Ipernity Media Sharing Site Embraces BitTorrent
Written by enigmax on September 08, 2008A site dedicated to the sharing of all kinds of media, from blogs, through photos and video, has embraced BitTorrent. Ipernity.com has been in operation since 2007 and has just finished work on a ’secret project’ – to implement the sharing of bulky media on the site via BitTorrent and their own tracker.
For years now, it has mostly been dedicated torrent sites utilizing BitTorrent for the spreading of large amounts of data. However, as the protocol, technology and benefits get reported more and more in the mainstream, other sites are getting interested in BitTorrent. Millions of tech-savvy people are already familiar with using this method of sharing files, and since it’s incredibly cheap to implement, BitTorrent makes huge sense as a distribution option.
Created in 2007, Ipernity set out with some simple aims in mind – to allow its members to publish their media – blogs, photos, music and videos, all backed up by a powerful index to locate it all. A free service, Ipernity claims to be the first to offer users the ability to store all types of media, which will build up over time to create their “digital heritage” within a social network.
Due to the huge bandwidth requirements of an increasing number of long videos and massive photo archives submitted from the Ipernity userbase, the site made a decision to implement a BitTorrent sharing system.
“We had more and more demands from our members about sharing voluminous contents, such as full-length personal videos or entire folders of thousands of photos,” Ipernity Managing Director, Christian Conti told TorrentFreak.
To this end, the Ipernity team decided to implement their own BitTorrent sharing system. “We think using the BitTorrent protocol is the right solution to share such content,” said Christian “and that’s the reason why we decided to propose an Ipernity tracker. We are pleased with the savings.”
Christian told us that the Ipernity tracker isn’t an off the shelf item, but a custom in-house private tracker. Like with most trackers it’s possible to see a list of files contained within a torrent along with various stats. From a social networking position, torrent creators can see who from the community downloaded it. The torrent file itself is stored as a file in Ipernity and can be added to albums, noted as a favorite, commented upon and tagged, with the torrent creator deciding who can have access to the material.
In August we reported that EA had chosen BitTorrent to distribute the Warhammer Online Beta, so how long before BitTorrent becomes the standard for other bandwidth intensive projects? Maybe a year or two yet but the sooner it happens, the better for everyone, especially the hobbyist torrent community.
Once plenty of big businesses start using BitTorrent, the sooner throttling ISPs like Comcast will have to come into line and treat this revolutionary protocol’s traffic like HTTP – and let it through, unhampered.
Previously: Top 10 Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent (wk36)
Next: Europe Gets Prison Break Fix via BitTorrent
22 Responses
Cool! but am waiting for the day when this wont be news anymore, it would be commonplace of just “another company doing it”.
We are getting there, slowly but surely!
cool n stuff.. i guess.. can i like share copyrighted shit or…?
not so sure if i would want my pictures on bittorrent lol.
Just like any other file on Ipernity you can choose who gets to see it; everyone, family, friends, or both family and friends.
Can’t see how this got 51 diggs, but fair play – if things like this continu to get reported, other sites will see that its growing as a viable distribution method. There is a slight problem when it comes to seeding the s – i don’t really want to have to have a torrent client open all the time just so that some peole can see my pictures but meh.
Sorry for the bad spelling and grammer in ^. keyboard batteries are dying and I didn’t proof read.
Quite interesting idea by that site…
Yes… let the swarm overwhelm all those infidels who put stones in it’s way… sooner or later, resistance will be futile…
For the Swarm!
Just be careful of those baby photos you put up, one family’s bath time is a pedo’s lawsuit ;-).
Once everyone has massive hard drives (Which are increasingly cheep) and solid bandwidth, the world with be run on BT… Not a bad dream, eh?
Indeed killer tree.. but that dream will be worthless if the internet continues to be more policed and ‘Copyright’ still exists.
What I have noticed is that even alot of file sharers dont understand exactly what they stand against. Yes the big companies are bad but there not the CORE problem.
The CORE problem is COPYRIGHT. Copyright was invented to protect the artists, now it works against them AND the consumer.
COPYRIGHT in this day and age has been changed to ONLY support those big companies we hate so much.
Copyright has become a monopoly.. its only purpose is to scam consumers and rip artists off of there hard work.. turning the world into a consumer farm. When you control what people watch and hear.. you basicly control there emotions.. likes/dislikes, attitude.. ect.
Copyright is the core of the evil.
I will continue to download until the end of time.. or until copyright no longer exists.
Copyright is simply a prohibition. It is absurd to say that it encourages or stirs people to do great things if it actually only discourages people from doing certain things. RAGE AGAINST COPYRIGHT, YEAH!
Question:
How can you make your own bittorrent tracker?
Nevermind
Found it.
http://tinyurl.com/6lo95w
“indeed”, i must reply. “or until copyright no longer exists.” so you will THEN STOP? with no laws against you, you will pick to stop downloading?? thats weird :p
good news, because, there is company that realized they can use something FREE to save money! sounds so weird in this wicked world. only reason why bittorent isnt more used. people dont believe that there can be something useful and FREE!
to add, where are those weirdos with comments like “slow news days, huh?” can you please tell me is this news are newsworthy?
good job torrentfreak, keep with it!
@12
Downloading is something to be encouraged. Everyone should download. It is not a bad thing – rather, it is a good thing. Essentially the purpose of culture is to get it to as many people as possible, and what better way to get it to people than copyright? Our culture would be much better if anyone and everyone could instantly download anything – from anywhere. It would be much better if culture was distributed in masses everywhere, with everyone able to see it all the time. It shouldn’t be about money – it should be about culture as a social activity.
“Let There Be Torrents”
I said that.
It’s high time for ISPs like Comcast that throttle BitTorrent.
To wake up and realize that this protocol actually reduces overall bandwidth across web.
won’t be wasting my time with this
13 Sep 09, 2008 at 01:15 by Anonymous: actually, i think that we did not understand each other. first part of my post was for “indeed”. part that start with good news, was about this actual news on torrentfreak.
“hogwash”, geee, please, as you doing something useful with your time.
There has to be other ways of paying artists for content eg from advertising.
@8
Do you have a plan? I think it would be prudent to gather at some kind of website, don’t you think?
@19
thanks :)
I see countless examples of people who need to be STABBED with a knife.
For example:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/copyright-monke.html
In this comment by “tuneesq”:
“4) Taking someone else’s property without permission to create your own (for whatever reason) is just plain THEFT, whether it’s LAND, FOOD, or MUSIC. Just because the latter is intangible doesn’t render the owner’s rights any less valid than those of a land-owner.
If you need 3rd party input when creating something of your own, ASK PERMISSION, and pay for such input if/when asked. Otherwise just CREATE.
http://www.tunelaw.com”
Unforunately, it seems like there are a ton of people who are deluded like this. They seem to think that the making of new copies, rather than the taking of original copies, even if it was willingly given, from a friend, for example (who are you stealing the copy from? from your friend? That doesn’t make sense), is stealing. Talk about ridiculous. I think we need to do something about this.
Hey you all! I think I have a grand idea. I stumbled across a website called http://www.fstdt.com/ which is “Fundamentalists Say the Darndest Things” where people post quotes from fundamentalists saying ridiculous things, and where people comment on them. I think we can also do the same thing for copyright whores, like “Copyright Supporters Say the Darndest Things” – post quotes from copyright supporters and have people comment on them. What do you think?
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