In the 1600’s the crews of renegade pirate vessels had not lead a previous life of education and luxury. They had little religious background and many had criminal record. They believed in a heaven and hell with the corosponding names Fiddler’s Green and the Devil Jonah’s Locker. Pirates did not write out the word L if the letter I was present because the way they wrote, both letters looked the same. So the Devil was……Devi. Jonah was the evil angel to all sailors, pirate or otherwise from the biblical story where Jonah was considered an unlucky sailor and was cast overboard, left for dead. The superstitious sailors of that era had developed a detailed account for the Devil Jonah and his locker, full of evil souls….

One of the most renown facts of many famous pirates was the concept of treasure…and treasure maps. Do you find it odd that pirates who loved treasure so much, would leave it buried on random islands here and there? Actually it is your perception of treasure that is not in align, and it leads you astray. You envision the gold, the jewels, the coin but these things had no value to a pirate. They had no intention of buying a house, a new car, and pc upgrades. Their life was on the seas, where was represented freedom, an element that society would not grant them on land.

I’ve seen it said that TPS is where to go if you want invites….invites to all the important sites. You better tighten your saber recruit, you are a little ‘loose in the shoe’. The downloaded data of a torrent IS the gold, the jewels, and the coin, but the real treasure here is your membership at TPS. The thing in the 1600’s that pirates treasured the most, was the camaraderie, the freedom, the rum, and a woman. With these in place, what need had they with coin? You can download more movies than you can watch in a lifetime, more music to add to the pile you already don’t listen to… filling teraquads of drive space. And yet, you are not a pirate. The pirates plundered the riches of France and England, for the lifestyle. Without the chase, the lawlessness, there would be no excitement, no journey, no cause….no adventure…if copying all media were legal we would just meet each other on google.

There are two types of torrenters….those looking for data…..and then there are Pirates. You can find just about any data you want with google and/or a decent public tracker. You come here….to be…..a pirate. And its not always about the coin, mate. Sometimes its about the good chats, the good reading, and helping others besides your hard drives.

Invites here will lead you to the coin, but don’t walk past the real treasure. Put your good eye on these forums and you may discover why Roger was so jolly…and…perhaps…..Davy won’t have room in his locker for you

-Alysen Ravakk

What is the real power of bittorrent? Is it the fact that we can get blazingly fast download speeds? How bout the fact that it’s completely decentralised and thus that much more difficult for the copyright gestapo to shutdown? Maybe, it’s the awesome communities that have developed throughout the private tracker world? I know! It has to be that fact that it’s free, the ability to get something for nothing right? Well actually it’s none of these. They’re all well and good in their own right, and each incredibly beneficial to all of us. But none of them is the real power behind bittorrent. BT’s real power is in your head. It’s in you, it’s in me and it’s in anyone who consumes content.

In order to really get this concept we have to examine why we watch movies, read books, listen to music and consume content in general. We do so because that content elicits an emotional response within us. Movies make us laugh, they make us think and some even make us cry. The music we listen to inspires us and the books we read give us the freedom to be almost anything we want. Regardless of the content choice, one thing is for sure. It’ll make us feel something. And, it provides a little bit of an escape, something that most people in this day and age desperately need.

As kids, we are totally in touch with our imaginations and we can do anything. A cardboard box becomes a fort or the ground below is molten rock and you’ll die if you touch it! That set of Mom’s old couch cushions can be made into a rocket that’ll fly you to the farthest reaches of outer space! We could do it all, and without even trying. But eventually we grow up and, as adults, we lose that ability. Now, the closest things we have to help us get back there are the movies we watch, the songs we listen to and the books we read.

Recently, I’ve had the privilege of joining a tracker that’s helped me get back in touch with my imagination and, in turn, my childhood. In case you don’t know, Cartoon Chaos is a niche tracker that is, as the name states, dedicated to tracking animated content. Recently I’ve snatched a number of series packs that allowed me to be a kid again. Some of these shows I haven’t seen in easily two decades, so it was quite an awesome experience to get my hands on them. While they’re playing, all the pitfalls of adulthood seem to melt away. It’s been a rough year, and being able to rekindle those feelings was exactly what I needed.

That experience is why we download. It’s the joy and memories that those torrents bring. When I double-click that episode of Thundercats, I’m back in pre-school and life is simple again. That’s the true power of bittorrent. So to Cartoon Chaos and mkdgraham I say thanks and keep up the good work. Let’s keep those memories coming.

-ryedawg

Historically…piracy at high sea was most in effect in three time periods known as (1) The Buccaneer Years of 1650-1680 (2) The Pirate Round of the 1690’s (3) The Privateers of 1716-1726. The later of the three were mainly unemployed military left over from the War of the Spanish Succession. While the middle of the three focused mainly on merchant lines and often involved long voyages to stalk their target. The Buccaneer years involved piracy on any target unlucky enough to cross the path of a pirate vessel. And thus, three pirate classifications exist.

Torrent sites tend to be classified, if not officially at least mentally, in catagorization of genre and in some cases their difficulty to obtain invitation. Torrent sites can be General in nature or specialized in media such as Music Only, Standard Definition Television Shows, High Definition Television Shows, Porn, Games, Movies, or combinations of such. But the division and sometimes ranking via their invitation difficulty…is it all hype? Are the sites with the highest difficulty level in obtaining access truely the greatest troves of all? If you’re going to have access it may as well be to the best eh? Or have you…perhaps…confused one attribute…with another….

January 1718 off the coast of North Jamaica, an unbelievably fast vessel boasting three main sails and two tether racks, armed with 22 guns…and worse…long oars. The vessel could maintain 8 knots in a dead wind. And on this day the superiority of the Concord had laid waste to the mains of a British light corsair and plundered the treasure. Odd thought the crew, as no coin or gold were present on the corsair, and they were ordered to return only with the ship’s canons and ammunition. You can never have to many eh? Withdrawing the long oars from their socketed ports, Edward Teach had the oars stored for emergency use, and replaced with the salvaged canons. Thus creating a 40 gun dreadnaught he named…..Queen Anne’s Revenge.

When obtaining access to a “known” famous or “hard to obtain invitation” site, for the purpose of status, stature, or to become the envy of your peers/enemies – the obtained access only has a personal value for whatever amount it is worth to how you feel. It means very little in the way of piracy, or it’s actual value to you as an asset in your arsenal of media access. Edward Teach’s crew had a short sighted interpretation of what had REAL value. Edward had an ability to look beyond the coin, while still keeping a sharp eye ON the coin. Edward didn’t want to win, he wanted landslide. Absolute force. So the coin would come easy, and at little or no cost of life to his crew…..his mates. The true value and power of a pirate is measured in what he “can” lay his hands on, and has the means to do so…with no risk to him or his mates. Not by becoming a status symbol like some celebrity. And to this end, the best sites are not always the hardest to obtain invites, and by no means the easiest. The true value of a site can only come from sailing into port, and investigating, making your own assessment at to what a particular site could mean for and to…you. Do not immediately dismiss the potential of a site because you have not seen it listed on a top 50 list somewhere. Or on a list of being one of THE most impossible to obtain. Sometimes the most obscure, least known about sites, contain a wealth of potential, and it’s lack of notoriety comes from your good fortune of perfect timing….in early on “the next big thing”…

You can’t let articles, and other’s opinions tell you WHAT a good site is. It is all personal perception….your personal perception. And you can only obtain this by getting in there yourself and checking them out. Even the little ones. But don’t set sail without maps! Uncharted!! *shivers* While your crew are splitting the tankards, point your browser over to the Tracker Review Section, and map your options. Then back to The Quarter Deck or your Wheelhouse sections to plot your course with some invites.

Walking into a new port such as TPS and demanding maps to the most treacherous waters in the ocean will gain you as much respect as an untrained land lubber, as it sounds kinda like something a clueless person would do. Avoid that. Start off small, get to know your tps mates, post around a bit, participate. Pirates are wary of strangers. Walking in talking of “status” sites for the purpose of a “feather in the hat” and you may get a few oars broken. Give it a little time, you’ll soon see past the coin, and may just find an additional 18 cannons in your holds. It seemed to work for Blackbeard….

-Alysen Ravakk

In September of 1622 a Spanish galleon sailing from Havana Cuba north to the Americas with a 27 ship escort was travelling through waters know to be the heaviest concentration of pirates in the world. The crew was nervous and being superstitious they feared the appearance of The Ravenous, a 30 gun ex British ship now manned by the dead. A ghost ship that rode on the powers of a storm commanded by Devi Jon himself. Or so they were told in the taverns back in Havana. They were told to stay completely on the course indicated on a charted map they were given, and they would avoid such misfortune. But on the tenth of September, all went wrong. In the span of just two hours the skies went from cloudless blue, to a hurricane that lasted 40 hours with thick sheets of rain obscuring all but the fire of canon from around them and the jolt of impact as their keel line was being blow to pieces. Some men jumped into the water to escape their fate while others attempted to keep the masts together and the main rigging tight but the constant bombardment of the hull was more than the Neusta Senora could take and she went down just south of Key West Florida taking with her the largest carry of precious metal ever recorded, even today the record stands. As the storm cleared almost half of the 28 ship armada had been decimated, and The Ravenous withdrawn into the dissipating storm…

One of the strongest assets available to a pirate is his access to maps and trusted sources of information. True pirates band into networks of solid and verified communication. This network is measured by an element known as, Reputation. On TPS reputation is not given, it is earned. And it comes faster for some, than for others. It is an element that is not as easy to measure as volume or distance. How does one truly measure trust? Is REP important on TPS? Only to you, and only if want it to be. It does not mean anything to anyone else….literally. “But” you say “my REP determines my rank and whether I can have this, or gain access to that”. No, YOU determine your rank. It can be anything you want it to be….and work for. REP is a measure of participation, involvement, sometimes honesty, integrity, and the ability to “fit in” and be a team player. Gaining REP by hiding from everyone and slinking in the shadows is not possible. No one cares how damn many sites you are a terajesus on or the fact that you have been into piracy since the Rusty n’ Eddies…you are new HERE and will need to work the system here properly. The system was put into place to provide a means of knowing you and creating trust between you and all relevant parties. When people just trust ANYbody, disastrous results can occur. As per our story, lets return once again….

On September 8th of 1622 a pirate ship commanded Wistlow Barton made port in Havana where he and his crew became very jolly with ale and even more jolly with women as there was plenty to go around. But on the next day hordes of sailors had landed and was thinning the supplies on the island….and the women. This frustrated Wistlow until he discovered it was a fleet of Spanish trade vessels in route to the Americas. Thinking fast, he and his senior officers concocted a story and began telling a tale loudly, as to be overheard by the sailors. When asked, Wistlow and his men told the story of The Ravenous….a ghost pirate ship just north of Cuba. Terrified, the sailors asked if there was any known way to avoid the area where an encounter was most likely. Wistlow gladly offered a map that showed a particular course that lead up to Key West Florida. The sailors gladly took the map back to their officers…and the tale. Wistlow had created a map that moved the ship into the coral reefs underwater at the Florida Keys, in hopes of thinning the numbers of the armada by nature, and then picking off the rest manually. But on the next day, unknown to Wistlow….a hurricane blew in from the Southeast. The men on the armada ships, thought Devi Jon (the Devil) himself had brought the storm when he raised The Ravenous.

If you ever hear of information from any pirate site, channel, or source that sounds crazy, unusual, unbelievable, or out of character…ask any ranking member of TPS to vouch for the truth. Either in forum or in IRC. Do not act on the information or agree to the information until you hear back from a TPS ranking member. Don’t be embarrassed, it is better to ask than to find out you’ve been talking to Wistlow Barton….

-Alysen Ravakk

In 1599 a group of merchants raised £68,373 to fund a charter for 15 years of trading rights from London to Bombay. This would create the largest trade route in existence which would stand for 200 years. A monopoly that caused envy and hate from every possible faction, race, country, and continent. The limits, power, and scope of this franchise grew with no opposition. Ports of Call for ships were important treaties. This was a period of time that the wrong ‘colors’ displayed in a port could start a war. So captains of ANY vessel had to know where his ship would and would not be welcome. The East India Trading Company actually purchased the rights to do business in any port they wanted. This created restocking and replenishing problems for any ship that needed certain ports to extend their range due to water and food replenishment yet was not on an agreement with the port. Ports required Bills of Lading as proof the Port of Call was authorized, and a Cargo Manifest was required to obtain a Lading Bill. There were however, dozens and dozens of Ports that were just absolutely out of the question for ships bearing the English colors. These harbors were often the safe replenishing zones of notorious pirate ships. This presented a problem to the Trading Empire, which needed some of the locations to extend it’s boundaries and range. Often the legitimate paperwork was moved from a proper ship, to a bogus one, not correctly bearing the proper colors, to gain access to the Ports of Call in pirate lanes.

Your ship can pull into any Port of Call in which you have a proper Bill of Lading acquired from having provided a sufficient Cargo Manifest. But if you are thinking about trading those Bills of Lading, your brain is as rusty as your hook. Invite trading absolutely negates and bypasses hundreds and thousands of man-hours that were spent to insure that a site and it’s members had some level of privacy and security. Sites have processes in place to monitor and regulate just WHO has access to view anything written in their forums or irc channels. The very act of trading site invites of torrent sites is probably the most offensive and malicious act that could be committed. If you ever suspect that invite trading has been conducted in a pirate forum or irc channel you frequent, take screenshots and private message a TPS admin so they can access the threat level and determine what action needs to be taken. A screen shot is a PRINT SCREEN button and paste to either MS PAINT or programs like Photoshop, save the file. Your willingness to actually do something about it, gives all of us strength and resolve. Such as in the case of Mani Busan. Oh, had I not mentioned him yet………

On March the 15th of 1610 in a Bengal auction yard, two pirate crew mates had been sent to purchase every bit of bamboo over 4 inches diameter for their ship the Kahn Sta (Unending Breeze) commanded by Mani Busan a Mongol who had been born into piracy by two pirate parents. While in the auction yard, the two crew mates overheard half of a trade deal (because they did not understand the language of the other party) in which goods would be on the Majjai (pirate ship). “How odd” they thought, “why would legit goods of a corporation be placed on a pirate skiff?”. They returned to the Kahn Sta with the bamboo and reported the story to Mani Busan, who took particular interest in the tale. He ordered full masts and underway, and off they slipped into the night. At the next port south, Lintin Island, Mani ordered planks pulled from the starboard railing to be placed on the deck at the port railing, and all starboard cannons to be hoisted up to the main deck, and spaced along the port rail. When they came into port they anchored to the right of the harbor, port side facing inward. Under the cover of darkness the Majjai pulled into the port at Lintin Island carrying a nice supply of British Soldiers sent to secure the port and make ready to receive defensive canons. The Kahn Sta unloaded all 32 of her two inch cannons. These highly accurate high penetration cannons were not made to sink ships, they were made to kill and leave a good ship intact for possession. The massacre only lasted 12 minutes. The British Military never set foot on Lintin Island.

You ever hear that story about the boy that cried wolf, but none were ever found, and the day a wolf WAS there, nobody believe the boy? Yeah well that crap doesn’t apply here. If you feel you have seen a trade happen, pop the screenshot off and pm the staff here at TPS. An ounce of prevention can cause two inches of cure….

-Alysen Ravakk

In 1699 a lone 200 ton vessel slipped across the water in the darkness of a moonless night, with a destination of Port Martinique. Upon arrival only one man disembarked, a very well dressed man of either great political power, or possibly from the House of Lords. But he was neither. For he was John Roberts…aka Black Bart. On the pier he moved about with purpose towards the trade tavern to negotiate supplies and fresh water. But while walking he noticed an inordinate amount of sailors and soldiers in uniform. Seeing a familiar face he pulled aside a dock worker and inquired, and so discovered the Spanish had two Galleons moored up on the outer piers that Bart had not seen. Turning to the skies he measured dusk, and made hast about his negotiations. Upon returning to his ship, the Royal Fortune, he ordered a third of the crew to move the supplies onboard, a third to load the port canons with ball and the starboard canons with grapeshot and chains, while the last third would rig the sails for Corsair maneuvers.

One of the most important elements to pirates were and always have been, their ships. In today’s computer age of piracy your ship, be it your personal computer or a seedbox, is your main and primary tool with which to operate your goals. Or is it? The aspects of 17th century ships were size, speed, firepower, and such. Your computer is rated in capacity of storage, transmission speed, and the ability to negotiate dozens or sometimes hundreds of torrents at a time consuming memory and processor. But will having all the tools at your disposal be enough? The Galleons in port were 75 small gun patrol vessels much like the ones sold by SavvySeed. A formidable addition to any pirate’s fleet. Ahhh I just love the smell of coconut in the Caribbean. Oh my, look over there….

“…over where mate?” “Speak surely!” said Bart. “There captain” the first mate pointing frantically “at two notch the twelve starboard”. Bart snapped the looking glass to his right a bit “Aye son of a bitch and we’re rigged for Corsair.” In the looking glass on the horizon of the dusk lit sky was an inbound British Ship-of-the-Line. 2,200 tons with a crew of 850 bearing 100 guns. Without collapsing the looking glass Bart stared into the sea pulling on his beard. “Full ahead, and forget Corsair, prepare for Cross Lateen” demanded Bart. “Surely”, thought the crew, “Bart didn’t intend to slap them in the face and then try to outrun them!”. At 100 yards and closing the Royal Fortune had the attention of the large British war ship. But the twelve mile per hour winds were not treating either kindly for speed. At fifty yards Bart yelled the order to cross the Lateens (a maneuver only a Brigantine ship could do due to the mast arrangement) and the forward sail pitched left while the rear sails pitched right. The Royal Fortune literally started to spin to the port in her own wake. Within 30 seconds the Royal Fortune was completely broadside to the perpendicular warship and fired all 15 starboard canons. Two sets of chains fired toppled the warship’s fore main mast snapping it twenty feet up and driving the entire rigging downward like a spear through three decks. While the grapeshot played hell on the fore deck crew. Bart yelled for Corsair, a maneuver that would take advantage of the Brigantine’s MUCH superior speed. The Royal Fortune crossed her own wake running towards Port Martinique ahead of the warship and held a port heading till the port side canons were at a flanking broadside. The warship, in pursuit, could bring nothing to bear. And was coming ever closer to a much larger problem. A main mast down and two Spanish Galleons inbound….Spain and England were in an argument over this port….did Bart know that?

The effects of adequate computer, seedbox, and transmission speeds are not always enough to produce the results desired by all pirates. Arriving new to a torrent tracker faces the pirate with the challenge of making the proper decisions on those first initial downloads. A few wrong decisions at the start can create a deficit that can be hard or impossible to correct. Some pirates employ the tactic of downloading everything and pray for a winner – the gambler. And there is the time honored wisdom of porn, if available, because you can’t go wrong there can ya? – the sage. You could of course study which types of torrents have the most “snatches” and document mentally what genre of torrents tend to be popular on that tracker, and possibly patterns, such as shows that a certain uploader “always” uploads on certain days, and you could stalk out these popular treats for the attack – the assassin. Or focus on the free leech items and seep a good buffer, then actually download torrents of interest later – the investor. Going into your ROUTE table at command line and changing the METRICS of your route path to bypass congested gateways, is a bit more than the average pirate is wanting, but setting a pair of seedboxes to work IP ranges in tandem is not out of the question. Your brain….the most powerful tool in a pirate’s arsenal.

-Alysen Ravakk

Around here where I live, the average citizen has access to ADSL, SDSL, Comcast Broadband via hybrid coax, DirecPC Satallite, Dial Up, and in rare instances, Fiber Optic.

But both DSL options are somewhat limiting on solid torrent activity. ADSL has slow upload speeds even with the best package and SDSL is just too dang expensive. Comcast started a warpath in April in my area of calling customers and threatening “Service Interruption” with their newly enforced Transfer Cap. DirecPC Satallite has always had FAP to limit transfers.

So in the month of April I have seen more and more local friends and customers drop their internet commitment to the lowest priced service and engage the service of seedboxes.

I don’t mean to be condescending but USA is not exactly “up to par” with the internet speed it offers their public. There are many many other countries that are much more liberal with service speeds. Capitalism says they are not going to give you one more kB/s unless they can figure out how to make a dollar from it. This attitude is choking and holding back the advancement of information flow in North America.

Europe on the other hand has been more frugal with the fast flow of data but after allowing the internet to develop and mature over ten years, they have finally decided to start regulation and law. Thats like watching a stream and waiting till it develops into a wild rapid river before you imply a dam. So now we see countries imposing Three Strikes You’re Out laws in regards to things such as torrenting.

I believe that up until these recent activities, seedboxes have mostly been used by that top percentage of super aggressive torrenters. The “Big Boys” if you will…And I feel that all of the recent events are going to drive even the most simple and common torrenter to seedbox service at some point in the future.

For North America it allows even a $14 a month ADSL user to aquire staggering ratios on private trackers while leaking the bounty to their personal computer via FTP at a leisure pace. Dropping their service to minimum financial cost allows more money to be spent on the seedbox.

And for Europe, they don’t need the speed but it surely offers decoy for the Three Strike rules being imposed.

I believe the future use of Seedboxes is about to skyrocket, and in two years become the next target anti warez factions.

-Alysen Ravakk

I have been here for almost 3 months and the reason I Joined TPS is because of the last Demonoid downtime. I was a refugee who knew basically nothing about private trackers and was perfectly happy using Demonoid alone. Then it happened….the second major downtime since we thought Demonoid was gone for good..I had put all my eggs in one basket ..and I was left out in the cold again.

Everyday after I woke up I’d check Demonoid and be welcomed by that damn greyscreen, then I began searching through public forums and search engines looking for something similar..within a few days I started hearing of places like TL, FTN, RevTT not knowing what these places had to offer or how to get in. They were just wrapped in secrecy and unlike demonoid obtaining an invite in a public forum was impossible.

So I regrouped….

I started searching google for P2P blogs, P2P forums, exclusive forums, anything that might set me off in the right direction. Then I chanced upon the FSF blog and the post of the day spoke about an invite forum called The Pirate Society so I read on, then I did an interview with mike3775 and got established here at my new home.

After following the rules, posting my first 30-40 posts I got my first invite….It was a general tracker like Demonoid but qualified as a Private tracker, and it provided me with similar options to my green demon, and I thought this private community may be on to something, so I continued to use the TPS forum. As my post count increased so did my addiction to TPS, in contrast my need for invites also decreased(along with my lingering thoughts of Demonoid) after I got a handful of choice invites I stopped checking Demonoid on a regular basis and the thought of that tracker fell from my mind.

I could have never thought torrenting could be would be so diverse and wide ranging If Demonoid hadn’t gone down, I would have never found TPS and I would have never lost my lingering apprehension that my Green Demon could go away at any second….If Demonoid had appeared a week after it disappeared I would be jumping for joy….

Nowadays at the news of Demonoids return my only thought is….Meh