What Happened to Demonoid, Will it Ever Return?
Written by Ernesto on December 13, 2007Ever since Demonoid decided to pull the plug following pressure from the CRIA, thousands of members are wondering what happened. Perhaps even more importantly, they are asking themselves this: Is Demonoid ever going to come back?
Nobody really seems to know what the future holds for Demonoid, however, Deimos, the founder and main admin of what used to be the most popular (semi)private BitTorrent tracker, has given people a little hope.
He writes: “Money is an issue, but the real problem at the moment is finding a suitable place to host the website. There has been no luck there. And there’s some personal stuff I need to take care of that takes most of my time at the moment, and that does not help.”
Deimos is right, it’s getting harder to find a suitable host. However, it is far from impossible since all the BitTorrent sites that were kicked out by the Dutch ISP Leaseweb found a new home within a week.
So what started the chain of events? The trouble for Demonoid started back in June, when the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN started to put pressure on Demonoid and their ISP, Leaseweb. Deimos decided that the Netherlands wasn’t the safe haven it used to be and he to moved the site to Canada, which resulted in a few days of downtime.
Deimos never really told the administrators or members of the site exactly what was happening. Initially, most members assumed that there was some hardware failure, but after a few days it became clear that Demonoid was more or less forced to move. Maybe there could have been hardware failures too, who knows, but the outcome was the same - Canada here we come.
Relocating the servers to Canada initially solved the problems, but, by the end of September Deimos took Demonoid offline for the second time. Again, nobody knew what was going on until we found out that the CRIA was responsible for the downtime, which was later confirmed by Deimos. It turned out that Canada wasn’t the best choice after all.
After 5 days of downtime the site returned, now blocking all traffic from Canadian users in an attempt to calm down the CRIA. At first it looked like the storm was finally over, but on November 9th Demonoid’s users were welcomed by a disappointing message on the frontpage:
“The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.”
The tracker was still working for a few days, but after a while it died as well. At the moment Demonoid.com redirects to the temporary forums, which have an active community but any filesharing is strictly forbidden.
So will Demonoid ever return? Apart from the message posted by Deimos there’s not much to go on. It would be a shame to see it go down like this. Demonoid was one of the most widely used trackers and Deimos has done a lot for the BitTorrent community.
Being a BitTorrent administrator must be a very stressful experience, not to mention time-consuming. When the pressures are finally lifted for someone like Deimos, it will take all the addictive properties of BitTorrent to bring him back. Let’s hope so.
I guess time will tell.
Previously: Behind The Scenes of the Swiss DMCA Fight
Next: First Russian BitTorrent User Sentenced, Activists Call For Support
246 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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i want demonoid back asap ;p
I really Hope it comes back! IMHO Demonoid was the best semi private tracker period!
Ah, Demonoid old friend, I miss you.
All the best to you Deimos, hope it comes back.
Demonoid is the best torrent site with the best indexing method .
i hope to see it back online soon , .
Man I loved Demonoid and I really hope it comes back online. Props to Deimos for thinking about its users and the big community that Demonoid has.
I’m really hoping thah something will happen, i really loved demonoid, It had everything, from comics to the most rare mac stuff…
why dont they host it in switzerland, thepiratebay has no trouble with the law there!
and if money is an issue Deimos should put up a way to donate demonoid of couse with some privilleges for the users who donated when it gets back up!
[quote comment="238317"]Demonoid is the best torrent site with the best indexing method .
i hope to see it back online soon , .[/quote]
couldn’t say it better
I loved demonoid too. If it never comes back I wish the people who ran it a new, safe life. You must imagine the stress looming over these people trying to keep a site going that may result in their incarceration, this alone is not very good incentive to bring it back. I know if i escaped the hangman’s noose once I wouldn’t try it again! For us to expect that is selfish. Why should they end up like OINK? Facing stiff fines, Jail time, letting their friends & family down? No, i say it isn’t worth it by a l o n g shot. No place is safe anymore anyway.
demonoid was a trash can. RIP
I never really loved demonoid but I sure noticed it downfall. A lot of torrentfiles I downloaded came from demonoid so it was the perfect place to find anything. Hope they come back.
Deimos should ask (somehow) for financial support if that’s an issue…there are no doubt thousands of us who will respond. Just drop the dime…
demonoid was great. Despite belonging to several high level private trackers, still nothing matches demonoid.
It’ll probably come back after xmas… once things have settled down for deimos or he hands it off to someone else. I also recommend either moving to switz. with TPB, or perhaps even partnering up with TPB.
It’ll be back somehow.
I miss Demonoid too. It was only when it went down when I realized just how many downloads used Demonoids tracker.
There are many rare vids etc that I could only find on Demonoids tracker, so it is a great loss to me. Come on Deimos, your public needs you!
I really do not understand why they would go after exactly Demonoid, when having FEW members compared to other sites. gustine’s suggestion is just great, 1$ from each member would sure bring it back online…
:(
i still put the little demonoid.txt file in all my torrents, it just doen’t feel right without it.
I’d pay. Hell, I’d pay for a legal service that had anywhere NEAR the selection Demonoid had.
I liked it for the audiobooks, not the music or movies. And most of the books were out-of-print. Where else would you get this stuff besides filesharing?
time for for off-shore asian hosts..
take longer to load a page but thats better then no page to load..
asian hosts are not a good solution, try to open a web page in China and see how long it takes.
The backbones between europe and asia are really busy.
Korean hosts are ok, but its hard to find a place to host dedicated servs for cheap.
Piratebay in Switzerland? Let me guess, you’re from the US, right?
Why is this article here? It does absolutely nothing. We all know Demonoid is down, and this sheds no light on wether or not it will come back.
Slow news day, ey?
We support you Deimos, thank you for all you’ve given us.
[quote comment="238313"]i want demonoid back asap ;p[/quote]
So do I :(
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