Demonoid Torrent Tracker Shut Down by CRIA

An anonymous reader writes "As of Tuesday, 25th September 2007, Demonoid is currently down, with no prior warnings from any moderators of the site. Both the main torrent page and the forum (fora) are no longer accessible. It is still possible to ping and trace the IP address of the site and it locates itself as in Canada. As of 6:45pm EST on 9-25-07, SSH and SMTP services are no longer active. Torrentfreak.com has since reported this is due to legal actions from the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) who ordered Demonoid's ISP to shut down the site."

Finger in the dyke...

[downix]

This action is akin to putting a finger in the dyke, but there are thousands, if not millions of other holes. You will run out of fingers (read funding) long before you ever patch up the holes in the wall that is DRM. We are in an era where the old rules of rights management can not survive. Pandoras Box is open, the cat is out of the bag, you cannot go back without causing more damage, if you can go back at all. Adapt or die.

it had to be said

[the_fat_kid]

I for one welcome our new dyke fingering overlords.

ouch. that hurt just to say.

Re:

[the_fat_kid]

how do you know I'm a man, you insensitive clod?

Re:

[LM741N]

I'm sure dykes are just as outraged about DRM as anyone else. But why pick them?

Re:

[kaos07]

Fingering the dyke? The CRIA is more like a c*ck up the arse.

Re:Finger in the dike...

[ElleyKitten]

This action is akin to putting a finger in the dyke, but there are thousands

A dyke is a lesbian. A dike is a dam. No one read the rest of your post because they were distracted by thoughts of lesbians.

Re:

[GrayCalx]

A dyke is a lesbian.

I was wondering why I got so aroused by his first sentence.

This action is akin to putting a finger in the dyke, but there are thousands, if not millions of other holes.

Re:Finger in the dike...

[MarcoAtWork]

A dyke is a lesbian. A dike is a dam.

actually that is not true, look it up in a dictionary and you'll see that dike and dyke are synonims.

dyke
          n 1: offensive terms for a lesbian who is noticeably masculine
                    [syn: butch, dike]
          2: a barrier constructed to contain the flow or water or to
                keep out the sea [syn: dam, dike, levee]
          v : enclose with a dike; "dike the land to protect it from
                  water" [syn: dike]

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

and from another

dike
noun {C} ANOTHER SPELLING OF
    dyke

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

actually that is not true, look it up in a dictionary and you'll see that dike and dyke are synonims.

Though synonims and synonyms aren't synonyms.

Re:

[sjwaste]

Hey look, I found this book of cliches...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards ... Checkmate.
- Zapp Brannigan

Re:Finger in the dyke...

[Poromenos1]

This action is akin to putting a finger in the dyke, but there are thousands, if not millions of other holes.

I would appreciate it if you could point me to the direction of an available one.

Re:

[Seumas]

Not really. Demonoid was a tremendous private tracker. There aren't a whole lot of those (much less ones that are huge and always have fully seeded content) around like Demonoid. Pirate Bay is fine, if you want to have your machine hammered from all the public trackers you'll continue to be listed as a seeder/peer on for weeks after you've stopped seeding/downloading the file. Not to mention, the crap you have to pour through to find something worthwhile.

The funny thing is, I used Demonoid a lot. But I most

Re:

[DDLKermit007]

I'm with ya on that! If you can't find it seeded fully on Demonoid it's likely not worth bothering with. Good community to it too.

Couldn't resist

[trrwilson]

I feel a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Re:

[sgant]

I feel a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, then remembered there are about a billion other sites for torrent files in the world and then they all just yawned and went about their day.

Re:

[chazwurth]

http://xkcd.com/307/ [xkcd.com]

there is some debate here on the demonoid shutdown

[bubblah]

last night techwag was reporting the same thing based off the torrent freak article, but a commenter pointed to a discussion out on http://www.thecircuitbox.com/demonoid/ [thecircuitbox.com] which is basically an IRC chat that refutes the CRIA end of the story. The techwag article is here http://techwag.com/index.php/2007/09/25/bad-day-for-bittorrent-demonoid-shut-down/ [techwag.com] Yesterday was basically a bad day for Bittorrent, ISOHunt shut down trackers to american users, and demonoid out of service, for what ever reason, either because they were taken down by the ISP or they are having one of their outages that happens randomly, but every time they go down people think they got shut down because they were shut down almost a year ago by BRIEN. There really is no way to tell the truth in the story without getting someone from demonoid to talk about it, and so far, people from demonoid have been very hard to reach. Makes for an interesting story overall though.

Re:there is some debate here on the demonoid shutd

[Hemogoblin]

There really is no way to tell the truth in the story without getting someone from demonoid to talk about it...

...or you could tell me where the server is located. I live in central Canada, so I could just waltz over there and check it for you. It's not like Canada is very big and I can use my dogsled. Problem solved.

Re:there is some debate here on the demonoid shutd

[ahoehn]

If you could say Hi to my cousin on the way that would be awesome. He also lives in Canada.

Re:

[IronChef]

This guy is NOT Canadian, he'd be riding a moose.

Re:

[megalumpy]

If it was in Australia us New Zealanders would simply walk over the harbour bridge and say "Oh hi, I upgraded your RAM" or something equally pithy.

Re:

[despisethesun]

The geographic centre of Canada is in Manitoba. Toronto is just the centre of the universe.

Re:

[LuSiDe]

[...] but every time they go down people think they got shut down because they were shut down almost a year ago by BRIEN. [...]

BREIN [wikipedia.org].

No details yet...

[pathological liar]

This story is useless without details, and nobody has them yet.

IRC log of convo with seanap of Demonoid.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.thecircuitbox.com/demonoid/ [thecircuitbox.com]

For tl;dr types: Torrentfreak made it up, the box is down for unknown reasons. Nobody knows yet. Sorry.

Re:IRC log of convo with seanap of Demonoid.

[morgan_greywolf]

Nobody knows yet because Deimos hasn't said anything. But from what I see in an nmap scan:

Starting Nmap 4.20 ( http://insecure.org/ [insecure.org] ) at 2007-09-26 09:54 Eastern Daylight Time
Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 09:54
Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 09:54, 0.00s elapsed
Initiating System CNAME DNS resolution of 1 host. at 09:54
Completed System CNAME DNS resolution of 1 host. at 09:54, 0.00s elapsed
Initiating SYN Stealth Scan at 09:54
Scanning demonoid.com (209.44.123.21) [1697 ports]
SYN Stealth Scan Timing: About 6.25% done; ETC: 10:03 (0:07:43 remaining)
Completed SYN Stealth Scan at 10:01, 401.57s elapsed (1697 total ports)
Warning: OS detection for 209.44.123.21 will be MUCH less reliable because we did not find at least 1 open and 1 closed TCP port
Initiating OS detection (try #1) against demonoid.com (209.44.123.21)
Host demonoid.com (209.44.123.21) appears to be up ... good.
Interesting ports on demonoid.com (209.44.123.21):
Not shown: 1690 filtered ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
21/tcp closed ftp
22/tcp closed ssh
80/tcp closed http
123/tcp closed ntp
443/tcp closed https
8000/tcp closed http-alt
8080/tcp closed http-proxy
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.6.X, OpenBSD 4.X, Sun Solaris 10|8|9
OS details: Linux 2.6.17.13 (Slackware 11.0, x86), OpenBSD 4.0 (CURRENT) macppc, OpenBSD 4.0 (sparc64), Sun Solaris 10 (SPARC), Sun Solaris 8 (SPARC), Sun Solaris 9 (SPARC), Sun Solaris 9 (x86), Sun Solaris 9 or 10

OS detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://insecure.org/nmap/submit/ [insecure.org] .
Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 405.503 seconds
                              Raw packets sent: 5164 (229.400KB) | Rcvd: 76 (3496B)


It looks like all the ports are firewalled off by the ISP. So while it's not confirmed, it's pretty obvious to anyone knowledgeable in network admin that the ISP firewalled off all the ports at someone's behest. Perhaps the CRIA, perhaps even Deimos himself.

Re:

[19thNervousBreakdown]

What about that makes you think the ISP closed it off? I don't see a comparison of TTLs from when it worked to when it didn't, and 99% of the ISPs out there, if they're going to close something off, aren't going to send icmp-port-unreachable, they're just going to drop the packet. If I were the non-alarmist type that was also willing to make completely unfounded guesses, I'd say it looks like the box had some problems and came up in a single-user style mode with TCP connectivity.

Re:

[19thNervousBreakdown]

If you get a "closed" response, that means something is answering for that IP. The ISP is unlikely to do this in the event of a takedown, they'll just cut access. Even if they didn't completely cut access and only disallow inbound, they still would more than likely drop the packet instead of returning ICMP port unreachable responses. SYN scans these days are rarely any more penetrating than a regular TCP connect(). If I had a remote box, I'd do my best to make sure it had some kind of connectivity even in s

Re:IRC log of convo with seanap of Demonoid.

[Slashcrap]

I don't think so -- the ports shouldn't show at all. But I don't have any TTL comparisons. This was the result of a SYN stealth scan, not a TCP connect scan, FWIW. It shouldn't show any ports at all if the box is hung or booted into single user mount.

Without going into a treatise on the reliability of Nmap results, let me point out one thing. As well as getting a closed result for HTTP, you're also getting the same result for NTP, FTP and at least one HTTP proxy service. If you're assuming that the "closed" result for Port 80 means that it's running a web server but that the port is being blocked, then you also have to assume that it's running as an NTP server. An NTP server isn't something you enable by accident and I doubt the Demonoid server is connected to an atomic clock and providing time services to the rest of the network. So that and the other unexpected ports indicate a strong possibility that your results are inconsistent and useless.

So while it's not confirmed, it's pretty obvious to anyone knowledgeable in network admin that the ISP firewalled off all the ports at someone's behest.

I would say that someone who assumes a certain explanation is correct based only on running Nmap against a host in a different country is probably not quite as knowledgeable in the field of network administration as they may think.

Re:

[bit01]

I doubt the Demonoid server is connected to an atomic clock and providing time services to the rest of the network.

Running an NTP server is an indication of nothing more than a professional administrator who wants accurate time on that machine. It's not inconsistent with the other results in the slightest.

It depends on the configuration but a common default for clients of distant time services is to act as an ntp server also. A server needs to run on the client so that round trip packet times to the d

Too bad...

[dalmiroy2k]

While there are tons of trackers like TPB or Mininova, Demonoid was the best comic book's scans source.
Let's hope they manage to get back online.

Re:

[Maxo-Texas]

Aye.
Probably 99% of the site benefit to me.
I was so glad to find a source for the comics I grew up with (Adam Strange and others)... most of which either are or should be out of copyright after 45 to 50 years. The only way to get them hard copy would have been prohibitively expensive if even possible since many issues are not for sale often.

that's what makes it absurd

[gambolt]

People don't go to demonoid for Britteny Spears. They go for Jazz and Classical recordings that have not been available for purchase in the US for 20 years. They go for medical textbooks. I got a full Principa Mathmatica there for cripe's sake. It's where Americans get 30 year old BBC productions. I'd been wanting to see The Sweeny for years. I'd have paid for it given the chance.

The copyright Nazis don't give a shit about 90% of what's there and 90% of the people using Demonoid don't give a shit about any of the stuff the copyright Nazis give a shit about.

Re:

[Syberghost]

Oh come on. Read the comments on any TV show torrent and tell me Demonoid's users are there for medical textbooks. You are, maybe; but most of Demonoid's users are there for TV shows, current hollywood movies, Windows games, and comic books, to judge by the usual output of browsing the new torrents.

Speculation

[Ilex]

The latest speculation I heard on Torrentfreak 5 hours ago was that Demoniod was down due to a hardware failure and not a MAFIAA Hit squad. I haven't seen any statements from CRIA crowing about their victory which you would expect if they were really responsible.

Are You Sure?

[fringd]

As far as I know there is not any strong evidence that CRIA has done anything yet. The server is down, true, but I heard it's just a hard drive failure. Some demonoid people were complaining about the bad journalism reporting that the CRIA shut down demonoid, without anybody from demonoid saying this. Who is the source on this? Some nu.nl article? How do they know anything? Here [thecircuitbox.com] is an IRC log where demonoid staff give the torrentfreak admin a hard time for reprinting the nu.nl story about the CRIA without having confirmed it in any way. To be fair, at this point in time, the torrentfreak article [torrentfreak.com] uses the word "allegedly." maybe they changed it.

Must be a hardware glitch

[Coraon]

The CRIA couldnt have shut them down here, I work for one of the few ISP's that could have handled their traffic, and the rules here state that if another company (read *IAA) wants to shut someone down/off the proper responce is to ask them for the MAC address, if they provide it then we shut *IAA off for illigaly obtaining information from our network, if they dont we say get it and call us back.... The big ISP's in Canada LOVE torrent sites, Trackers bring in ALOT of cash to the ISP's that shelter them.

Re:

[trybywrench]

the proper responce is to ask them for the MAC address, if they provide it then we shut *IAA off for illigaly obtaining information from our network

how is getting a MAC address obtaining information illegally? If getting a MAC is illegal then getting the payload portion of a IP packet would also be illegal.

Re:

[trybywrench]

my mistake, i was thinking of something else ( src address )

Re:

[Dr Caleb]

For those that don't know your revelation - MAC address are stripped by the first router they encounter. So, if the *iaa got a MAC address, they did so internal to the ISP's infrastructure. Therefore, they were illegally inside the ISP's network as there is no other way to obtain this address.

'Entrapment' is a single edged razor. ;)

Re:

[Emetophobe]

The big ISP's in Canada LOVE torrent sites, Trackers bring in ALOT of cash to the ISP's that shelter them.

I highly doubt that. ISPs want you to buy their service, but they don't actually want you to use it for anything other than light web and email usage. I use Rogers and they are probably one of the worst offenders when it comes to throttling BitTorrent traffic. I can easily get 700-800kb/sec with certain web sites or ftps, yet I usually only get 25-50kb/sec with BitTorrent if I'm lucky. If ISPs loved Bit

Interesting. I just checked this morning...

[erroneus]

I know... it's "wikipedia" but still...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonoid_(BitTorrent) [wikipedia.org]

That's the word I'm seeing. And according to the article, this is essentially speculation.

Hurts, but there are other trackers.

[gravis777]

Oh no, Demonoid is shut down! But we still have TPB, Suprnova, and mininova

Re:

[sYkSh0n3]

Well, lets just list all our favorite trackers so the MAFIAA can shut them down too! :)

Actually, I would believe this is hardware failure before them being shutdown. Demonoid is always goin down for something.

What's really going on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't jump the gun, I've talked to #demonoid ops and they say nothing has been confirmed. Goto:

irc://irc.p2p-network.net/demonoid

#demonoid

Without torrent is there a need for high speed?

[Maxo-Texas]

I pondered this last night.

For my needs (EQ, email, occasional funny video) a $17 AT&T DSL account would be fine. It's okay because of occasional torrent related surges that I keep my $55 cable line.

Re:

[Xest]

Yes, because without Bittorrent I'd just use the KAD/eMule networks or simply USENET or FTP for exactly the same purposes.

Put simply, it doesn't matter if bittorrent vanishes overnight, there's still massive amounts of redundancy in terms of ways to get the content bittorrent provides, stopping bittorrent wont stop demand and as a result it sure as hell aint gonna stop supply.

what a joke

[HipPriest93]

"Without torrent is there a need for high speed?"

Are you dumb? P2P services like Soulseek and E-Mule are showing no signs of being even remotely effected by all this bullshit, and as long as P2P exists and the popularity of video hosting sites like YouTube and Google Video remains unchallenged, there will be a need for high speed.

This whole article is poorly researched in any case:
http://www.thecircuitbox.com/demonoid/ [thecircuitbox.com]

Demonoid shit:

[Kildjean]

Demonoid shit:

Ok folks, here it is. Demonoid is down. It has been for around 1 day 2 hours. The reason is down is unkown. It hasnt been RAIDed, shutdown, terminated, deleted, burned, mamed, or thrown under a bridge. There have been speculation as demonoid.com whereabouts. Well the rurmors are false. A no name site in Netherlands has a blog about Demonoid.com being down. As I don't speak douche, I can not translate. However TorrentFreak Decided upon there own free will to further spread this and rumors. Torrent freak has known to be a sleazy site they post false rumors and hope they turn out true. They do this in order for money and popularity. Quite sad isn't it. To prove this is quite easy:

[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:00.54] ((
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:00.54] .. Query with (ernesto)/(~[e-mail]) opened on (Tuesday, September 25th 2007, 18:00:54).
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:00.54] .. Total queries: (40)/(~0.7 per day)
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:00.54] .. Queries today: (1)
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:00.54] .. Common channels: (+#demonoid)
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:00.54] ((
[05:26] *seanap*
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:00.54] (ernesto) hi
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:01.01] (ernesto) it's ernesto from TF
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:01.05] (seanap) hello
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:01.27] (ernesto) brb 1 min
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:01.28] (seanap) are you part of the staff there?
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:02.01] (ernesto) I'm the staff
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:02.03] (ernesto) hehe
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:02.32] (seanap) that article is completely false.
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:02.39] (ernesto) well, I based my story on a respectable source
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:02.47] (ernesto) but I doubted it
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:02.55] (ernesto) so what's going on then?
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:03.05] (seanap) there hasn't been word yet
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:03.44] (seanap) the 2 IRC ops that are usually in contact with Deimos haven't been around
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:03.45] (ernesto) last time demonoid staff said it were hw problems you relocated to CAN
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:04.11] (ernesto) they said my story was false then too
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:04.20] (ernesto) but it turned out not to be
[05:26] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:04.46] (seanap) well i'm saying we as site and IRC staff haven't heard anything.. and we'd be the first people to hear
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:05.18] (ernesto) perhaps Deimos doesn't know it?
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:05.21] (ernesto) yet
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:05.28] (seanap) so i don't think you should be reporting unconfirmed things, the IRC is going insane.. almost double the amount of users in a day
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:05.32] (ernesto) that was exactly how it happened last time
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:06.04] (ernesto) nu.nl is the biggest news source in NL
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:06.12] (ernesto) they might have inside info
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:06.21] (seanap) form who?! we are the inside
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:06.22] (ernesto) from the isp or the CRIA
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:06.41] (ernesto) the ISP probably firewalled the servers
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:06.52] (ernesto) after some seriuos legal threats
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:07.04] (ernesto) it's not unlikely
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:07.16] (seanap) no its not, but it's not.. confirmed
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:07.31] (ernesto) as long as you can't explain what's happening this is all I have
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:07.16] (seanap) no its not, but it's not.. confirmed
[05:27] *seanap* [09/25/07 - 18:07.31] (ernesto) as long as you can't explain what's happening this i

Re:

[WarwickRyan]

I can speak some dutch, and that link adds nothing new that isn't in the summary. Well, except for a link explaining how Demoniod was taken down previously by Brein (the dutch consumerscrewing association).

Why is Slashdot posting rumors?

[wintermute1974]

Really, this is a non-news item. Why waste our time with rumors?

If you read what the people behind Demonoid say, they're not sure what is happening right now.

Just because one site on the Internet decides to post non-sense, Slashdot shouldn't chase after it.

Re:

[Aladrin]

Ah, my bad. The page only partially loaded the first time. There's more words there, but still no real information.

Re:Legal?

[Hemogoblin]

Coincidentally, the CRIA is now opposing the private copying levy. [michaelgeist.ca]

The Canadian Recording Industry Association this week quietly filed documents in the Federal Court of Appeal that will likely shock many in the industry. CRIA, which spent more than 15 years lobbying for the creation of the private copying levy, is now fighting to eliminate the application of the levy on the Apple iPod since it believes that the Copyright Board of Canada's recent decision to allow a proposed tariff on iPods to proceed "broadens the scope of the private copying exception to avoid making illegal file sharers liable for infringement."- Michael Geist

Re:

[Poromenos1]

Yeah, that's crap. That means they prefer to sue people than being paid money. And don't tell me that they'd lose more than they gained, a levy on EVERY recording media is more than they imagine (and know) they're losing.

Re:Legal?

[speaker of the truth]

Actually the blog has done CNN's trick (or is it Fox's trick?) in that they assert a fact that they cannot prove, and so had a question mark at the end. They haven't said the CRIA is responsible, they've ASKED if the CRIA is responsible.

At this point the only thing we know is that demonoid was hosted in Canada, is currently down and the admins of the website haven't made any official comment.

It simply makes no sense that CRIA would be responsible for this. The Canadian MPAA would make more sense as I believe they haven't blundered into the situation the Canadian professional music industry has.

Re:Legal?

[Emetophobe]

From what I've read, the demonoid servers got hosed and the admins have to restore everything from backups. The TorrentFreak article is just baseless speculation at this point and slashdot isn't helping by spreading these rumours.

Re:

[pipatron]

Sources?

Re:

[camperdave]

Technically, it is the importers/manufacturers of blank media who pay the levy, but I'm sure they pass the cost onto the consumers. Torrenting a recording is a completely different animal than burning a copy of a friend's cd.

Different? Doesn't seem like it.

[Kadin2048]

Torrenting a recording is a completely different animal than burning a copy of a friend's cd.

Um, you want to explain that a little bit? Because I don't see any particular reason why it is.

Re:

[camperdave]

Straight copying is a closed revenue environment. When you are burning a copy of a friend's cd, only two people have access to it, both of whom have paid for it (one through the original purchase, and one through the media levy). When you are torrenting a file, everyone on the planet has access to it, but only one person has paid for it. It is a leaky revenue environment.

Re:

[camperdave]

Not really. Either way you are copying the bits from one storage device to another.

While true, there is the whole issue of who has access to the bits. Burning a copy of a CD is a unicast operation in which the bits are copied onto media for which a levy has been paid. Nobody else has access to the data. Torrenting is a multicast operation in which the bits are made publicly available, onto media which (for the most part) no levy has been paid.

Re:

[This_Is_My_Happening]

Didn't we just decide that stea^W copyright infringement was legal in Canada...

Downloading is legal in Canada. Uploading is still a grey area.

Re:

[Constantine XVI]

No, just the RIAA, but in Canada, eh?

Re:

[PygmySurfer]

More like a wannabe RIAA for Canada.

For the most part, CRIA is ignored.

Re:

[Jonny_eh]

Not even wannabe. They are one and the same. They represent very few Canadian artists if any. The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLaughlin (sp?) have spoken out against them.

Re:

[mwvdlee]

Hooray for the MAFIAA!
I really appreciate how the MAFIAA is saving us all the costs on judges, juries and executioners.
Who needs an expensive legal system when the MAFIAA will find you guilty for free?

Re:

[ScrewMaster]

Well, it's just a matter of time before groups such as this manage to have themselves granted de facto police powers, or have our respective governments set up an "International Bureau of Copyright Enforcement", and directly divert police resources (and our tax dollars) to their ends.

We'll see what Demonoid's operators are made of, if this is true. Who knows, maybe they'll relocate to Sweden.

Just to clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

TorrentFreak has speculated that they may have been shut down by the CRIA. At present there is absolutely no proof, aside from one article on a dutch blog (which is TF's one and only source).

Re:

[apdyck]

I sent some e-mails to Demonoid's hosting provider. Here is what I got:

Me
I was wondering if you had any information about the recent disappearance of demonoid.com . I did some research and it would appear that you are hosting the site. Site admins have been unavailable for comment, and there is a gread deal of speculation regarding the site. Are you able to shed any light on this situation?

Netelligent
Hello,

There have been many rumours circulating as to why Demonoid.com is down. We cannot comment any furth

Re:CRIA Sut Down by Pirates

[radiojock]

Moderators: PLEASE check the stories BEFORE you allow them to post. According to the folks on demonoid IRC, they were NOT shut down by the CRIA.

Geez slashdot is turning into DIGG where every moron can post "the truth"

Re:

[HardCase]

Nah, the big difference between /. and Digg is that on /., only a few morons control all the information.

Oh, and there's no self correction facility (Slash it?)

Re:CRIA Sut Down by Pirates

[happyemoticon]

And as far as comments and moderation go, Digg's level of discourse is about what you'd expect from an MMORPG.

Re:CRIA Shut Down by Pirates

[UncleTogie]

So what's our excuse? Oh yeah, we don't make excuses we flaunt our faults here.

...and on that note, you have a booger hanging...

Re:

[Keebler71]

Moderators: PLEASE check the stories BEFORE you allow them to post.

You must be new here...

Re:

[SQL Error]

Moderators: PLEASE check the stories BEFORE you allow them to post.

Yeah, whose bright idea was it to make this "CmdrTaco" guy a mod anyway?

Re:CRIA Sut Down by Pirates

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Moderators: PLEASE check the stories BEFORE you allow them to post. According to the folks on demonoid IRC, they were NOT shut down by the CRIA.

Geez slashdot is turning into DIGG where every moron can post "the truth"

You get a hearty second from me on this. It just seems that a lot of stuff on Slashdot these days is FUD and fearmongering. Just this week we had a big story on how evil Apple was going to deliberately brick your iPhone if you unlocked. I am not an Apple apologist or fanboy by the way and I own no Apple products, not even a iPod.

The real story apparently was that Apple tested its new firmware update on the iPhone on some unlocked iPhones and found that it bricked them. Apple decided to warn people - "Hey, if you unlocked your iPhone, you better skip this firmware update". Of course no good deed goes unpunished and the tin foil hat brigade swung into full force about how "evil Apple" had deliberately decided to brick unlocked iPhones in conjunction with some sort of unholy alliance with AT&T. Sadly, the truth seems to have been lost in this discussion.

Then we have the story that Slashdot had to update from earlier this week about how some open source program supposedly sent all kinds of private information to evil overlords who would use it in nefarious ways before the update arrived that said that the program in question only sent a few bits of information that in no way could identify its user. All you have to do any more these days is post something untrue but sure to ruffle some feathers and it shows up immediately.

I hate to break it to you...

[aws910]

but "sensationalism sells". That's why most of the "news" on tv is about war/shootings/etc.

Apple's reason for the iBrick announcement was FUD

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The reason Apple made the announcement about bricking iPhones had nothing to do with with people who'd already unlocked their phone & everything to do with scaring away those who were thinking of unlocking their phone.

Classic FUD.

Re:

[StingRay02]

Right. The simplest "solution" is a corporate conspiracy designed to scare customers and drive away sales. Seems to me that "We just want to let you know there's a problem" is a lot simpler a solution.

I'm sorry you're too much of an nutjob to recognize it.

Re:

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Except that on Digg, this story was posted, then buried, and more accurate information was posted shortly after.

Re:

[speaker of the truth]

There's more than just music on those sites you know.

That's neither here nor there as its legal to download and upload music thanks to the CD tax. It can't be the CRIA unless they're simply abusing their power with bogus claims in which case they should be brought to justice.

Re:

[thatskinnyguy]

Ahh I'm sorry for the ill-informed post my Canadian friend. Perhaps their servers just crapped-out and the CRIA is a scapegoat.

Re:

[Reziac]

"...and the CRIA is a scapegoat."

Well, at least that means for once the CRIA is doing something useful! Now, where are those tigers??

Re:hmm

[shark72]

"That's neither here nor there as its legal to download and upload music thanks to the CD tax."

Misinformation like this is contributing to the problem.

• Canadian consumers pay a private copying levy on some recordable media; notably CD-Rs.
• Copying copyrighted music is legal in some circumstances; in particular, single copies, for private use.
• The consensus in legal circules is that downloading is thus allowed under the private copying exception. As Michael Geist (who knows far more about Canadian copyright law than anybody here) puts it, "downloading music in Canada for personal purposes is arguably legal as it is compensated activity covered by the private copying levy." (emphasis mine.) But there is no law that states that downloading is legal. It's yet to be tested in court, and I don't think it ever will be, since the money is in chasing after the distributors, not the people doing the private copying.

As you've demonstrated, this doesn't prevent folks from trying to claim that uploading is legal. The most common argument is that since the default operation of P2P software is to automatically redistribute what's downloaded, then if downloading is a legal act, then anything that happens (including the redistribution) as a result of the downloading must, in turn, be legal. However, this would not even pass the laugh test in court.

Re:CRIA orders ISP to disconnect? Or a judge?

[Egonis]

Action like this is highly unlikely, because within our legal system they cannot (rather, should not) take action with the assumption that you are guilty without first having a full judgement.

If there were in fact a judgement, given the speed of our legal system, it would be shut down three years from now.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Action like this is highly unlikely, because within our legal system they cannot (rather, should not) take action with the assumption that you are guilty without first having a full judgement.

If there were in fact a judgement, given the speed of our legal system, it would be shut down three years from now.

Actually, if the infringed party feels that the infringing party is unduly harming them, they can ask the judge to issue a temporary injunction from operations. However, in that case, the site can remain o

Re:

[Reziac]

I'd clean forgot til I read your post, but on Monday (I think it was Monday) all I got was a gigantic Demonoid logo and a "try back later" message. Which could have meant anything, from "server busy" to "oh fuck who's at the door??"

Re:

[morcego]

It more likely is a hardware failure than anything. When I first tried Demonoid on Monday, the site was returning no data (it was responding to HTTP, however).

I had problems like that, both monday and yesterday, on other sites as well. EZTV-EFnet site is one of those.

Lets remember several TV series are starting a new season this week. It is also likely these servers just got overloaded and crash&burned.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

So what do you do when you are on the tail end of a torrent's popularity, you leave your client running for a week, and you still can't get up to 100% because there aren't enough other people who want to download the work? There might be a dozen seeders and 0 downloaders.

You rely on the fact that it's a private tracker, and most (>99%) don't expect you to seed 1:1 for every torrent.

Get in on one earlier and seed it 2:1 or more. You don't have to stop at 1:1, you know. I've done torrents where I only seed

Re:

[NMerriam]

But because total download equals total upload, it is mathematically impossible for an entire community to keep a ratio above 1:1

1:1 isn't required at any private site I know of. Usually .8:1 or even .7:1 is good enough -- as you say, it's impossible for EVERYONE to have 1:1, but when you're dealing with huge volumes of data like demonoid is (and of course some people who just leech and then let their accounts get canceled) keeping a decent ratio is perfectly doable. I obviously can't check my demonoid ra

Re:

[apt142]

I assume it was a judge who ordered Demonoid's ISP to disconnect Demonoid. If a trade organization like CRIA can order an ISP to disconnect a customer directly, then things are extremely bad in Canada.

The details are scarce here. We only have the word of one source that the CRIA is involved at all. Given the state of such shaky evidence, wouldn't the next hypothesis be that it is not legal troubles at all?

I mean, backhoes have been attempting the take down of the internet for quite some time. (Those

Re:I hate Torrents

[Applekid]

It is because of you that there are GB caps and severe upload restrictions on my internet access.

As I recall, upload restrictions and bandwidth caps predate Bittorrent by at least 5 years, if not more. Maybe you just need a better ISP: one that will maintain and upgrade their infrastructure as traffic grows instead of just blaming their customers.

Re:

[Reziac]

My ISP (a one-man band, so the owner is also the entire tech dept.) explained it to me thus:

Download bandwidth is essentially free to the ISP.

However, upload bandwidth costs the ISP serious money, they pay so much per gig, and therefore it is a major operating expense. And that's why they limit uploads, and why your upload cap is usually so much smaller than your download cap.

So it's not the downloaders that are the problem, it's the uploaders. If you're going way over 1:1, sad to say your generosity is con

Re:

[Gadgit]

Typically in a cable modem environment, the upstream ports on a CMTS are bundled together to a single downstream. In this sense, please remember that upstream is what going from the internet to the CMTS, to the cable modem (essentially the download path) and the downstream is your upload going in the opposite direction. In a typical Cisco 7200 CMTS each blade has 5 upstream ports and 1 downstream ports. If I remember correctly, each blade is recommended to serve approximately 1000 modems. Since cable is

Re:

[Reziac]

Good explanation. My brain hurts. :)

So in addition to the cost differential, they're trying to balance it according to probable demand -- which of course makes good sense. You're right, most people would be seriously pissed if the norm was fast uploads but slow downloads!

Re:

[Hatta]

You people literally took up almost all the network bandwidth at one point for what is, in actuality, a very inefficient distribution mechanisim.

Find us a more efficient distribution mechanism and we'll use it.

Re:

[apt142]

That would only be more efficient in the following conditions:

Postage + Disk_Cost
and

average_postal_transit_time
The above conditions would only really be efficient for large amounts of data. Where large amounts of data is relative to your bandwidth and other fellow sharers.

* I omitted the sender's bandwidth on the the extremely far reaching assumption that the file sharer uploads enough back to the network as he downloads.
* This is a gross exaggeration and meant more for humor than real wor

Re:

[apt142]

The equations messed up, sorry. Here they are:

Postage + Disk_Cost < ISP_Monthly_Fee/Seconds(current_month) * download_time_in_seconds

and

average_postal_transit_time < download_time_in_days

Re:

[Tom]

But: I just want to say that I really hate torrents and torrent users. It is because of you that there are GB caps and severe upload restrictions on my internet access.

Yes. Evil users. Look, they actually use the bandwidth they pay for!

it is highly unlikely that the ISPs will ever become more generous in what they give the consumer.

You need a slap with the cluebat. It isn't a matter of generosity. It's a matter of contract law. You pay for a service. ISP has to deliver service. If I buy a book at Amazon, it's not generosity that makes them deliver it to my house, it's the fact that they have to, because that's the service they offer and collect money for.