking elsewhere for downloads. I am, of course, only downloading legal stuff.
Anyone got any good sites?

[jman]

Demonoids been down for months before after DDOS attacks... so you could be in for quite a long wait....

Isohunt & Piratebay have plenty of legal stuff on their site 

[harv]

Yup, Isohunt and Pirate Bay are good, and there's a new contender called torrentz.eu that I've found. It basically gives links to the different torrent sites that share a torrent. And if your ISP has blocked the Pirate Bay you can reach a mirror site going to www.fucktimkuik.org lol

Tbh you don't really need any of these to find public torrents, although Google have removed a few from searches due to the DMCA.

Demonoid is excellent though, plenty of stuff on there that you can't find anywhere else so hopefully it's going to be back in action sooner rather than later.

[Dragontao]

Depends if you want public or private trackers.

A lot of the private trackers now operate on an invite only system, so unless you happen to know somebody with an account and a few invites, then you aren't going to get in.

A lot of the private trackers have very strict upload ratios as well, unless you are paying for something like VIP membership.

On another note. This is interesting:

http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-online-music-piracy-pales-in-comparison-to-offline-swapping-120726/

Backs up what I have said about one of the things that will happen if they stop downloading. They will not prevent the loss of sales, but will add to problems for organisations such as trading standards and law enforcement agencies, with much of the physically pirated material actually being sold to fund other crimes.


By the way, Torrentfreak is an excellent source of information and looks at legal issues as well as exposing a lot of the hypocrisy of the media industry.

For instance, the fact that the industry is going to keep all of the money from fines levied against defendants in the Piratebay cases, while the artists, who they repeatedly claim to be protecting by their actions to stop downloading, won't see a penny.

[harv]

Yup, Slyck.com is also good for torrent and piracy news

[jman]

On another note. This is interesting:

http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-online-music-piracy-pales-in-comparison-to-offline-swapping-120726/

The chart is bollocks and so misleading.... I mean, where do the source files come from in relation to hard drive trading and burning/ripping .. well it either comes from a physical sale or it comes from illegal downloads..... if for instance the files used in hard drive trading and burning/ripping came from an illegal source.. then cutting off the source would cut out the other stuff... my mate has been round my house a few times with his portable hard drive and just dumped all his movies on my computer... he had illegally downloaded though.. where he will watch screeners and telesyncs, I wont, so I delete most of them anyway... but it just goes to show that the chart doesnt prove or mean anything other than the fact that 65% of all acquired music is unpaid for.

[Dragontao]

On another note. This is interesting:

http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-online-music-piracy-pales-in-comparison-to-offline-swapping-120726/

I mean, where do the source files come from in relation to hard drive trading and burning/ripping .. well it either comes from a physical sale or it comes from illegal downloads.....

Your point is? I'll tell you what your point is, totally irrelevant. You might think the chart is bollocks but this information is produced by the RIAA, the ones claiming downloaders are the anti-christ. 

One physical sale or one leagally downloaded copy is all it takes. A copy of that ripped to a hard disk, copied as a physical CD on an individual basis or used as a master for making large numbers of pirate copies for wider distribution.

As I have said, stopping downloading will just lead to an increase in the trading of physical copies. With sites such as E-bay almost impossible to police for pirate copies, and with pirates more likely to produce even more accurate looking copies of things such as CD cases, the consumer will end up getting ripped off more and the tax payer will be picking up the tab as the responisbility for stopping this will fall to the law enforcement agencies as these will be criminal rather than civil cases. Not to mention the funding of other forms of crime.

So the industry gets the law enforcement agencies to do their dirty work at the expense of the tax payer, while the artists get nothing extra out of it.

Instead of embracing the technology, reforming antiquated and industry biased copyright laws and introducing measures which would still see downloaders provide large sums of money into the industry, they seemingly bury their heads in the sand.

The same is true of the ridiculous release schedules for films in cinemas and on DVD across the globe. The industry appears to be its own worst enemy but there is method in their madness and that method is making a lot of people at the top of these companies rich and powerful, while it is the artists not being paid well and that is as a result of the industry, not the downloaders.

I have a collection of over 3000 physical CDs, probably over 500 DVDs (films/music) and something like 200 TV series dvd box sets. So I'm not just defending downloaders from the point of being a downloader.

[ancelotti]

I use a site called thepirateschest.net. Just have to sign up, no invites needed. Used to use torrentz but not very often since VM blocked access to thepiratebay. I don't trust a lot of the other sites there as they usually have no comments on the torrents.

[Dragontao]

http://www.torrent-invites.com/forum.php

A potentially useful site. List of open trackers too.

[Late]

The Ukrainian government has today raided Demonoid's servers, confiscating hardware and copying all tracker data.
Appears to be a gift to the US - coinciding with the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister's first trip to the United States - to discuss copyright infringement.

[Dragontao]

Torrent sites are like the Hydra. Cut off one head ...

They seriously need to rethink their strategy such as a levy on downloads. It would be far more successful. People who claim that it's unfair on those who don't download, well it's no different to many other forms of taxation that are unfair. It could easily be tailored to torrent traffic and any other new protocols that rear their heads if they continue to target torrents, because it is invevitable something will replace torrents the way things are going. Using QoS they could prioritise traffic and set the levies. Obviously there are ways around that but if the levies were set correctly, people wouldn't bother.

They'd make more money for the media industry doing this than they ever will by stopping downloads, with the exception of the boost in shares seen every time new legislation comes out, which only favours the big companies.

When they shut down allofmp3 in Russia, a dozen or so clones reared their heads.

It was a shame because the software allofmp3 used was really good, letting you choose to dowload music in different formats and different bitrates, with higher prices for higher quality. It was considered legal under Russian copyright law, but was shut down to prevent Russia being kicked out of the various trading organisations.

They aren't so quick to threaten Russia with that anymore as thye hold a lot of economic paoer as one of the major oil and mineral producers now.

[Late]

Not really into music, but that was a great site.
Can't remember how much credit I had on there when it disappeared - about five quid I think. But I think the site had been gone a year before I realised it'd been taken down! Mainly used it to get albums for friends & family.

Thanks for the recommendations, folks. Will check them out some time soon.

[harv]

Aaaaaaargh!!! My first casualty of Demonoid dying - the Movies With A Twist Collections aren't all being seeded any more Bollocks!!!

Might have to download them separately I guess, a great collection of films although some of them are repeated in other parts.

I hate to think how much rare music I'm missing out on too 

[Dragontao]

This is an interesting story.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/4517317/Bruce-Willis-to-fight-Apple-over-music-rights-after-his-death.html

Seems like those people who download music "illegally" own it as much as those who purchase it from Apple.

I have never liked Apple as an organsiation. They are scum, though they try and disguise it. They have been ripping people off for years. They were supposedly brought to taks over their use of DRM which prevented people from playing music bought from Apple on anything but Apple devices.

I'm glad I purchase my music elsewhere and stll prefer the physical item for the most part.

[Dragontao]

... and I rest my case.

... instead of embracing the technology and doing something sensible, the authorities make it worse for themselves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19982440

This model will now be taken up by more and once people cotton on to things such as seedboxes and proxy servers ...

well, the Pirates will always be one step ahead.

Not only that but it will allow a lot more than pirated music/films/software to be shared invisibly on the net. A criminals paradise ...

... and it will get worse.

(yeah been away for a bit, but as of today (well tomorrow when I tell them to stick it) I'm unemployed. Had a bit of a nightmare few weeks.