Interview: aXXo, The Most Popular DVD Ripper on BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on March 11, 2007In real life, aXXo is probably just an average person, but on the Internet he’s a celebrity, with over a million people downloading his DVDrips every month. The search term “aXXo” is among the top searches on every torrent site, and even anti-piracy organizations use his name to trap people into downloading fake torrents. We had the chance to ask him a few questions, and find out a little more about him.
For those of you who never heard of aXXo, he is responsible for hundreds of DVDrips that find their way to millions of PCs around the world. Most of the rips are 700MB, made to fit on a single CD. Some have criticized his preference for single CD rips because of the inferior video quality, but most pirates agree that he does a great job.
Earlier this year aXXo temporarily stopped uploading movies because axxotorrents.com was trying to profit from his name. After a few weeks that site went down, and aXXo continued releasing DVDrips.
Most of the time it is impossible to track down the source of DVDrips, especially with people from “the scene“. But aXXo is not a member of the scene, and although was not very talkative either, he was at least willing to answer a few questions.
TorrentFreak: When did you start ripping / uploading DVDrips?
aXXo: When I was about 15 or 16 I got into backing up my old DVD’s. History from there.
TorrentFreak: What motivates you to share these movies?
aXXo: Why not? If I see a great film I believe everyone has the right to be entertained by it.
TorrentFreak: Don’t you think that ripping and uploading these (copyrighted) movies is wrong?
aXXo: No not really. It was just for me and some mates at first.
TorrentFreak: Are you alone in this, Or do you get help from others?
aXXo: No help, It’s all me.
TorrentFreak: You seem to prefer 700MB rips, and not higher quality ones, why is this?
aXXo: Very little (if any) Loss of quality, and will fit on a Single Music CD.
TorrentFreak: On which torrent sites do you release this movies, and why not just on one?
aXXo: There are quite a few I release to. Many people prefer one site over the rest, and I want to spread these as much as possible.
TorrentFreak: What do you think of sites that (mis)use your name, like axxotorrents.com?
aXXo: This is a touchy subject. I have nothing against any of them, it was a complete misunderstanding and the issue has been cleared up. They are reliable, And I have checked every torrent on there thus far to be real.
TorrentFreak: How can people tell if the torrent is not a scam, or a fake torrent?
aXXo: If it’s a RAR archive, It’s not mine. My rips will contain 2 or 3 files. One info and one .avi files. On occasion a .txt file but that will stop.
TorrentFreak: Where do you get the movies, and do you use scene releases as well?
aXXo: …
TorrentFreak: Do you think that distributing these (copyrighted) movies is morally wrong? That is, do you consider sharing shows to be the same as stealing?
aXXo: Thank god in this country we don’t believe in copyright infringement. It’s just sharing entertainment, nothing more.
TorrentFreak: Okay, perhaps this one is easier to answer. What is your favorite BitTorrent site?
aXXo: I don’t have one. Darksiderg.com is where my original releases are, But I release to many. Superfundo, Demonoid, MiniNova, The Pirate Bay.
TorrentFreak: Anything you want to add to this?
aXXo: Upload what you’ve downloaded, and then some.
TorrentFreak: Thanks!
aXXo: You’re welcome.
Previously: Mosts Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk10)
Next: The Pirate Bay’s Torrents Quadruple in a Year
95 Responses
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Haze: “Like some people have said this newb is not scene and does not have his own sources. All he does is dupe scene releases then uploads them on stupid public torrents trackers. Thats why you wont find him on any newsgroup, irc channel or private tracker. He is simply ruining the scene and he needs to go to hell.”
Haze the kind of elitist, the kind that prides themselves for being a member of “the scene” and their ability to get anything through technical prowess, all elitists whether those using money or wits will hate anyone who can bring their prized possessions to the masses.
this re-encoder has no real purpose other than for noobs who can’t find scene releases
“all elitists whether those using money or wits will hate anyone who can bring their prized possessions to the masses.”
It is not about that at all.
The Scene wants everyone to get all releases, thats the point with the scene.
It is about taking credit for other peoples hard work and relable them as your own, and then upload them on torrent sites and boost about it on the net like he does in this interview.
Check a real dupe site like
http://www.nforce.nl
http://www.swedupe.com
and search for axxo,aXXo.
No hit whatsoever, as he has released nothing.
Lets see how long he last now that he has pissed of the REAL scene by taking credit for others hard work.
Sorry for my bad english ;/
re-encode pussy. stop ruining the scene with your shit. get a life(leave it to the big pirates in the scene), anyone can download a dvd-r off a newsgroup and run it through AUTO-GK, you are nothing special. and you’re bound to get yourself caught if you keep it up.
I thought it was hilarious that he had a meltdown over axxotorrents using his name in the url, yet he infringes copyrights and re-encodes others’ releases. you’re certainly right about him being a teenager.
@Hal Jordan
wouldn’t say haze’s an elitist. No one’s fucking complaining about if DiAMOND or REPLiCA releases get into the p2p scene, cuz duh it’s expected. This guy DOES nothing but re-encode already compressed DVD-5 sources for even shittier bitrate into XviD, hence fucking up the integrity of the scene ya asswipe. there are plenty of real internal groups in the scene who use proper sources. in short: aXXo is a lowly scumbag who gets a thrill with seeing his name tagged and seeded for the masses. loser
who cares if he steals, or does anything against the scene…ALL PIRACY IS STEALING!!!!! regardless what you wanna believe…. no one does it because they believe “movies should be free” or this should be free, or whatever… they do it because they want FREE shit and don’t care….fucking idiots…you expect me to believe you guys are patriots to freedom or whatever? NO!!! you guys use WINDOWS, not open source, and I bet most of you also don’t do ANYTHING to get shit right…guess what…if NO one pirated anything…i bet dvds would be the price of a cd….brand new…9.99
Anyone saying “aXXo ruins the scene” obviously has no clue what they’re talking about.
To think that aXXo-releases are re-encodes from other Xvids is just insane, considering the final quality aXXo manages to achieve (his popularity confirms this).
The mere fact that his encodes do not follow scene-rules (quick example: 1CD size, and audioformats used), should be enough for scenegroups to ignore him, as there’s no way their releases can be confused.
Scenegroups are (mostly) anti-P2P anyway so they probably welcome aXXo because his releases help keep their scenereleases off the P2P.
If you’ve read the warning he’s been posting in his torrents, then you know that it wasn’t so much the fact that his name was used in the fake site’s url, but that he is concerned that the wrong people may be watching those torrents posted on those fake sites.
His many fans will know his real homesite by now anyway, but it was a legit concern as TorrentFreak recently explained in its article about the mafiaa posting fake torrents.
You people and your precious “Scene”. It seems like your more angry over the fact that you aren’t getting the credit for uploading this. I mean he’s apparently able to upload a large quantity of video because there is a LOT of stuff out there. He’s spending time and effort creating easily viewed video for the mass, not just for your little “Scene” of friends that get on private IRC channels and share amongst yourself. Yes he will probably get caught but no one is completely safe. I applaud him for doing what he’s doing, he’s got more courage then you people that just hide on IRC.
Well I prefer DVD quality rips vs 700mb ones, aXXo is for people not intelligent enough to make it to private sites, which offer much better releases. Thanks anyway, though I kinda doubt it’s all your work.
It’s called subpoena IP records people.
Computer Investigative Procedure.
L2Live
Thanks aXXo whoever u r ;)
u rock in our part of the world.
@diarrrr
“This guy DOES nothing but re-encode already compressed DVD-5 sources for even shittier bitrate into XviD, hence fucking up the integrity of the scene ya asswipe”
This shows how ignorant you really are. DivX looks the same at 700mb as a DVD @ 4.5gb, ya asswipe.
Did anyone already mentioned that scene DVR-R releases are almost always 2 days before AxxO’s dvdrip release?
[quote comment="62151"]you know that it wasn’t so much the fact that his name was used in the fake site’s url, but that he is concerned that the wrong people may be watching those torrents posted on those fake sites.[/quote]
but they’re not watching his torrents that are released on torrentbox? they’re all right there in one place for them to point their tracking bots at:
http://www.torrentbox.com/account-details.php?id=277561
ffs, torrentbox has even been sued by the MPAA:
http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38933
his little tantrum had absolutely nothing to do with the security of the torrents, it had to do with his inflated ego.
Sorry who is this nobody again? who gives a crap who the fuck this retard is. Meh!
this guy is a nobody! Who cares!
Hopefully he will be busted. He’s a total douche. I bet he hasn’t ever been laid either. LMAO, what a gimp. Pathetic and sad.
1. Who cares where axxo gets the movies from? He is obviously the best at putting them all out there under one name, thus creating a RELIABLE name that people can trust to get good quality torrents from.
2. some people (students like me) can’t afford to buy or rent movies or may live in switzerland in the countryside (like me) where there is no video store and spend the little money they have on a broadband internet connection to do their online university course. Thanks Axxo.
All you people saying he is ruining the scene, ROFL, maybe the guys who are ripping the DVD-r and releasing to the priv FTPs should add their files to the torrent sites themselves.
[quote comment="62236"]All you people saying he is ruining the scene, ROFL, maybe the guys who are ripping the DVD-r and releasing to the priv FTPs should add their files to the torrent sites themselves.[/quote]
They wont because they dont support any p2p or torrents especially public ones which are where all axxo releases are. Public torrents trackers are going to ruin the scene by increasing its publicity.
Anyone who still thinks the scene exists in some Robin Hood fashion (bringing releases to the poor), is disillusioned. The scene is all about elitism and bragging rights and the egos within it.
P2P is a lame landscape of recycled and repackaged scene releases brought to the masses.
The two can never live harmoniously. Kill P2P and the morons that use/support it.
“aXXo: Not everyone can afford $8.50, or whatever it cost’s these days, to see movies.”
“aXXo: The movie industry loses only 1% of its yearly profits, in a multi-BILLION dollar industry. I think the people who can’t afford movies deserve to be entertained just like more privileged people.”
If you have a PC that can run one of his rips and an internet connection capable downloading one in a reasonable amount of time, you’re already highly priveleged.
He can and will do what he wants but painting himself like some kind of robin hood is ridiculous.
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