One of the founders of the world’s largest music-dedicated private torrent site has quit. WhatMan, sysop at What.CD, the spiritual successor to the now-defunct and legendary OiNK BitTorrent tracker, says that having spare time is a luxury of the past. With some major achievements behind him, he will long be remembered in the BitTorrent community.
As we’ve mentioned in a previous article, cutting the funding of torrent sites is one of the strategies that will be used this year to put pressure on torrent sites. As it now turns out the popular private tracker What.CD has been hit hard by the anti-piracy outfit IFPI. What.CD is now hoping to get [...]
What.CD is not your ordinary BitTorrent tracker. The three year old site is most of all a community of audiophiles and music fanatics, and one that has built one of the largest music catalogues that ever existed. Today, What.CD saw the upload of its millionth torrent, an absolute record for a private BitTorrent tracker. TorrentFreak discusses this milestone with the site’s founder, who is far from done.
Despite being a private community of music fanatics, What.cd operates one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. Recently, the site’s users were silently transferred to a new tracker. Named Ocelot, the new and improved tracker is one of the most efficient around and to commemorate its implementation What.cd staff have been telling the complete story of how it came to be.
Microsoft’s much sought-after COFEE law-enforcement forensic tool has leaked onto the Internet. One user uploaded it to private tracker What.cd to collect a huge 1.6tb bounty. However, in a sensible move, the admins of the site took action to remove the link and ban further sharing of the tool via the site.
A study conducted by PRS, the British music royalty collection agency, looked into the downloading habits of the average user of file-sharing networks. They found that the most downloaded tracks mimic the music charts. That is, people tend to download music that’s already popular.
2008 will be remembered as the year when BitTorrent went mainstream, with an increasing number of artists discovering that it is an excellent tool to promote music. Today, in a sign of the times, Open Your Eyes Records and the popular music tracker What.cd have announced an exclusive partnership.
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