Archive for the Category »The Pirate Society «

On Tracker/TPS Partnerships
04
September
othersna

This article is again, my opinion only, and is written to provoke thought and ask questions. When I joined TPS fourteen months ago, I remember there being an extensive involvement with tracker staff, where there would be many active recruitment threads for trackers, busy forum activity by tracker staff, and subsequently, TPS would respond by respecting trackers’ rules when it came to invite, bonus point and publicity rules. But what happens when TPS and a tracker end their relationship, or when tracker staff just fade off and not participate at TPS? What are the consequences?

Let’s take the invite policy for example. There are trackers where it is specifically forbidden in their rules to give out invites on forums, and I’ll respect that, but unless staff from a tracker gets involved with us, it’s very time consuming for TPS staff to track down all rules of various trackers. Now suppose a tracker’s rules say “No public giveaways” and “Invites are for your friends whom you know and trust.”  TPS is a closed (non-public) forum and we encourage our members to offer invites to fellow members they know and trust. So is there a problem? If a tracker has no problem with offers/requests of their invites at other invite  forums, perhaps there should be no problem with TPS allowing the same.

Now let’s talk about Bonus Points (aka Karma points, cash, gold etc.) These are points gained by seeding, uploading, and participating in community activities. I can understand why a tracker would not want these points given away at TPS since the points can be misused as a commodity to gain “rep points.” But again, it’s very difficult to determine if a tracker has a problem with bonus points being shared at TPS if there is no tracker staff to guide us. What about a member who is in some ratio trouble, and is requesting TPS members download torrents that he is solo seeding or has uploaded. In my opinion there’s no problem with this, as long as there is no exchange of a “rep point” or anything else to follow. If anything, it’s a good thing for members with buffer to spend that buffer down and add to the ratio economy.

Publicity rules are also very confusing. There are “low publicity” trackers which specifically ask for members not to display screenshots, give out their full URL, or discuss what goes on inside their tracker. I  try to respect those rules here and modify any posts which have “unwanted publicity,” but we need to be informed if publicity is unwanted.  Some trackers would actually benefit from some publicity. On the other end, if I see a tracker being reviewed at one of the popular public torrent news sites, then I can assume that what’s printed there is “fair game” for discussion at TPS.

Now suppose there’s a tracker which has no staff active at TPS. The tracker either never associated itself with us, or their staff just stopped coming. If TPS staff are members of those trackers, we’ll try to keep their rules in mind, but otherwise we’d appreciate someone guiding us, rather than have our members banned or warned because someone “snitched” on them after the fact. (I’d much rather have a partnership than an adversarial relationship.)

Category: The Pirate Society, Trackers  Leave a Comment
A Message For Those on the Fence Re: Signups
13
June
othersna

I am writing this post for those of you who may have seen the articles about the open signup at TPS and are still on the fence when it comes to signing up. (I assume you hit the “Blog” button before hitting “Register” to see what was there.) I wanted to address some of the concerns you might have.

First let me again say that TPS is not just an “invite forum.” It is a discussion forum and community. You may want to join because you are looking for invites to a particular tracker, but there is a lot more to TPS than the invite sections.  In many ways, TPS is also different from what I consider the “typical” invite forum. At other places, there is an emphasis for members to give out invites in order to “build rep” and be able to get invites in return. At TPS, the emphasis is on becoming part of the community, meeting people, and getting invites because the members trust you with an invite. One of our sysops, NiNeCat, once wrote in a blog article that being invited to TPS is like being invited to a party where you can mingle with dignitaries. If you are a wallflower, you will not get to know the dignitaries. However,  forget any talk about TPS being elitist. If anything, the members here are very friendly and helpful to new members, and anyone caught “picking on the new guy” will get it from me and the rest of the staff. We will however, try to guide you properly if you come to TPS, make a beeline to the invite section and ask for an invite to your “dream tracker.”

The other thing we encourage new members to do is to make an introduction, an avatar, perhaps a siggy,  and make quality posts before looking for invites. As I stated before, the members need to get to know you before you are “trustable” with an invite. With hundreds of subjects and thousands of posts here, there has got to be some thread where you can take an interest in and participate.  At TPS, the “what are you listening to right now?” type threads are a small fraction of the forum. Also note TPS is a world community, so if you come from a country where English is not the native or secondary language, it’s ok. You will most likely find people here from your country to befriend. Note English is the language of the forum, but no one is going to put you down if your English isn’t perfect. (Mine isn’t.)

You may have heard that TPS has a large “No-Movement” list, and that you won’t be able to get into “good” trackers. TPS respects the wishes of trackers, and if these trackers don’t want invites given out on forums, the tracker is on the “no-movement” list. If you were to get an invite on the NML at another forum, you would most likely get banned if you were caught. However,  you can get into these NML trackers if a community rep has a recruitment thread here, and if you get to know the members, you could also get an invite offered to you privately. Just don’t go sending PMs to people asking for an invite to a NML tracker. The invite will have to  “find you.”

Finally, if for whatever reason you join and find TPS is not for you, then take care and good luck. No one is going to hold it against you if you leave.

Category: The Pirate Society  Leave a Comment
Demonoid Open For Registration June 2009!
03
June
othersna

The title is not a typo. I know from reading the article at FileNetworks (a fine blog) that Demonoid is open for registration as of today, June 3, 2010. The recent opening of Demonoid for open registrations brought  back fond memories of a year ago today.

A year ago today, I was a big user of public trackers and indexers such as The Pirate Bay, Isohunt, and Mininova, all of which were fully operational for a year ago. I tried to be a good user and seed back 1:1, and even participated in the forums, even though it seemed out of the millions of people using public trackers, a very small percentage posted in the forums. I was vaguely familiar with private trackers, but back then I thought you had to personally know someone who used private trackers to get into one. I certainly had no knowledge of any private tracker except for Demonoid. Back then the only torrent blog I read regularly was TorrentFreak, which is and was heavily slanted towards the use of public trackers. But they did have articles about Demonoid, and would mention how they would open for registration every few months, for only a few days at a time. In May 2009 they opened on a weekend and I missed it. After that, I would log into Demonoid daily hoping to catch them open for registration and that day occurred a year ago in June 2009. At that point, yours truly became a member of his first private tracker!

Now Demonoid could be nicknamed “baby’s first private tracker.” It does not keep track of ratio using a passkey system but on a somewhat  inaccurate method comparing finished torrents with the IP associated with it. Although no one can be disabled for low ratio, it does measure your ratio, and you could use a Demonoid ratio proof when applying for another tracker.  The speeds there are slower there because the tracker is semi-private. That is, non-members can access the torrents on the tracker and therefore a user may be reluctant to contribute a lot of bandwidth to all the non-members downloading from the tracker. I know my seedbox provider forbids the use of the seedbox on public trackers or on Demonoid.

But the best thing about Demonoid is the extensive content. To this day I have found really rare stuff, like episodes of TV shows cancelled many years ago, or movies which are unavailable commercially (except for a worn VHS tape on sale at eBay).  They also have a huge collection of pictures, e-books and comics.

Here’s some more memories of June 2009. I had posted requests for several rare movies I was looking for on public tracker forums to no avail. Within a few days of posting my requests at Demonoid, the kind members pointed me towards Cinemageddon and Karagarga, two trackers I had not heard of. CG had open registrations, but where could I find the KG invite? Demonoid also had an invite section, but I mainly saw a lot of requesting, and not a lot of offers, especially for the ones which looked interesting.  They did have a thread about the IRC interview for what.cd, which led me to my membership there, but I was still stuck when it came to getting into the trackers which were invite-only. But after digging through those invite threads there was a recruitment thread for The Pirate Society. I did a Google search, and I found a review article at Filesharefreak (another fine blog) which basically told me TPS was where I needed to be.  It was and still is.

So anyone reading this article who is on the outside looking in at the private tracker world, do yourselves a favor. Sign up for Demonoid while it’s still open.

Category: BitTorrent, The Pirate Society  One Comment
Latest TPS News
25
May
othersna

An acknowledgement to staffer “mib” for his suggestion to periodically write about new happenings at TPS for those who read the blog but are not members. Perhaps this update can persuade some of you non-members to take that interview and join us.

1) Creation of a new section, “Broadsides” – Described as a “no holds barred” discussion section for adults, this area is NSFW and unmoderated.  Members need to PM an admin for the password as it is kept separate from the rest of TPS. Enter at your own risk!

2) Check out the busy “News and Politics” section. Believe it or not, people whose political views run the gamut from left to right post here and engage in spirited, yet civil discussions. I have yet to see a flame war erupt there…

3) The Pirate Academy for new recruits is up and running, to help those n00bs learn how the private tracker world works.

4) Check out the Library with hundreds of tutorials, guides, and how-to’s for just about anything BT and Computer related

5) Also the Tracker Review section gives you a blow-by-blow breakdown of hundreds of trackers, everything you need to know to plan your roadmap.

6) New contests and games are in the works.

7) Am I forgetting something? Oh how can I forget the Invite Section? You see, TPS is so much more than an “Invite Forum.” But anyway, we have permission from  Blackcats Games to take their name off the “No Movement List,” and therefore invites to BCG may be offered at TPS. But if you are thinking of joining TPS just to make a beeline to the Invite Section, think again. We highly encourage new members to get active and get to know people so that the established members  can trust them with invites.

Category: The Pirate Society  2 Comments
Adjectives To Avoid When Describing Trackers
02
May
othersna

As a tip to users  new to TPS and the private tracker world, I write this article to try to discourage the use of three words used to describe trackers. The three words are “level,” “elite,” and “dream.” Lest anyone accuse me of hypocrisy, I will fully confess I was guilty of using those three words early in my torrent career, mainly because I didn’t know better. Before I joined TPS, most of my knowledge of how the private tracker world worked was from reading public blogs and forums and the good members and staff  of TPS guided me into a better way of thinking.  TPS serves to not only provide a community of people with shared interests, but also to help educate those new to the private tracker world.

Let’s start with “levels.” At TPS we really discourage categorizing trackers by “levels.” The “level” concept originates from the trader world, where an invite to a tracker was treated as a commodity, with a “level” designated to give the trader an idea of how much the invite was “worth,” either for trading for an invite to another tracker, or worse, for money. The “level” was based purely on a combination of how hard it is to get into the tracker, and how badly traders wanted to get into it. The level designated said nothing about how appropriate a tracker would be for a potential user and had the unfortunate side-effect of driving up the desirability of trackers based purely upon the difficulty of getting in. I have mentioned that the concept of “level” is so passé now that the original source of the level list has gotten rid of it.

“Elite” is another term that should be avoided in describing trackers. Yes, there are good trackers with lots of good content and a strong community, but comparing trackers to each other is problematic as one runs into an “apples and oranges” situation. Unfortunately, the “elite” description is usually used to describe those trackers which are a combination of:  difficult to get in, publicity shy, and desirable to obtain. The unfortunate side-effect here is that those trackers hit with the “elite” label are attracting the absolute wrong type of people to them.  I will give a really striking example of a wrong mentality. At a “trader’s forum,” I read a post where a trader was requesting an invite to a trance music tracker, a video game tracker, and a magic tracker (huh???). Want to guess what element tied the three trackers together?

Finally, we get to “dream.” The context here is usually in a tracker review thread where someone posts a comment saying that the tracker is his “dream tracker,” followed by a more pitiful “someday I will be a member there.” That not-so-subtle request for an invite is more thinly veiled than Salome at the end of her dance.  Now I already said I was guilty of using the term “dream tracker” in my early torrenting life and I even used the term in my first blog article here. Let me also say I am currently very active at what was my “dream tracker” and hope that I am an asset to them.  I currently regret I described what is now one of my favorite trackers in such a fashion.  The reason the words “dream tracker” is a red flag, is that it raises suspicions about the motive of the person writing it. Does the person want to get into this tracker for the wrong reasons, such as a desire to enter an “elite” and “high level” tracker?

Category: The Pirate Society  One Comment
An Outstanding Introduction
19
April
Castagnety

Othersna edit:  At TPS the first post by new members is an Introduction post. This is an outstanding introduction posted by a new member, Ocean,  a few months ago, and forwarded to me for blog submission by Castagnety.

* * *

Well, how do I do that now, my dear? I am not a native english speaker. I don’t know how to talk like a pirate like some awesome members here (truly, because I don’t even know what ‘ahoy’ means for crying out loud). And last but not least, back in high school, my grade in literature barely passed the average note.

Besides, I myself am not outstanding either. In life, I’m a normal person, an average guy. Online, I’m not an IT guru, or some awesome hacker like geohot for example. I’m just a guy in front of my laptop, surfing things, googling stuffs, and yes, torrenting too.

It all started out almost 15 years ago, the day I had my first computer as a reward for being able to get into a good high school (well only good, not the best) all by myself. And there I was, starting my days of file sharing. Well, back in 1996, stuffs like CD-ROM were too luxurious, I had to be content with some 1,44M Floppy to exchange some Dos games with my classmates. Games like Aladdin, Lionking are still vivid on my mind. For a game less than 1.44M, the video quality was pretty darn good in compare to huge games today which requires Gigas of HDD and RAM as well. Back then, we shared not only games but programs too of course. I remember stuffing dozens of Floppy disks into boxes to go get a version of MS Office and Windows 3.1.
A few years passed, there go the day I got to upgrade my PC with a CD-ROM Drive and with that my system changed its life to something more graphical we call Windows 95. Life was easier from that day on as I got to get rid of bunches of fragile 1.44M disks.

However it was not until 2000 that I could get my hand on the thing we all call Internet. Before that, I only read about that in papers and how it is rapidly growing and it will change our life, etc… Unfortunately, it was not as fast as I imagined. On a dial-up 28.8 or 56Kbps line, your life can not change very fast, my friend. Sometimes, in my 3h online at night, almost half of it was waiting to get connected and frustrating for being disconnected. Nevertheless, during the surfing and suffering, I heard of a guy whose name is Napster. People told one to another how awesome he was to create something that helped him share his homework or some other stuff in his computer to his friends apparently on the other end of the world (otherwise, who would wait on a dial-up connection to get something instead of getting out of his chair and run to his mate’s house to get the stuffs?). However, that’s beside the point. The point is, he made something that helped him give something to someone in any place that had a computer and a dial-up connection (to save server disk space for a better environment, I will call it internet hereafters). After that day, not only his homework was shared through internet to his friends, but also a song he liked, a game he found cool, etc… So… despite slow internet, I jumped on this boat immediately, and there the world was mine. Songs I’d never get a chance to listen to otherwise, things I thought I’d never have a chance to watch it again. They were all there, waiting for me. From here, I started to have a slightest idea what P2P is.

However, all that sharing stuffs I mentioned were just a small part of what I’ve acquired since the day I have a PC. Getting to know what a computer is and every part of it is very interesting for a guy like me (who unfortunately never ended up making money out of it anyways). Had Linux been available to me that day instead of Windows, my life would have been much better. Simply because I stuffed into my head everything ppl talked about windows and how to survive it, how to endure it…
Most importantly, the internet paved my way to a place where I can share things which I’d be much more hesitant in real life, a community of anonymous people. There I can talk about everything; I can open up myself without feeling shy. The Internet became a training school where I can practice myself how to talk to people, how to react to their behaviours… I joined a local community where I read tons of interesting discussions about things in life, where I realized there are a lot of people who want to share the same thing as I do. I got to meet a lot of nice people. We organized occasional meetings which we called “offline”. It’s a very interesting feeling when you meet for the first time people that you’ve known for a while. Confusion over whether we should call that person by his real name or his nickname, Surprise over the look of certain persons when it did not look like we imagined… One cool thing was that every time after we had gone to “offline”, we talked about it again when we’re back online. There were comments, muses, ideas… some of them we could even have said during “offline” but we did not . Well… that’s what an online community about, and that intrigues me since then.

Time passed, things changed, it was fun while it lasted, we moved on… but the Internet is still there, growing, expanding to every single cell of our lives.
I moved abroad it so it only made sense that my reach to the online community should be more internationally. One obstacle though, the language. However, language was just a minor issue. Difference in culture; difference in living style; and in thinking… those were the hard part to fit in. Although the internet has a very large resource to make it up to you, it does not seem enough, especially when you’re into something that’s not your specialty.

Of course, when we are at this timeline, Napster was history, even Kazaa or the like of it. A new power must have risen of course. And so I heard of something called Bit torrent. To be honest, my first experience was not the best. I could not download a single byte for days and had no clue how to fix it. So I gave up and went to something more user-friendly and what could be friendlier than some kind of animal like a donkey or a mule? However, terrified by the infection of viruses over P2P, and downloading had never been my main interest, I dropped it there. I made my return to file sharing right on time when torrenting started to mature or probably because I was more prepared to get to know more about it. Well… how I could not know when people talk about it more than once to my ears to make me realize I might miss out something there if I skipped it. So I crawled from one place to another, grabbing every little bit of what bit torrent is. From public trackers, to semi-private one, then higher and higher. I think I should mention many good souls, who have helped me to get to where I want to, but I don’t want to ruin their discretion without asking them first.

Nevertheless, those were only small stops along the road as I haven’t found a place where I can settle. There was one that good, but not so friendly to be with. One that was great and kind of friendly but they were at too high of a level for me to be able communicate without feeling bad about myself…

Out of nowhere, a sudden need of research brought me here. Not sure of what I was searching, so I looked. Certain articles of the blog interested me, one impressed me, inspired me get to know more about you, about this community. A lot of things in the blog entry I’ve read make me feel like I could be myself in this community like many of you have been. So I hope this place could be the one where I can stay and share a part of my ordinary life with.

I don’t know the pirate way or the outstanding way to say it but I’d like to say that I’m glad to be on board with you

Category: The Pirate Society  Leave a Comment
TPS <3’s Monopoly
18
April
ryedawg

Families have been torn apart by it. Life long friendships have been ended because of it. Heck, even wars have been started over it. But damn if it isn’t really fun too! So what’s this powder-keg o’ fun that’s caused so much heartache through the years? It’s Monopoly! Yes , that legendary board game created by Charles Darrow all those years ago. Recently at TPS we seem to have re-discovered this wonderful game and it’s been mostly good times all around. Mostly, hehe.

A little over a month ago we had an enterprising new recruit hop on board the ship, ContraMundi13. Ole Contra made like a good young pirate and introduced himself and then went about getting to know his fellow shipmates in the usual ways. He’d post here and there and even jump into IRC. Well, it was to be IRC that would put him on his way to making his mark here at TPS. A few of us were in the main channel chatting away like we always do, when the subject of Monopoly came up. Well it didn’t take long for young Contra to step up with the fine idea of a weekly TPS Monopoly tournament! Awesome we all thought, but will the enthusiasm actually last and will this thing take off? Sure enough people stayed stoked and the first tournament was an overwhelming success. A bit chaotic, but good fun nonetheless!

So for two straight weeks now, pirates from all the over the world have gathered every Friday/Saturday (depending on their timezone) to roll the dice, buy houses and do our best to bankrupt our fellow crew members. The past couple of tournaments have shown us that there’s a hearty little group of regulars that are on board to make sure that this thing keeps its momentum and stays popular for the foreseeable future.

Our monopoly tourneys are good times, but don’t be fooled. They can get pretty competitive as well. And this past week saw the first bad blood develop over a monopoly gone wrong! It was drama on the high seas and the e-fists were flying right and left. I’m not going to mention who was involved, but let’s just say that a couple of TPS regulars propbably won’t be on each other’s Christmas card lists anymore. It was like watching a soap opera unfold right there in IRC. It basically went down like this…

|Angry pirate|: you cheated!
phdman: no I didn’t
|Angry Pirate|: wahhhhhhh, you totally did!
|Angry Pirate|: the computer gave you properties, it likes you better and that’s not fair!
phdman: wtf?
|Angry pirate|: shut up! And stop cheating you cheating cheater!
phdman: dude, chill.
|Angry pirate|: CHILL?? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CHILL WHEN YOU PUT A HOTEL ON BALTIC AVE???
phdman: well I could have put a hotel on your mom.
|Angry pirate|: I WILL END YOU AND YOUR HOTEL BUILDING CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY!
AColdMod: ok children, calm down back there or I’ll turn this pirate ship right around!
|Angry pirate|: Fine then, but im totally taking my toys and going home.
phdman: here, have a grape-flavored apple.

So yeah, that may not be verbatim, but it’s a pretty close approximation of how it went down. We should have seent this coming though. Because along with those intense “monopoly highs” that so many seasoned veterans have come to depend on, there are also those horrible lows. The monopoly board is a cruel mistress and she’ll turn around and stab you in the back just when you think you’ve got her in the palm of your hand. I mean, it’s a little known fact that World War II was started after Hitler found out that Poland snuck a couple of extra hotels onto Marvin Gardens while he wasn’t looking.

Ah well, it seems some good has ultimately come out of this fracas though, because it’s highlighted the need for some ground rules. These are being worked on as we speak and they’ll probably be in place by next week’s tourney. Sure, we won’t think of every rule by then, but hopefully we’ll have enough in place to make sure things go a bit smoother.

I know it’s early days yet, but it looks like TPS is well on its way to becoming a finely-tuned monopoly machine! If you want more info feel free to either PM myself or ContraMundi13 and we’ll gladly hook you up. See you Friday

Category: The Pirate Society  2 Comments
Privacy and the Internet
02
March
othersna

There have been some threads within TPS about privacy and the internet, whether it be about one’s right to privacy on the internet, or about protecting one’s privacy on the internet. This blog article is about some people who decided to forego their privacy on the net, with consequences. Read on.

One of my office staff told me that she and her son are very close and that they have very open lines of communication. Her son told her that he was feeling down because a friend since childhood, who I will call “Cody,” was becoming distant to his circle of friends since he got a new girlfriend. A little while later, my staff member, “Mom” was browsing on her son’s MySpace page since she had permission to do so, and found a link to Cody’s MySpace page. Well Cody, on his MySpace page, was writing about his relationship with his girlfriend. The only thing is, it read like an erotic romance novel, with graphic descriptions of their lovemaking. I assume Cody’s girlfriend, who has access to the MySpace page, must approve of the stories about all of their sexual experiences. Let me add that the two of them are high school kids. Call me old-fashioned, but to me your privacy is something that when taken away from you, is gone forever. IMO, graphic stories about your sex life, posted next to your real name and pictures of you and your girlfriend, don’t belong on accessible internet pages.

The next story involves another one of my office staff, who on her Facebook page wrote about a co-worker. (The “Mom” in the above paragraph.) She wrote some derogatory remarks claiming that “Mom” comes to work with alcohol on her breath (untrue), and then afterward her friends added their own comments. This staff member unfortunately forgot that she added “Mom’s” son as a friend, who read all of the remarks about his mother, and was understandably upset. He told his mom, which led to it getting back to me, and I was very concerned since these remarks reflected upon my workplace and could hurt the reputation of our office. Now some companies will terminate any employee who writes negative material about their work on blogs, but I gave this staff member a formal written warning, and made sure she understood her job was over if anything about her work showed up on the internet. Note that unlike this article, this staff member’s Facebook page contained her real name and pictures.

So, my lesson for the day is, assume what you write on the internet on a blog or personal page can be considered public information if you have anything posted which is personally identifiable. Assume what you write can be eventually read by your schoolmates, your co-workers/employers, your future employers, and even law enforcement officials.

Category: BitTorrent, Filesharing, The Pirate Society  One Comment
Decline of the Bittorrent Empire
28
February
Mehcetylene

Bittorrent, which had started shortly after the new millennium as a means for peers to share files amongst each other (peer-to-peer), has grown to become a culture for its users and, for those who choose to embrace its secret-society-like underworld, an empire. I am referring, of course, to the empire of private trackers and the unofficial hierarchy that results from such a social structure. Consider the passion membership in these private trackers inspires in people and how this, in turn, influences each person’s association and social standing in the general community of bittorrent file-sharers. Yet as this civilization of piracy prospers, the philosophy under which bittorrent was created, that peers should share what they have with one another, becomes less and less the foundation of its cities. Instead, that foundation shifts towards friendships, rivalries, alliances, rank, and (at its worst) money.

Social relationships and networks, that had originated as the byproduct of having a private community in which members must be trusted, is increasingly becoming the point around which the people’s piracy revolves. While this is often beneficial to the community—such as in cases of friendships and rivalries—it adds the risk of people sharing or holding back based on how their actions will affect their social status. Sharing becomes controlled by who and what can increase a person’s rank; rank becomes determined by the haves and have-nots; and whether a person has or has-not limits the society to which he is confined. Influence is the key that anyone aspiring to get anywhere requires. Ideally, a candidate for membership should qualify depending on how well he can contribute to that community’s needs, but because influence is integral to a person’s advancement it becomes a game of politics. Sharing is reduced to an investment in hopes of gaining something at a later time as opposed to everyone sharing for the sake of sharing—Ephialtes as opposed to Robin Hood. Sometimes file-sharing is removed entirely from the picture in cases where people suck up and make promises of support to establish their relationship with persons in position of power. This can be commonly seen in the form of First Line Support and Staff common to a number of different trackers that have no apparent duties. They will be glorified idlers that are active in social discussions (especially with important people of places they aspire to gain membership), but when it comes to helping people those support members are curiously absent or useless on the subject. Consequently, this leads to theseparvenus, or unqualified persons, being members of other trackers and repeating the process. This would naturally lead to two groups into which members can be categorized, those that ask how their trackers can help them and those that ask how they can help their trackers, except when one additional element comes into play: money.

Historically, the act of charging for services that should be gotten by the merits and affections of both parties alone is symbolized best as prostitution, where enters the whores and patrons of whores as the third group. There can be no denying the financial needs involved in the various operations of a tracker (or forum for that matter), but the controversy lies in those organizations accepting donations beyond the costs specific to those operations. Every organization is responsible for its own budget, and if it is not prepared to pay its own costs in cases of lack of donations then it becomes an organization designed with the expectation of money coming in. Then there are those trackers that charge for membership or have tried that business model and failed such as a now defunct 0-day tracker that attempted a sponsorship program late last year or a TV tracker that charged $24 USD per year for membership. In either case, sharing becomes pay-to-leech instead of the aforementioned sharing for the sake of sharing. Organizations using this pay-to-leech structure are not always clear as their monthly budget is not open to the public, nor can the exact financial responsibilities be determined as some things such as topsite access costs (in itself frowned upon by Scene parties) are not verifiable. As for the patrons of such organizations, the intent is the defining factor. A donation by definition is something given as a gift and not as payment for services received, but there are those trackers and forums that “reward” donations with such things as upload credit, VIP status, or invites. This can be argued to be a sort of counter-gift except that gifts are voluntary, and the rewards are invariably given to everyone who has given their gift. With that in mind, these rewards and their significance must be examined individually. Upload credit allows the person to download that amount without first having to share that amount, contributes to the requirements for promotion within the tracker, and raises the ratio some put so much stock in. VIP or Donor status has the effect of elevating members above the status of their peers or raises their social standing among site-specific benefits. Last of the common perks of donors is the bonus invites rewarded by some trackers which is ordinarily reserved for members that have achieved promotion by merits of contribution such as power users. These trackers do not necessarily seek profit, but notice how all of these rewards can raise the influence level that has been established as so important to those whose priorities rest in personal advancement. This puts both the organizations and the donors’ intentions into question as the donation simply for the sake of supporting something the donor believes in is made complicated by the resulting rewards.

As these problems and others arise in the community-at-large, the Bittorrent Empire moves continually towards collapse. More trackers rise and fall every year; more alliances shift and enemies made; more established sites are put into question because of money. Trackers themselves become trophies and status symbols rather than means of sharing among one another, while sharing increasingly becomes trading. Consider how many people request what are sometimes known as “*** trackers” without contributing to the communities they are already a part of, how many request invites to certain lossless trackers that do not listen to lossless music, and how many request an established magictracker that probably cannot even shuffle a deck of cards. The attention of bittorrent users are on their personal standing rather than their personal security and the good of the community. Think of how many people would reach out to unknown new members to a community versus how many people would greet established bittorrent members in hopes of gaining favor. At the capitol of commerce, which will remain unnamed because of some of the good that comes of it, invites are given and requested without regards to how their recipients can—if at all—contribute to the places in which they are admitted. If things like these continue, the road being paved is clear, and although the dismal future has not been set in stone yet, the populace will have to examine this structure and weigh heavily the toll it is taking on its way of life, its meaning, its culture. Those persons who have gained influence and those of us that are able must either take responsibility and change its course, or watch as the community we care about falls apart.

Category: BitTorrent, Filesharing, The Pirate Society  One Comment
A Tale of little old me
24
February
sanga

Well today fellow pirates i’d like to tell you a long tale about the best community there is out there, and how they clubbed together to keep me around.
It all started just over a year ago when i first joined the legendary TL, at the time i was new to the BitTorrent world and TL was the zenith of torrenting, as time passed i realised there were other sites that were just as good but this time around i know there is no better site and community than TL, however i digress. Back when i first joined TL i started off not knowing anyone in the IRC and just talked around for a few days making friends and then got invited after a few days after making a banner for a users site. After that i eagerly signed up and started browsing, i started like any new user with just building a small ratio up to have a little buffer, this however didnt work out great on my 80kb/s connection. I was barely scraping the minimum 0.4 ratio and i hadnt even started downloading files i wanted. As it happened i joined on the 6th of feb, a week before my birthday, not only that but our home connection was getting an upgrade to 20mbit fibre line just 2 days later. My birthday came and went and as any 17 year old i recieved a big bundle of cash, naturally i jumped at the chance to get TL vip and be one with the community in which i had idolised, and rightly so as it turned out. And the good times kept rolling from there, i was an IRC regular and built up strong friendships with some really amazing guys there, as time has gone on ive become such good friends with some of those guys i’d talk to them about just about everything.
Recently (4-5 months) financial problems have struck me and i managed to get by with my TL vip just in the december run up, as any of you who visit the TL irc will know i am the only person that purposely keeps their ratio at a specific number (0.007) and has have always had the joke of being Bond, Sanga Bond. That is a target ive been hitting since about june and its always good to jest about it in the IRC. As my money worries hit me however this joke has begun to die as the fear of a ban faced me. Today i recieved a warning saying that i would be auto banned if i couldnt get my ratio up. I was mentioning this in the IRC and knew my time had come but would remain active in the IRC as i had too many friends there to give up even if i couldnt stay on the site. This was when i saw the strength of the community and everything they could do, they were truly fantastic and i appreciate everything they did for me. I had multiple staff members offer to extend that time so i could get my ratio up, a friend put a thread on the forum asking for people to help me out because i needed it, i got people offering me seedbox places on gbit lines with scene access torrents to get my ratio up within the 5 day limit. It showed the strength of the friendships there and really made me appreciate the power of a real community. Then i was given a sizeable donation to pay for my VIP status, i tried to refuse but it was no use. If anyone out there wants a good community, you’ll find no better than that of TL. I’ve been there through a year and hope to see my time there last longer into the future. Everyone there clubbed together to help me, i wasnt anything special there just an avid community member with some good mates. I now owe them all everything and its shown me that piracy may be illegal, it may be socially frowned upon, it may have bad labelsattached to those that do it but one thing it does very well is build community we all stand strong together knowing that we fight a common enemy and if one of us falls we’ll do whatever we can to help them. For this i want to say a big thank you to the TL community and will continue to be there for every single one of those legends that hang around in the IRC, from the new to the old they’re all amazing and they’re all there for each other whenever they are needed. From this outside this tale may seem frivelous, it may seem trivial or any other such word you can think of. But to me it means everything, half of my life is devoted to communities on the internet, the toher half to the real world with my friends and my family, and i dont think many of them wouldve easily given me that much money for another year with them but the folks at TL did and to that i raise my glass in thanks and sign off for this blog post.
Sanga

Category: Abstract, BitTorrent, The Pirate Society  One Comment
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