isoHunt Launches ‘Social’ BitTorrent Site
Written by Ernesto on September 02, 2009In a time where torrent sites are being chased by the entertainment industries and despite its dealings with the MPAA and CRIA in court, isoHunt has launched a brand new torrent site. With Hexagon.cc the Hexagon team aims to revolutionize people’s sharing experience.
For years most torrent sites have shared a similar layout where torrents are listed in several fixed categories designated by the site’s owners. Hexagon.cc opts to do things differently.
“The main difference that sets Hexagon.cc apart from other social file sharing and BitTorrent sites, is everything is centered around groups. Be it file sharing networks or flash video sites, a key piece we found missing is social context,” isoHunt’s founder Gary Fung said.
With Hexagon Fung hopes to bridge this gap by allowing people to start groups where they can share content within a certain niche. These groups help to organize content and allow people to share with others who are interested in the same material, privately or in public.
In addition Hexagon is also aimed at content producers and independent artists who want to promote their content using BitTorrent. For this group Hexagon offers monetization opportunities such as direct “fan” contributions and sharing of advertising revenue.
“We have contacts with game publishers and independent musicians and film makers, who are very interested in creating their own groups where they can directly market their music, videos or games and interact with their fans, and generate sales directly or indirectly,” Fung said.
Hexagon is certainly not your average torrent site and we must admit that it took us a while to fully grasp the new sharing interface. That aside, it is great to see that some people are still innovating and trying to improve the BitTorrent sharing experience.
The Hexagon team is offering 500 invites for TorrentFreak readers who want to give Hexagon a spin, so you can decide for yourself. Update, here are 3000 more invites. And 10.000 extra just in case…
Previously: PiSEXY BitTorrent Admin Passes Away Suddenly
Next: Political Parties Criticize Law Forcing Pirate Bay Blackout
115 Responses
sugoi monogatari aniki
lol @1
just joined. bacon. paperbag.
I like the idea! Let’s hope the site will gain enough popularity and content producers get some money out of this. Would be a nice slap in the cartels’ face. 8)
Maybe just in time.
Well done Fung. Now go on and turn off the switch on the illegal stuff.
If not, you will probably go down and you legal service and good intentions with it.
LOL Facebook for pirates, maybe this will work or maybe its a way of making millions through advertising just like any other “social networking” website. Not only will you be able to share torrents but you might be able to play Uno or MobWars while your at it….
joined, thanks TF.
J.
We tried this in The Netherlands with our Tribler initiative at the Technical University of Delft.
Turns out people are not really interested in chit-chat but are really after pirated content. They’ll visit other sites for the social networking element.
Here is some background information
http://www.tribler.org/trac
going in the GGF spirit, almost, or never mind.. hehe.
thanks TF for the invite.
Way to rip off the UAW logo.
thx for the invite.
urgh what a horrible site, sorry
too clunky and confusing
Just signed up, will be checking it out later tonight.
@10
Ehhem… where are you?
Cool. Very cool. SERIOUSLY cool and innovative.
looks neat
thx! joined it and i already like it!
Thx for the invite torrentfreak. Giving the site :thumbsup:, very well designed.
Looks good
Thanks torrentfreak
I’m diggin’ it. Like the chat, good for commenting on torrents and such, maybe being used for requests. Nice setup. Thanks for the Invite
Hopfully this site will grow large
Isohunt is the shittiest website with shit admins, why would anyone use it?
nice thought lets see if it works.
http://www.torrentkit.com
scene release site, best on net
Because there is cp on it?
joined already, looks ok and good for legal p2p, so can be showed that not all p2p is bad
now off to watch some films (TV) from the uSa that might never reach my country
Made a group called Torrentfreakerz.
You can guess who its for.
:-)
no more invites?…. i keep getting an error. :(
hell yeah! does this mean anyone can make a what.cd?
Invites page comes up with a 404-type “we couldn’t find it” message for me. :-(
no more invites? :(
I’ve created a nice Leverage hexacgon group :)
http://leverage.hexagon.cc/ Come and join!
cool.
just what i need to get my music out :D
the invite still works i just got mine… worked fin
invite doesn’t work for me (
invite page is 404 :|
1000 more invites please ? :))
EDIT: darn, no more invites :(
ALL GONE!
At least that’s what Registration says :S
Anyways.. I’m willing to see how this will work..
Guys, if you use Google – there is a way to get an invite. I am already inside! The system looks VERY promising and seems to be very well coded.
could somebody send me an invite code, the isoHunt ones are gone :/
my email is digchrono@gmail.com
we have started a textbooktorrents.com reunion group
http://textbooktorrentscom-reunion.hexagon.cc/
just like the site once we have a large enough community we will go invite only. so please feel free to join know and help establish a community to replace the once and great site… once private we will upload a vast collection from our once great fallen site….until then we leave it up to others to start us up…
Single point of failure. Not good.
Hey guys and girls,
I’m friends with one of the Hexagon admins for the site. Try using this one if the main one doesn’t work.
http://creativecommons.hexagon.cc/invitations/H3JdKqa5zV
thanks for the invites !
btw…i see many unseeded torrents(0 seeds) why don’t they make some kind of a partnership with a hardware (HDD) manufacturer…in order to seed the releases
The 404 “Oops” page was due to the 500 invites being used up. We are correcting the error but you have a new 3000 link. I’m surprised how you guys use up 500 invites in 2 hours ;)
We welcome your feedback as we are still working on tons of new features and improving performance (site is fairly slow right now so bare with us). Cheers
nice one Gary. the concept of groups combined with torrent permissions is gonna be HUGE once people realise what they can do with it. i predict an avalanche of new sites each with a different take on the basic premise of self-moderating social planets ;-)
@ Johan Pouwelse sorry to hear about your woes with Tribler
“chit-chat” is that what you think social networking is? take another look at the new system, play with it, let your imagination open up to something that is gonna revolutionise filesharing. Fung is the first to get this model released but i know a dozen groups who are working on the same idea. all of us who have looked in depth at the model are simply amazed by the scope for innovation, identity and creative society, latent within such a structure
none of the big social sites permitted filesharing due to their being US based and their stockholder ties to big interest media companies. watch what is gonna happen when the kids upstairs in their bedrooms take an opensource myspace/youtube/facebook/twitter clone and add a torrent plugin
http://www.h33t.com who loves the Fung initiative
nicely put together site. looks very promising! i can see this exploding. 10/10 gary :)
Tribler was a dire piece of software that never worked quite right. If you think p2p folk don’t like chit chat, you should have a look at isoHunt forums, Demonoid forums, frostwire’s irc channel and the numerous irc channels for emule. Tribler didn’t fail because people don’t like to chat, it failed because it was crap.
@47 (IH)you should really put some kind of captcha or email verification when registering !!
I’m in, thanks a lot for the invitation code.
I registered, but everything looks confusing.
Pretty cool idea, though I’m sick of the “Social Experiments” about now… One problem plagues the site, a bot by the name of HexRoot. It floods the groups with torrents from IsoHunt and most of them don’t have seeds to be worth anything! Kinda sloppy…
signed up and i quite like it :)
thanks h33t. And for Johan, what’s different about Hexagon isn’t really about the chit-chat but the ability to very easily create groups, distribute moderation tasks and finely control permissions on making your group public or private. One thing demonstrated from Facebook and what I’ve understood before is when you let people share privately (or semi-privately), people are willing to share a lot more. Social context and interests also encourage relevant sharing.
And we did a fair amount of work with associating shared content with Semantic Web resources, which is fairly ground breaking in my opinion. I’ll write a post on isohunt.com or facebook on these in detail
I was just reading through the terms of use (http://hexagon.cc/terms_of_use) and I noticed that they say (under heading 3.) that transmitting copyrighted content and other copyright infringement is forbidden. I’m not sure how this will affect the torrents and other content uploaded to the website.
Not interested in social networks :)
@anonymous
LOL
This is fantastic, just what I was looking for to distribute my work. If more sites like this come along, hopefully the MAFIAA will see that we don’t need them anymore. I hope that this won’t be abused, there are other sites for that.
Thanks a lot TF, and thanks a lot Mr. Fung =D
Well if sign ups are open and the mpaa already have their eyes on Mr Hung whats to stop them signing up themselves and bringing another case against him?
Interesting site, I joined…I hope I can find something useful here if not hopefully I can find some more private communities to get in on. :D
they have some cool stuff….
BUT you have to have copyright holder permission (and inform them BEFORE upload) to upload anything copyrighted, though it looks like theres some copyrighted stuff on there already
Its up to you to get the permission, and they do not require proof.
^^ Anyone with brains can figure that out.
Interesting ideea…but i think that i will pass it
2863th invite. thanks!
2863rd invite. thanks!
Thank You, TorrentFreak! I love you! :D
yay I got into something finally :) thanks tf. Just joined the FLAC group.
hope this catch up
who the hell MAFIAA will sue when we all share to close friends/groups?
1 guys get stuff using VPN then share it to trusted people, MAFIAA can go to hell and failing biz model will finaly die
Great stuff, does this mean i can pay artists directly for the work, without the huge hungry for money corp’s getting most of it. Of course, i expect a small amount of money going to owners and site costs.
great, think invites will run out soon again.
I joined the Flac group as well. One downside to this might be the huge number of groups, takes ages to scroll through everything.
^^^^Cool Guys!!!
Hot cougars and milfs on ==== kisscougar. c o m ==== love you guys; and wanna hook up with men just like you!! if you don’t mind the so-called age gap, if you really have desires in your hearts, then you rock there!!!
would luv an invite :)
would luv an invite :)
now this sucks… trying to get the download business more “anonymous” and here we are making “facebook-torrent” wannabe…
quite lame actually because nothing “good” is shared so far so it’s useless :)
HAHA NICE TRY BUT U CAN’T CATCH ME RIAA WITH UR LITTLE FAKE SITES !!!!
@ TooClever4RIAA
I think every single person here will join me in presenting you with the Asshat Of The Day award.
Congratulation on your achievement, keep up the bad work.
Wow, this is awesome =D
Any one interested in sharing Japanese Learning resources, go here
http://revtk-share.hexagon.cc
Very slick – and dare I say 2.0… ;)
=Kiss Cougar . Com== was where we met. She makes me believe that ” I am one person for the. world, but I am the world for her.”… ..
nice idea, just signed up!
very interesting…
isnt torrenting within social networks possible even today ?
you could always just post the hash codes needed for http://www.torrage.com
nobody can stop you from posting hashs :)
why no article yet for TPB website? They’ve been bought, the sale went through and the site has the new system ready to go(fail), funny they still call it “Pirate Bay” oxymorons!
Wow, right wshen you thought ISOHunt couldnt get any better! AMazing!
RT
http://www.anonymous-web.be.tc
@ROLF
actually that is an excellent idea …
good bunny, i love and trust that your code is opensource, it means you are one of us :-D
http://www.h33t.com having a great week
Got a spare invite?
hdmc52@gmail.com
need an invite killislv@gmail.com
To those without an invite, do these work?
http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:hexagon.cc/invitations/&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=BSE&filter=0
i would love one invitacion.
decarne@gmail.com
thxs
if someone has one or more invitations, please, send me one to marinespl@gmail.com
thanks in advance :)
Invitations to robertolyrio@gmail.com please.
:3 I’ll spread it to everyone too.
http://google.hexagon.cc/invitations/9tBREtRszc
http://google.hexagon.cc/invitations/9tBREtRszc
10 invites
Thanks 94!
Hell yeah!!! Thanks 94!
http://hexagon.cc/ sign up its not hard .
please send me an invite to marc.harris-7o9ye0pu@yopmail.com
ty
http://lobby.hexagon.cc/invitations/g5XMY663tJ
Just checked out Hexagon, interesting concept. Quite related to Tribler indeed. Interesting to see someone doing a spoof post of Tribler-stuff under my personal name..
@IH, H33T, … Tribler next upcoming version will include group creation-like features. The Tribler version will be crafted without the requirement of a central server bottleneck.
10 000 reg:
http://film.hexagon.cc/invitations/NNKvy2pan0
500 reg: http://film.hexagon.cc/invitations/zBzAMljG24
Oddly, despite how very different this is from anything I’ve ever been to… It feels perfectly natural for me! The moment I joined, the options were all there right in front of me, and I was able to start taking advantage of them right away. Making use of the features feels as natural to me as various other sites I’ve been using for years.
It’s amazing! But I have to say that from an outside observant perspective, because it doesn’t FEEL amazing while I use it… It just feels “natural” and “normal”! Which is why it’s amazing! LOL, I bet only two people will understand what I mean…
But yes. I hate Twitter, I hate Facebook/MySpace. But I can totally dig this. When you’re sharing personal creations, Hexagon just plain does the things I’ve wanted sites to do without even realizing it.
Guys, can I have an invite?
Thanks! <3
I signed up and my nick is “martienne”. If you are an intelligent mature person, plese feel free to friend me..
Can’t work out how to upload torrents though.
Or whether they actually have a tracker or not.
Does anyone know?
LOOKS GOOD… UNTIL THEY SEND YOUR NAMES TO RIAA !!!
If it isn’t a honeypot meets Facebook(TM), I’m not sure what it. For those of you who don’t know, a honeypot is digital jail bait.
Read their terms of use agreement: they don’t consider your IP to be private. IE they record it.
They state that they also record all your account activity and permanently back it up. What you upload, download, when, for how long. All permanently backed-up and associated with your IP. Unlike other sites that don’t do that, they will happily make available all of that information to the MPAA, RCMP, PTA, YMCA, etc. etc. should you happen to upload a video you made with a Jessica Alba poster hanging in the background (You are using a copyrighted image and likeness) and the copyright holder complains… and copyright holders employ people for the express purpose of complaining to authorities.
They could easily dump that data when your session ended, but NOOOO.
You cannot delete your account from their backups. So your disobedient behaviour will be there forever! Lake of fire here I come. The baby Jesus(TM) is going to cry!
Furthermore, they encourage you to give a VALID email address (yes you can set one up for just this purpose…) which many people will divulge at their potential peril – all permanently backed up.
They also have a draconian, un-free speech policy. Apparently, you cannot use avatars or names depicting/impersonating cartoon characters or celebrities. So forget using your Spongebob(TM)-head-Tia-Carerre-body (is that body TM-ed?) animated jpeg. Das ist Verboten!
If that wasn’t bad enough, neither can you claim to be president of the world, the queen of Sheba, or Howard Sterns’ inflatable doll, I quote:
“(you cannot) create a false or misleading identity of, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent, your affiliation with, a person or entity.”
Oops! No data for you!
You cannot post anything that MIGHT be harmful to children like: Pokemon(TM) cartoons that caused seizures in the 90s or re-enactments of your favourite A-Team episodes – violence; or news clips of Michael Jackson hanging his baby over the railing
(That’s vulgar, obscene, and harmful/disturbing to children, isn’t it?) I imagine saying “BOO” isn’t allowed as it might scare the elderly, the faint of heart, and college kids on LSD.
You cannot say or post anything ‘obscene’ or ‘vulgar’ or ‘racist’ – all nice terms that are open to wide-as-the-Suez-canal interpretation. So no videos of the Toronto Film Festival protesters saying Palestinians are being left out by some Israeli sympathetic organizers! So says Naomi Klein! That’s racist x2! The CBC can report it, but don’t post it on Hexagon ‘cus it’s hate, racist and ethnically vulgar! What about news reports of how some Chinese restaurants in Toronto in the 1990s Toronto failed basic health and safety inspections? Racist! Ethnically vulgar! Defamatory! Full of MSG!
Off with your head!
Naw man, nice idea, except it’s a bad idea. They are enemies of everything that the internet is about. The only thing you are allowed to post is:
-Anything that is not copyrighted (unless you have permission to post it): NO popular music (sucks anyway); NO Feature Films; NO Smurfs; NO Yul Brynner pics; NO books (but I guess you could post pictures of yourself BURNING Books unless, of course, a librarian complains)
-Anything that no one will find offensive, vulgar, racist, obscene, intelligent, or truthful: NO politics, NO violent images, NO ‘dirty’ jokes, NO quotes from the Bible(TM), NO full monteys, NO Carebear-count-downs.
Maybe you could post videos of a static-snow screen, but then you’d be impersonating THEM from Poltergeist.
To Lookn4Trouble:
All torrent sites have to use such terms. It’s for their own protection. Or what did you expect? Terms like: “Here it’s allowed to share warez”? Even on the piratebay site it says it’s not allowed to share copyrighted stuff without permission.
And if they want to run a honeypot they wont have to open a second site. They would use isohunt for that purpose.
A responce I made:
Hello @ Hello !
Fair points, allow me to respond.
No, I don’t expect them to say “come and get someone else’s beer”. But I was surprised to see that they are using hyper politically correct language in their t.o.s., including severe limits on content and “speech”, regardless of the copyright status.
Furthermore, a distinction can be made between this (Hexagon) and other sites, as this one wants users to establish a social
network part-and-parcel to file sharing. Connecting the two allows the provider to establish a robust database about you, your
likes, your media habits, and your opinions all connected to an email address, IP, (even your picture?) ALONG with a circle of
people sympathetic to your views/media tastes. You are also supposed to use your “real” identity, according to the TOS, so I guess you have to come out of the closet on every front – no privacy vis-a-vis their policy.
All this has lots of potential for abuse there – more so than ISOHunt. It’s like a honey pot with the bees still in it when the bear puts his claws in.
Or, are users not rrreally expected to follow the TOS – as it is just there for “legal” reasons? The “don’t post copyright stuff”
disclaimer didn’t protect the PirateBay, so it isn’t clear how it will help them at Hexagon – it serves no tangible legal purpose
- it seems more like a placebo or wishful thinking on the part of the admins that it will somehow, magically protect them from
prosecution. The recent ruling against Mininova, that they don’t do enough to remove disputed content fast enough, demonstrates
that a disclaimer is moot and wholly a useless appendix. Time and time again history has shown that a TOS that forbids copyright
material sharing has no impact on the (il)legality of the behaviour of users and the liability of those who run the site: think
Piratebay, Torrentspy, Mininova, Napster, etc.
When was the last time a judge ruled in favour of a defendant that the TOS made a file-sharing site operator not responsible for
what was posted there? References? News articles? Show how and when that a TOS protects them.
Wow, makes a lot of sense Lookin4Trouble.
Lookin4Trouble I think you work for the PAA, RCMP, PTA, YMCA, etc. etc ….Hexagon is a fantastic site are you jealous about something ?
Hope this clears things up: http://lobby.hexagon.cc/discussions/736-FAQ_concerns_on_privacy_censorship_etc
Lookin4Trouble, I think you should label yourself IANAL as I don’t think you are giving informed legal opinion as you think you are.
thanks for the invite!!
they are not just trying to sue isohunt, they are trying to freak out FUTURE programmers so that they don’t create new copyright-infringing technologies
but this just makes me WANT to create something new like that!
keep the piratebay alive so sign up at http://www.theghostbay.org/
thanks for the invitation! :D
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