backtop

Internet Update: Demonoid is Back
Tom Corelis (Blog) - April 13, 2008 3:29 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 36 comment(s) - last by bloked.. on Apr 16 at 2:30 PM
Rogue BitTorrent tracker plays whack-a-mole with the authorities

The Demonoid BitTorrent tracker is back online, following a shutdown in November 2007 when the Canadian Recording Industry Association threatened the tracker’s server host.

Demonoid’s resurrection is only the latest chapter in a storied, troubled history: attempts to block Canadian users failed to prevent its takedown in November, and the site’s BitTorrent tracker reappeared briefly in Malaysia around January before disappearing once more. Last March, Demonoid’s tracker popped up again, this time hosted in by Ukraine-based Colocall Ltd. According to TorrentFreak, the site’s web interface is hosted in the United States, and a number of the site’s features returned to operation earlier Friday afternoon.

News of Demonoid’s return almost immediately followed a change in management, with owner and administrator “Deimos” handing the reigns to “Umlauf,” citing undisclosed “real-life” distractions.

Anecdotal user reports indicate Demonoid.com to be fully operational, with user accounts and upload ratios preserved at the time the site went down last November.

Last January, the Pirate Bay offered Demonoid a pair of servers at its Sweden-based hosting facility. “We tried to contact the guys behind Demonoid and we’ve set up a tracker for them,” said Pirate Bay administrator Peter “Brokep” Sunde, “but they haven’t responded … we have two servers running for them if they want to set it up.” The site did not take up Sunde’s offer.

While only time can tell if Demonoid’s popularity – not to mention its semi-public nature – will prove to be its undoing yet again, the site’s future is uncertain as the Ukranian government represents an untested legal climate for BitTorrent copyright enforcement.

A July report from file-sharing site Slyck.com found Demonoid to be the second most popular tracker named in cease-and-desist letters sent to file-sharers – the first being the Pirate Bay – with 12 Demonoid users caught in the industry’s dragnet out of a random sampling of 100 letters. “Watch your back, Jack,” reads the report, “chances are the prying eyes of copyright enforcement aren’t too far behind.”

Update April 14, 2008: In a report dated March 16, TorrentFreak indicated that Demonoid's frontend was hosted in the United States, which was repeated in this article. Traceroute currently reveals, however, that both demonoid.com and www.demonoid.com route through a Kiev, Ukraine based gateway before crossing Colocall's servers, indicating that all aspects of the site are now operated from Ukraine.


Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Trust
By dark matter on 4/13/2008 4:53:52 PM , Rating: 5
Not sure if I would trust going to Demonoid. Something funny about it, I get bad vibes from this.




RE: Trust
By winterspan on 4/13/2008 5:27:58 PM , Rating: 1
I totally agree. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND STAYING AWAY FROM DEMONOID UNTIL IT'S PROVEN THAT IT'S NOT A HONEYPOT FOR THE RIAA!

Why is it hosted in the USA? Sounds very suspicious! If you are going to use that site, use a anonymous proxy! I use myinternetaccess.info, but you can also just google "anonymous proxy" and you'll have plenty of options..


RE: Trust
By BladeVenom on 4/13/2008 6:21:11 PM , Rating: 3
Since any new music I listen to is non RIAA, I'm not worried. www.riaaradar.com


RE: Trust
By Some1ne on 4/13/2008 9:26:10 PM , Rating: 5
If it's really being hosted in the US, then why does the tracert say:

quote:

Tracing route to demonoid.com [62.149.24.66]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 8 ms 8 ms 9 ms unknown.Level3.net [209.247.156.221]
2 12 ms 17 ms 16 ms vlan99.csw4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.18.254]
3 15 ms 17 ms 21 ms ae-94-94.ebr4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.134.253]
4 84 ms 89 ms 90 ms ae-2.ebr4.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.135.186]
5 79 ms 90 ms 91 ms ae-94-94.csw4.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.126]
6 117 ms 90 ms 89 ms ae-91-91.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.134.77]
7 150 ms 162 ms 148 ms ae-42.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.137.69]
8 166 ms 165 ms 157 ms ae-2.ebr2.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.132.134]
9 156 ms 180 ms 161 ms ae-1-100.ebr1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.133.85]
10 229 ms 533 ms 329 ms ae-2.ebr2.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net [4.69.133.90]
11 396 ms 186 ms 200 ms ae-4-4.car1.Stockholm1.Level3.net [4.69.135.21]
12 185 ms 186 ms 185 ms rt741-001.stk.retn.net [213.242.110.18]
13 244 ms 293 ms 244 ms so-300.RT771-001.kiv.retn.net [81.222.0.150]
14 487 ms 316 ms 265 ms 87.245.247.18
15 245 ms 244 ms 245 ms itsinternet-gw.colocall.net [62.149.20.1]
16 247 ms 263 ms 245 ms 62.149.31.50
17 280 ms 246 ms 254 ms demonoid.com [62.149.24.66]


Looks like somewhere in Europe, to me.


RE: Trust
By kenji4life on 4/13/2008 9:46:43 PM , Rating: 4
Kiv is Kiev, Ukraine


RE: Trust
By OblivionMage on 4/13/2008 10:15:54 PM , Rating: 2
I heard something about hosting in Ukraine, speculation and whatnot. You are probably right, Demonoid is now being hosted in Ukraine.


RE: Trust
By MrPoletski on 4/14/08, Rating: -1
RE: Trust
By johnsonx on 4/14/2008 12:53:37 PM , Rating: 3
no, he didn't. He did post the IP of his first router hop. So what?


RE: Trust
By OblivionMage on 4/13/2008 10:14:15 PM , Rating: 2
Please source your information that Demonoid is being hosted in the US.


RE: Trust
By kenji4life on 4/14/2008 2:20:25 AM , Rating: 3
No need to source his b.s., I just said that it's hosted in Kiev, Ukraine. You can clearly see that from the trace route.


RE: Trust
By OblivionMage on 4/13/2008 5:40:12 PM , Rating: 2
Why? Deimos is not a trusting person and he has said that he fully supports the new admin. It does seem too good to be true, however, but considering Deimos's 'real world issues', the site's down time has always been magnified in comparison to almost any other.

Anyways, I guess its all up to our own judgement whether or not we return to the site. I just know that I, for one, will.


RE: Trust
By ImSpartacus on 4/13/2008 7:57:37 PM , Rating: 4
Wouldn't surprise me if the RIAA let Demonoid off the hook if they allowed them to manage the website as a way to catch people.

I will not go there again.


RE: Trust
By OblivionMage on 4/13/2008 10:12:54 PM , Rating: 2
The RIAA were the ones to shut down demonoid? Really? I must have been mistaken. Oh..wait.. http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-shuts-down-again-...

The RIAA has nothing to do with this.


RE: Trust
By ImSpartacus on 4/14/2008 6:20:24 AM , Rating: 1
Hmmm, you're right. I guess it wasn't them, but it was a gov't agency (Canada FTW).


RE: Trust
By bloked on 4/16/2008 2:30:00 PM , Rating: 2
Trade groups like the RIAA and CRIA are not government agencies. Sure, they'd love to be, but that day isn't here (yet).


As long as there is a market...
By jadeskye on 4/13/2008 4:50:14 PM , Rating: 5
...You will never stop file sharing.

it's true of all businesses, services and generals needs.

demand = supply. even if in this case it's illegitamate.




RE: As long as there is a market...
By mrchenery on 4/13/2008 7:09:34 PM , Rating: 5
Best way to restrict anything is to legalise it.


RE: As long as there is a market...
By GaryJohnson on 4/13/2008 10:45:32 PM , Rating: 2
The best way to regulate anything is to legalize it. If you legalize something your not restricting it anymore.

How would you regulate file sharing, and what would that accomplish in the eyes of the artist's whos content you're getting without paying for?


RE: As long as there is a market...
By cochy on 4/14/2008 1:37:15 AM , Rating: 5
I'm sure people have no problems paying the artists. They may have a problem being ripped off for the content by huge media conglomerates.

In this age of the Internet, artist should be selling their content direct to the consumer, or give the content away for free and accept donations, a model already adopted by some and shown to be successful.


RE: As long as there is a market...
By GaryJohnson on 4/14/2008 2:06:35 AM , Rating: 2
I don't disagree with you about how artists (or any media owners) should be marketing/selling/distributing their content.

But my question was what would be accomplished by legalizing (and regulating) the sharing of copyrighted material?


RE: As long as there is a market...
By JoshuaBuss on 4/14/2008 12:30:54 PM , Rating: 2
make a giant bittorrent tracker that's actually legal to use and costs a basic amount per gigabyte downloaded.

make some of the profit go the RIAA and some to the MPAA

your average movie torrents would suddenly start moving as fast as your linux distro downloads! :)


By GaryJohnson on 4/14/2008 9:58:40 PM , Rating: 2
The media owners wouldn't agree to such an arrangement unless the fees were high enough to maintain their current profit margins, which would make the fees so high people would keep on pirating.

If the media owners were willing to lower their profits to the point at which a legal torrent system would be viable, then you wouldn't need a torrent system because you could order whatever you wanted by mail or secure download for the same cost as the torrent fees.


How long?
By WayneG on 4/13/2008 4:50:14 PM , Rating: 2
This war between the pirates (of which I am one - yar!) and the MPAA/RIAA/etcAA seems to be neverending... Tracker after tracker goes down yet is reborn in another country, dodging the bullet yet again. It seems that soon enough we'll run out of countries to use!

It's nice to know that TPB is looking out for other trackers and was able to provide 2 servers although the offer was not accepted... That's what the pirate world needs to do, stick together and fight it out.

Whatever happens it's going to be an interesting, seemingly neverending battle!




RE: How long?
By Rebel44 on 4/13/2008 6:10:31 PM , Rating: 2
We Will Win :)
RIAA/MPAA will lose!


RE: How long?
By murphyslabrat on 4/13/2008 6:37:41 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
That's what the pirate world needs to do, stick together and fight it out.

..right before all getting caught at the same time, that is.


RE: How long?
By Ringold on 4/13/2008 6:55:31 PM , Rating: 2
I reckon the WTO or someone will ultimately be brought in, and laws harmonised across the entire developed world. Even rogue states like North Korea can be pressured by their supporters and dependents, so they wont be completely safe.

Enjoy it while it lasts, though. While inevtiable, I think, that could take a decade or more.


RE: How long?
By oab on 4/13/2008 8:41:56 PM , Rating: 3
North Korea? Are you joking? How's those nuclear non-proliferation treaty discussions going? Or that whole "the peasants must eat food because starving to death is bad for the economy"? The WTO has done s**t all there, same with the UN.


Demonoid Joy
By Zensen on 4/14/2008 5:35:22 AM , Rating: 2
RIAA. HAHAHA. who, what where. greed? They mean jack all to the rest of the world. Give them their dummy so they can spit it out again.. demonoid is back :D

I will continue to buy music I like and continue to listen to the new stuff provided by these trackers. RIAA can kiss my arse.




RE: Demonoid Joy
By tanishalfelven on 4/14/08, Rating: -1
RE: Demonoid Joy
By Tsuwamono on 4/14/2008 9:58:19 AM , Rating: 2
I guess 90% of the posters on here are Theives.

*Continues downloading Matrix trilogy*


RE: Demonoid Joy
By marsbound2024 on 4/14/2008 8:42:10 PM , Rating: 1
zomg... YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR! YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A PURSE... etc etc, blah blah....


RE: Demonoid Joy
By marsbound2024 on 4/15/2008 12:42:56 AM , Rating: 2
For those that didn't get it... it was a mere pun on the announcements they put on DVDs.

As for me? Well... YARRR


RE: Demonoid Joy
By pillagenburn on 4/14/2008 10:29:42 PM , Rating: 1
It could be argued that anything that feels good or otherwise alters your mental state is considered a 'drug.' Food is a drug, heroin is a drug, nicotine is a drug, alcohol is a drug and caffeine is a drug. Music can, and does, alter your state of mind; making you happier, depressed, energetic etc - in this sense, it is an audible drug.

Using this logic (which is not really all that flawed if you think about it), the RIAA could be thought of as a drug cartel. To me the RIAA is certainly akin to a nicer, more sensitive version of a Colombian drug cartel. I personally choose to think of their goods as drugs and I really don't care how the pirates distribute their drugs.

IMO, it's better to download a music album than snort a line of coke or plow through a 12-pack of Newcastle then taking four shots of Goldschlager and another three shots of 151 then puking all over myself.

Just my $0.02 - the addicts will get their drugs any way they can.


RIAA can't win
By chmilz on 4/14/2008 2:35:49 AM , Rating: 3
The RIAA will always be stuck in the US, bound by US laws, whereas torrent sites have mobility on their side and can relocate to exploit any country's copyright legislation. RIAA's funds are finite and global litigation will make them the masters of their own demise.




FiOS FTW.
By AntiV6 on 4/13/2008 7:39:08 PM , Rating: 2
Hmmm, why are most all the letters on the Slyck News article from ISP's like Cox and Comcast?

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1547




By S3anister on 4/13/2008 11:17:54 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
the site’s BitTorrent tracker reappeared briefly in Malaysia around January before disappearing once more. Last March, Demonoid’s tracker popped up again, this time hosted in by Ukraine-based Colocall Ltd.




"Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" -- Homer Simpson

DailyTech Poll
Do you use copy/paste on your smartphone? 




17 Comments









botimage
Copyright 2010 DailyTech LLC. - RSS Feed | Advertise | About Us | Ethics | FAQ | Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information | Kristopher Kubicki