Z-Cult FM Comic BitTorrent Tracker Turns The Final Page
Written by enigmax on June 07, 2009Back in 2007, the Z-Cult FM comic book tracker experienced difficulties when it came under legal pressure from Marvel and DC Comics to remove torrents linking to their copyright works. The site complied and extended this service to other publishers but in the end, this courtesy ended up draining the life from the site.
In 2007 we reported on the difficulties experienced by comic book tracker, Z-Cult FM. Around since 2004, the site was put under pressure by comic giants DC and Marvel, and eventually took action to remove torrents linking to works to which these publishers held the copyright. The site continued to run until recently but then saddened users received a message from the administrator, Serj, who confirmed their fears.
Along with thanks to the staff, members and supporters of the site past and present, the message explained that Z-Cult FM would be closed down, marking the final chapter of what Serj called the “soap opera” of Z-Cult FM.
So what caused the closure of the site – more pressure from Marvel, more threats from DC? TorrentFreak spoke with owner Serj for the lowdown.
“Well, a decision was just made to call it a day. We had no legal threats since all those ones you covered but the site was dead in the water due to no Marvel or DC comics etc. After Marvel and DC tried to sue us, we decided to remove those [links to] comics, then every other publisher started sending us e-mails so we removed those too. In end we were left with a tracker but not many torrents on it.”
Of course, a site like Z-Cult FM costs money to run just like any other, and this was a factor in its closure.
“The site is costing me cash for a server that isn’t really put to much use anymore so I just decided it was time to call it quits, back the site up and kill the server,” Serj told TorrentFreak. “If we do come back it will be after a little break but that’s just an IF and if we do it will be just a message board,” he added.
There was also an interesting addition to Serj’s discussion with us. Although Z-Cult FM has been operating in the BitTorrent/comic scene since 2004, these days that particular sector is changing – and not for the better says Serj.
“These days most comics are pirated on DC++ or sites such as Rapidshare,” he explained. “Live links are becoming the most popular because uploaders are being paid for the number of people who download their comics from Rapidshare etc, its a sad turn of events in the scene.”
The BitTorrent and comics combination is less popular these days, Serj told us.
“So we are leaving now.”
Z-Cult FM Comic Turns The Final Page
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37 Responses
““These days most comics are pirated on DC++ or sites such as Rapidshare,” he explained. “Live links are becoming the most popular because uploaders are being paid for the number of people who download their comics from Rapidshare etc, its a sad turn of events in the scene.””
Not really. There are comic trackers other than ZCult -
http://tinyurl.com/bibliotik
http://tinyurl.com/animatoonic
http://tinyurl.com/comictorrent
And there might be more.
Anyways RIP Zcult. It was a great resource for die hard comic fans like me.
Lesson to be learned, never comply with or try to work with “rightsholders”
Do you hear me miniNova?
Pirating comics? hmmm I haven’t tried that before :p
FIRST!!!!
well this sucks.
they were forced out =(
… should’ve went the piratebay way.
CatZilla is an idiot. Who the fuck do you think is gonna fund them trying to defend themselves. Ungrateful piece of shit
Good, no one needs these trackers that comply with any of those threats.
sad day for Z-Cult. my deepest sympathies to the admin and community
the good news is all of the comic book refugees found new homes and new communities
http://www.h33t.com has a big and highly active comic community (as does demonoid)
Wasn’t DC and marvel torrents available on Zcult even after the threats, via another tracker?
Why cant anyone make an anonymous tracker that can be listed by sites but if one gets taken down the rest have the list.
You know instead of each having there own trackers for a single file.
-J
“The BitTorrent and comics combination is less popular these days, Serj told us.”
I disagree. There have been some new comic trackers that were launched recently
http://tinyurl.com/comictrackers (read the first three entries)
And yes, as #6 mentioned h33t has a great collection of comics too. Although very few know, what.cd has a decent comics collection even though its a music tracker.
Thanks for the info ComicPirate!
Goodbye, fellas. And thanks for everything.
By the way, RIP Zcult, you’ve been a great resource for die hard comic fans like me.
People are going ape on this copyright thing, next inline will be fashion.
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/proposed-law-to-destroy-90-of-design-businesses/
They pretend is to combat piracy but we all know it’s to stiff competition.
Lazy thugs.
Remember you heard here first:
Everybody on the streets will have to have clothes that have RFID tags on it that proof that your underpants was bought and it’s a original fail to do so will lend you in jail for piracy LoL
To be honest, and with all respect to this great former torrent tracker – now that RapidShare is so popular, why bother with torrents when RapidShare is so much more convenient. AT LEAST for small files like comics.
Why not make a quality private RS community. Either make it a message board format and have a private RS links section (all neatly organised and easily searchable) for the site’s members, or even a straight TBDev-like indexing site with Rs links instead of torrents.
Other such sites DO exist out there, like HD-BB.org and RetroFlix. And as for links getting stolen and posted elsewhere (like say avaxhome.), well I don’t think they would get reported THAT often, so it’d be pretty easy to maintain.
Torrenting, at least private, quality torrenting, is only really worth the effort for large files these days. Who says RS sharing can’t be done in a quality way, and with small files you probably don’t even need a Premium RS account. Using RS clients like JDownloader or Cryptload, RS is the new, IMO superior way, to share small content.
and if the likes of Marvel and DC etc think for 1 minute, that file sharers are the ones that lose, then they need to think again. in all reality, it is the comics’ producers that have lost out the most by not having their ‘work’ distributed. do they really think that because there is no sharing, there is more buying? what absolute, idiotic morons!!
Rapidshare is crap.
+1 to “Rapidshare is crap.”
The sad thing is there are comics out there that you might not beable to find anymore from Marvel or DC. I think Marvel and DC should put comics that are no longer in production for free on their website (with ads or something).
Oh wait, that would take time and effort to make their fans happy.
zCult like any specialized torrent site (eg: only movies or TV shows) is fantastic because its all in one place, but a lot of private/semi-private sites worth their salt have some quality comics sections that are accessible just one or two clicks after logging in.
For example: Demoniod, fantastic site with comics to suit nearly all tastes (i say nearly because they have a policy against “hardcore porn” comics – but if you want that, theres always Emp or PureTna) with no care if its Marvel or DC or whatever. The only way to make sure your comics wont get shared is… stop making them.
If you cant get for fix of Batman, xmen, Superman, GL or golden oldies like The Phantom, Mandrake etc etc… you are visiting the wrong sites mate.
Cheers!
@ 16
WtF are you talking about? Torrents get atleast twice the speed for any files then DDL ever does. Either you’ve never properly used a torrent client or you don’t know what you are saying. DDL isn’t even Filesharing and it is most definitly not the future of where the world of filesharing is headed too.
Most of these corporations look at file sharing as lost sales. Not one to date has ever proven that charge. Nor have they ever proven that sales of used goods would have been a purchase. (first sales right)
Despite both lacks, the corporations look at the used market and the downloads as something they need to squash and control.
To be honest with you, I no longer read comics. Call me too old, whatever, I just have no interest in comics. When I was a young lad, I learned to read through comic books, so yes they have a place in the scheme of things.
All print media is facing turmoil as everything gears up for digital distribution. Advertisers are abandoning the traditional print for the internet as that is where the eyeball pressure is. It’s where folks have gone to. The vested and traditional are fighting a loosing battle similar to the home delivery ice man of yesteryear. No amount of stonewalling, legal maneuvering, nor fancy schemes is going to change that. Fight it they may and in end, it will still be them that have to adapt or die.
With this adapting, comes the fact they are just going to have to realize that coming late to the net, makes them Johnny-Come-Lateys. While they may have the experience, they have lost the customer loyalty in the delay and other forms of entertainment have taken the market share they once enjoyed. With that loss of market comes loss of income. They are delegated to lower income levels because of that delay in acceptance.
Fighting against the tide won’t change anything. Economic pressures will be guaranteed to bring this about, no matter their desires nor wishes.
Yeah, I forgot that the fast speeds are only with Premium (which is about 2MBytes/s). The non-premium speeds are around 226KB/s. Well, I still think the price is worth it, and there is NO other reason why you could claim that “Rapidshare is crap”. And if you actually tried the RS experience with JDownloader and auto-unrar and used some quality RS sites, instead of your lame ignorant claims, you would find that all the benefits of RS (no having to seed back, no ratio worries, more secure with regards to IP addresses – to name a few) are WORTH the price. Even if you’re a 12-year-old kid with hardly any pocket money, 50 odd Euros a year? That’s peanuts.
And OF COURSE Rs is file sharing! It’s just not the “p2p” brand of file sharing. It’s still “sharing”, it’s just in the form of a small group of uploaders sharing for others to download.
But, what’s so good about p2p? Why the need for it anyway? p2p was only invented as a WAY to DOWNLOAD, by using resources in a smart way. Well, now the internet has more capacity, p2p is not needed for small files anymore, we can have DDL with fast speeds (for RS Premium).
Sure, I love torrenting too, I’m actually a HUGE private torrenter. I’m just not sentimentally (and irrationally) bound to torrenting just because I “love it”. You cannot make that claim unless you’ve actually tried the “proper” way to use RapidShare.
rapidshare isnt totally crap sometimes you can find things on there that are not availible anywere else on the visible side of the internet.
least number of links in a topic so far
@dvd:
Well still rapidshare continue to be crap and the reasons follow:
- It’s a central server, so have logs and could be shutdown.
- Uses flash to initiate a download which compromises anonymity so it’s not secure even using TOR.
- It’s paid and the free part have a download limit per hour.
- You never know what you get because people don’t comment on it.
- Lots of broken links.
Conclusion:
Crap!
@Anonymous
I don’t know what you use for downloading off Rapidshare but I’ve used it for a number of years.
I purposely removed and uninstalled flash on this computer. Did it right after I bought it as I dislike the .LWO cookies that are hidden to datamine and track you. So it doesn’t depend on flash to download, unless your particular app uses it.
Obviously, you haven’t been to the right places to see comments. Most likely you have been to the places that are full of leechers. You have the same thing in torrents, people that are just not going to honor their end of the bargain for the getting and feels like the world owes them.
There are places that are active communities that do comment, often and frequently about any and all aspects of a particular data set. Nor are the comments for the most part just “thx”.
The only reason for broken links is a lazy forum that doesn’t have mods doing the work they should nor coordinating with the members that should report a broken link when they find it. I know of a site that will remain unnamed that actively encourages the reporting of broken links in any manner the member so desires. The staff doesn’t feel it sits next to the deity and shouldn’t be bothered with trivial stuff like work. There are links there that have been good for years and folks that take care of their uploads and reup items if and when they get removed or broken.
So I have to respond that your experiences with Rapidshare are because of the sites you have visited. No one can control that but you.
Having been staff there for a good while, I know what I speak of in this.
hmmm never heard of zcult…
You should def check this out too its called an Electronic Cigarette
Oh, spare me the “woe is me” crap. Comics on the net is healthier today than ever. The one and ONLY reason Z faded away is Serj’s spineless decision to drop trou and bend over for the industry. Boo-f’n-hoo! Marvel and DC sent an email so Serj decides to gut the damn site and live on his knees smoking industry pole.
Now he wants to blame DC++ and DD links when the blame is solely due to his being a spineless twat. Peddle your sob story somewhere else, Serj. Those of us who were there know the truth. Like the old saying goes, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen”.
i got their email. sad story :( their site was confusing anyway, couldnt find the torrents
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the hell is that?
You gotta check this out too, it’s called an Electronic Cigarette The government and tobacco companies are trying to make it illegal, so we gotta spread the word.
@ 22
“WtF are you talking about? Torrents get atleast twice the speed for any files then DDL ever does. Either you’ve never properly used a torrent client or you don’t know what you are saying. DDL isn’t even Filesharing and it is most definitly not the future of where the world of filesharing is headed too.”
Depends on who you are and what torrent your downloading. In my experience DDLs are hella faster than torrents. Often times I dont get even near a full dro of my download speed when using bt. This is thru different connections and different OSes and such. It might be different settings and location and such, because when I was in Asia the bittorent was definitely fast, but generally everywhere else I’ve utilized it its been mediocre speed.
Also, typically i can get a 1mb per second and have a movie in 30 minutes on DDLs. Generally Im not some cheap bastard and can afford to pay for a premium acct which is truly how’ll you’ll notice the gain. (even though back when I was a cheap bastard some DDls where decently fast)
Also, like I said there are alot of variables…. which I really dont feel like getting into.
umm torrents “premium” those that actually uploads.. so if u have sh1t downloadspeeds on torrents…. odds are ur a dirty lil leecher.
and also frequent sh1t torrentsites like The Pirate Bay….
i got a 100mbit line. and as im not a stinking little leecher, im in the good sites… so 2mb/s on RS?? lol!!!!!
i rarely get under 8mb/s on “my” torrentsites…
also…. i dont have to pay sh1t for it…… well other then uploading to others so they in turn can enjoy FREE fast downloads… suckers….
where do the torrents shirts sell at.
ted
http://WWW.MIAMIPCSOLUTIONS.COM
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