ImageShack Starts Free BitTorrent Download Service
Written by Ernesto on April 05, 2008The popular media hosting website ImageShack just launched a new service that lets you download torrent files onto their servers. When the download is complete, you can download the files from ImageShack via an http link.
ImageShack’s torrent download service is still in Beta, but it works just fine. The only thing you need to do is point ImageShack to the torrent file and press start. The download will start immediately, and once it’s finished you can download the files via http onto your computer.
Services like this are not new, but up until now I haven’t seen one that doesn’t charge money. There are some limitations though. Per month you can download a maximum of 15GB to your computer, and the storage on ImageShack’s servers is also limited to 15GB.
Jack Levin, the founder of ImageShack told TorrentFreak: “We think its going to be a great service for users, especially in the light of ISPs ratelimiting torrent traffic.There is a lot of free and legal torrents out there, that people should have easy access too
to. We have the capacity to do it, and the world needs it.”
For those people who are concerned about the anonymity of the service (or think it’s a honeypot), Levin said: “We will not look at what you download and simply provide you, an account, with bandwidth and space. What you do with it is up to you. The DMCA applies, so, if we get reports from copyright owners to take down content, we will comply.”
The service comes with some great features. It supports selective downloading, which means that you can deselect files from the torrent if you don’t want to download them all. This can be quite useful if you only need one album from a complete discography for example.
ImageShack also provides some basic details about the progress of the downloads. Under the “status” link they list information about the download progress, connected seeds and leechers, share ratio and more.
The status reports are not yet working perfectly, as it keeps reporting that a torrent has stopped, while it was downloading just fine. However, the torrents I have tested were downloaded very fast, and I had no problem downloading the files from ImageShack onto my computer.
A more serious point of critique is that the torrent seems to disconnect as soon as the download has finished. This basically means that you will be sharing less than you should. I hope that ImageShack will add a sharing friendly feature in the future, and will at least continue seeding until the share ratio is 100%.
Levin told us, however, that there are no plans to include such a feature. They will offer (paid) premium accounts, but this will be only for bandwidth and storage upgrades.
Overall I must say that Imageshack’s new torrent download service looks very promising, especially for a free service. Decide for yourself, we think it’s worth a try.
This article was updated to include Jack Levin’s answers
Previously: Lawyer Who Threatened File-Sharers is Banned For 6 months
Next: BitTorrent Tracker Sends Takedown Request to Torrent Indexers
193 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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[quote comment="332978"]I have Ubuntu Desktop 7.10 i386 - http://img532.imageshack.us/tor/browse/?id=30&rel=ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso/quote
oh,thank u. but i hav decided to download directly from ubuntu itself.
gave u a B+ for effort tho,….
I only downloaded it for a speed test.
[quote comment="333178"]I only downloaded it for a speed test.[/quote]
He was being a tool.
I have not received anymore SQL errors, think the beta is on hold until the week starts.
I’m going to try it out at my uni, should be fun with a blank account.
How am i being the tool here?
I am telling the truth of what i have posted here.
If you don’t like it then simply don’t reply back to my posts.
A bug: ACTIVE Starting up…
The torrent has started and it is actually downloading if you click stats but the download speed is not displayed on the home page. The download speed use to be displayed on the home page of tor.imageshack.us/tor.
could be nice for those behind public/corp firewalls that have blocked torrents. nice. i’ll use this at work if it truly does what it says. legal torrents only of course (linux ditros, etc).
[quote comment="333217"]How am i being the tool here?[/quote]
[quote comment="333124"][quote comment="333124"]
I was saying he(ace hall) was being a tool, not you. I was trying to be friendly. :)
WTH I quoted myself, snopppinc can you read that?
[quote comment="333217"]How am i being the tool here?[/quote]
I was saying he(ace hall) was being a tool, not you. I was trying to be friendly. :)
I tried downloading “Torrent: Archlinux-i686-2007.08-2.core.iso”
but when i click START.
I get this
“Your disk space has been exceeded.
Please free 158.0 MB of disk space, or add more capacity to your account.”
But i created a new account now, its my first torrent.
How come all disk space is being used?
[quote comment="333235"]I tried downloading “Torrent: Archlinux-i686-2007.08-2.core.iso”
but when i click START.
I get this
“Your disk space has been exceeded.
Please free 158.0 MB of disk space, or add more capacity to your account.”
But i created a new account now, its my first torrent.
How come all disk space is being used?[/quote]
It is a bug, I believe that the server is full (unlikely) or it restricting it 15GB per IP address. We can’t know for sure until ImageShack publicly release some information about the service.
HTTP downloads? What century they live in? And 15GB won’t even suffice for one BD-remux… Wait a minute, did they say DMCA?
Nice try, mafiAA lapdogs. :-)
*yawn*
[quote comment="333230"][quote comment="333217"]How am i being the tool here?[/quote]
[quote comment="333124"][quote comment="333124"]
I was saying he(ace hall) was being a tool, not you. I was trying to be friendly. :)[/quote]
[quote comment="333231"]WTH I quoted myself, snopppinc can you read that?[/quote]
[quote comment="333232"][quote comment="333217"]How am i being the tool here?[/quote]
I was saying he(ace hall) was being a tool, not you. I was trying to be friendly. :)[/quote]
tool ?
lol !
Ok, it’s fast to download the torrent, but is so fuckin’ slow when i try to download by http… don’t even support download managers
you’re an utter fool if you think Imageshack won’t happily turn over your IPs once their friends in authority apply some “gentle persuasion”.
and if you do think giving your details to a bunch of shady bastards like imageshack is a good idea, then i’ve got $20 million dollars a nigerian prince wants to rest in your bank account - just send me your details to halfwit@gullible.com
> A more serious point of critique is that the torrent seems to disconnect as soon as the download has finished.
They should get banned by all clients & trackers. That’s not how bittorrent works!
Has anyone got the IP ranges these profiteering leechs are using so that I can block them from my client?
because there is no way that I’m using *my* bandwidth to upload to them so they can c ut right off after downloading.
Jack - shove your “service” up your fucking ass, you piece of shit.
The general idea is good, but is poorly implemented.
- Downloading at > 2000 kB/s but uploading at 20 kB/s … it’s a joke
- HTTP download is slow, too damn slow, and don’t support multiple connections (aka download manager)
- After torrent completes it doesn’t continue seeding at least to 1:1 ratio
… no future
The imageshack server are all inside the 38.* subnet owned by Performance Systems International Inc. unfortuanatly it’s impossible to narrow down the IP pool to imageshack only.
*blocked*
From the content industry point of view this kind of service should be ok. You download at a high speed and you don’t upload. So it’s not file-sharing. It’s file-downloading. Whether it’s with the Bittorrent protocol or the http or ftp protocol doesn’t matter at all. ImageShack uses Bittorrent just because it’s more efficient for them to gather the data that you download later on. As soon as there is money to be made with a community sucking data from ImageShack, the MAFIAA will come along and ask money. In the old days, the traditional Mafia asked money if you run a restaurant. The principle didn’t change. Just the market expanded to include other services.
> “We think its going to be a great service for users, especially in the light of ISPs ratelimiting torrent traffic. …
So, this guy basically wants us to give up the demand for unlimited torrent traffic.
> … There is a lot of free and legal torrents out there, that people should have easy access too to. …
I do have easy access. I use file-sharing.
> We have the capacity to do it, and the world needs it.”
I do have the capacity, I don’t need it.
It was blogged by aravindjose[dot]com the same day it was released (i.e. March 30th)
Anyone else notice that their frog logo looks very much like the Azureus logo ‘cept yellow instead of blue?
I used this service and my ISP provider sent me a Cease and Desist letter, I thought that couldn’t happen, what the hell!? Now I have to change my I.S.P. all because I decided to use imageshack!! I AM NEVER USING IMAGESHACK AGAIN!!
Bullshit, gambit. Could you post evidence of that?
There are countries where downloading copyrighted materials (software excluded) is legal. In those contries, the Imageshack bittorrent service is interesting.
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