BitTorrent Tracker Sends Takedown Request to Torrent Indexers
Written by Ernesto on April 06, 2008After being spammed with takedown request from several companies, ELiTE-TEAM, a French private BitTorrent tracker recently asked several torrent indexers to remove their torrents, and not to accept any new ones. Unfortunately their effort is doomed to fail.
In an email, sent to several of the bigger torrent sites, the administrator of ELiTE-TEAM writes:
“Lately we received more complaints from anti-piracy organizations on behalf of major companies, because some of our members post our torrents on your indexer. I take the freedom of you ask whether it is possible to remove all torrents related to my tracker, and not to accept new ones in the future.”
The administrator had already asked the members of his tracker not to post their torrents elsewhere, but this didn’t work out, as he writes: “We already put announcements on the tracker, but our +120,000 are not very co-operative.”
Most BitTorrent sites owners are more than familiar with handling takedown requests, however, these usually come from copyright holders or anti-piracy organizations, not fellow site admins.
Other than that, it is of course impossible to prevent torrents from being shared, since it is the whole purpose of filesharing. The only option to prevent people from spreading ELiTE-TEAM torrents is to take down the tracker.
ELiTE-TEAM, on the other hand, is simply trying to stay out the firing range of anti-piracy organization by showing that they are willing to cooperate with content owners. They even posted the takedown requests and removal logs on their disclaimer page. However, I doubt that sending takedown request to torrent indexers is the optimal solution.
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That’s a shame - I can understand indexers being pretty hostile to takedown requests from anti-piracy outfits but this guy’s just trying to protect himself, no threats, no lawyers, just a polite takedown request.
If I owned an indexer and got an email like that I’d respond to it immediately, the community should help each other out like this.
ELiTE-TEAM PWNed LoL
They shut down their site, at least on the front-page.
many french private torrent website do this, you have to pass by the full url to log-in … so too bad.
They were bribed.
Can ELiTE-TEAM not just delete the particular infringing torrent records from their tracker to nullify torrent files hosted on trackers other than their own?
Not if they were uploaded with more trackers added using the same hash.
But as long as their tracker is no longer tracking the copyrighted content then I don’t see how it could be an issue with the media companies, you’d just need to tell them ‘we’re not tracking that hash anymore, but other trackers are’.
Is it even possible to add trackers to a torrent file without altering the torrent hash?
I dunno, maybe I just don’t understand dis prop0r…
Don’t private trackers use a pass key..
So that even if the torrents are posted in other sites it’s kinda useless coz of passkey thing.. :)
Divide and conquer.
or, the ELiTE-TEAM admin needs to track down the people leaking the torrents and ban them… as blunt as this seems, if it’s the best way to help secure the site, so be it.
and @7: the hash is of the file(s) being shared; adding trackers to the torrent does not alter the file(s) themselves, so it would not change the hash.
They have taken their site down.
Babelfish (pretty bad)translation but you’ll get the drift:
After 2 years of passion and devotion to your service, the team of elite-team.net comes to decide the permanent closure of the site. The principal reason is the tragic disappearance of the one of our administrators there is 1 month, all the team was seriously affected by its disappearance, we decided to continue a time without him but, with final, the will is not there any more. The second reason is the general climate in the world of the division, which is increasingly deplorable and which do not give us any more the desire for continuing. We know that this decision is difficult but, we have reflects it maturely, we wish you a good wind on the fabric and we hope that you will include/understand our gesture and that you will support us in our pain. Thank you with all those which believed in us. Good continuation
The news looks useless now :D
@10, I understand the files have hash values, but don’t actual .torrent files have a specific hash that identifies that .torrent file to the tracker? Info Hash maybe?
Wish I understood BT a bit better… :s
No it only identifies the files as being a certain size and numbers it accordingly.
Like a MD5 or a SHA1.
FRANCE FTMFL
I don’t see what their problem is.
They can close down their own tracker(s), what else is there?
Torrent files on some other site, which refer to their dead tracker, that Isn’t Their Problem®.
Perhaps **AA said; “If you can get all the torrents related to your tracker (or most of them) removed, then we won’t sue you, we promise.
If you don’t do so, we’ll sue you, and your entire family to hell and back.”
Scared little ELiTE-TEAM makes request to remove torrents.
Everybody flips them the bird.
End of story.
And now gave them even more unwanted publicity by writing about them here.
Congratulation TorrentFreak, you killed a bittorrent tracker.
It does seem a bit harsh the way it’s been reported here, almost like TF is seeking to sensationalise the story because a tracker owner asks (nicely) if another tracker owner could remove some torrent files that are causing them trouble.
@13: “but don’t actual .torrent files have a specific hash that identifies that .torrent file to the tracker? Info Hash maybe?”
No. Torrent files have an “info dictionary” containing several items. The SHA1 value of the info dict is what makes up the “info hash” but the info hash is not stored in the *.torrent file.
Each client computes the info hash for itself, and uses that as a swarm’s identity key. This way, if someone modifies the contents of the info dictionary, the computed info hash will be different.
A tracker doesn’t know anything about the contents of the torrent file — just an info hash and data about clients that have sent requests about it.
France is a particularly harsh country for the P2P world so I can imagine the pressure. At least they were polite about their request but since torrents spread like wildfire its probably not going to help much.
Its bittorrent. If you cant stand the heat, get the fuck out of the kitchen.
@14,15,20 thanks for the info.
“As far as I’m concerned, war always means failure”
—Jacques Chirac, President of France
“As far as France is concerned, you’re right.”
—Rush Limbaugh,
Garlic eating surrender monkeys.
I think its a very legitimate request. OiNK used to have a rule about posting the sites torrents elsewhere. The fellows at this private tracker should implement the same one. Keep their users from posting torrents elsewhere. It’s fine to share the files, just not use the same tracker. It seems very reasonable to me if this is a private tracker, they shouldn’t have to deal with non-members using their tracker to download files.
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