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Demonoid

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Alexnye (talk | contribs) at 20:05, 2 October 2007 (→2007 Website Outage and Canadian blocking). 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 screen.jpg
Demonoid Main Page
Type of site
Torrent index
OwnerDeimos
Created byDeimos
URLwww.demonoid.com
RegistrationInvitation, Sporadic Open Registration

Demonoid is a BitTorrent tracker, supposedly set up by an anonymous Yugoslav known only as Deimos.[1] The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. These torrents can then be searched and the content shared using the peer to peer BitTorrent protocol. Demonoid is one of the largest BitTorrent trackers and its torrents are found on other BitTorrent search engines.

Membership

The website features 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; this is not required anymore. Registration is opened periodically when resources permit. Users have the ability to send invitation codes to others during closed registration.[2]

Demonoid does not technically require that its users maintain a good upload/download ratio, but encourages them to do so by automatically banning users who do not try. This is done to prevent resources from being spent on 'non-contributing' users. However, if a user donates $5.00US, the donor's ratio is pushed up to 1.0 for a one month period. Demonoid does not disclose the specific amount of time or ratio number a user must have to be banned in order to prevent abuse of the banning system.[3]

Features

Demonoid categorizes torrents under either Anime, Applications, Audio Books, Books, Comics, Games, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Music Videos, Pictures, or TV. 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 plugins 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 has over 205,431 user submitted torrents indexed as of September 15, 2007.

On June 26 2007 Demonoid went down for supposed hardware failures. Though their ISP Leaseweb sometime earlier was ordered by the Dutch police to take down the website and surrender the name and address to Dutch police. Some speculation was said that Demonoid was moving to a "safe house." Recently the Dutch anti-piracy outfit RIAA filed a subpoena against Demonoid’s ISP (Leaseweb) in which they demand that the site be taken offline.[4]

2007 Website Outage and Canadian blocking

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:

Downtime:

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]

Canada contributed 3.8% of the web traffic to Demonoid which is the fifth largest demographic group of visitors to the site. [6]

Over the next few days the website continued experiencing intermittent downtime, until coming back to full funcionality on October 2, 2007. Visitors from Canadian-based IPs continued to be redirected to the same downtime message which cited legal threats as the reason for the block.

October 2 Demonoid is back online, but will be blocking Canadian traffic due to the CRIA's threat.

References

  1. ^ Demonoid FAQ: Which software does Demonoid use?
  2. ^ Demonoid FAQ: Why is the registration closed periodically?
  3. ^ Demonoid FAQ: My ratio is getting too low, am I going to be banned?
  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. ^ http://whois.domaintools.com/demonoid.com
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