First there are the no-signup required types that give free access to all of their features with no commitment required by the end user. Next there are the free to access sites that also offer additional features if the user is prepared to sign up with an email address. Finally we have private torrent sites that have all of their features behind a subscription wall.

Gaining access to this latter category can vary from a fairly simple process to an almost impossible one. Some private sites let new members sign up via an ordinary page with no additional restrictions but many operate an invite-only regime and are very strict about who should obtain them.

The first hurdle, trading and cash

Herein lies the problem. If a user wants access to BestTrackerInTheWorld.com he needs to have an online buddy already on the site with invites to spare – if he doesn’t then he can’t get in. However, there are ways for people to obtain invites without having any ‘real’ friends at all.

Firstly, there are sites around where people in possession of invites to site X are able to trade them with people who have invites to site Y. By sharing in this fashion a user with access to a couple of sites’ invites can find himself with double or triple the amount, if he plays the game cautiously.

This activity is strictly against the rules of many private trackers but that doesn’t stop those wishing to trade. Many traders build up vast collections of invites which are not only valuable in terms of the access they provide, but in a real monetary way too. And when there’s cash on the table, getting access to that all-important first invite isn’t hard at all.

There are plenty of places online where people can buy an invitation to a low-end private tracker for just a few bucks. Furthermore, those with deep pockets should have no problems gaining access to even the most exclusive private trackers, providing the price is right.

Trading scum

At this point many admins, moderators, staffers and users of private torrent sites will be screaming at the screen. Trading and selling invites is almost always completely banned on invite-only sites and those who participate in either activity are often viewed as the lowest of the low.

“These scum put our security in jeopardy,” a moderator of one site told TorrentFreak.

“Any anti-piracy company can buy an invite and put the whole site at risk. We don’t want traders on the tracker and them being there undermines our work.”

However, trackers do allow members who have proved themselves in some way to give out a few invitations of their own. They are supposed to do this carefully, to people they already trust and only to those who will contribute positively to the site. But how can site operators be sure that’s going to happen?

“Well if they screw up and invite a trader/seller/cheater whatever, they’re gonna get their account banned aren’t they?” a staffer on another site told us.

But just as an anti-piracy company might threaten a file-sharer with prosecution for his transgressions (and be completely ignored of course), invite sellers and traders don’t follow tracker rules either.

Getting organized – trading and selling invites on the web

One site that aims to drive a bus through the invite wall is TorrentInvites.org (TI). This site and its users give away and sell/trade invites (plus other items such as seedboxes) and its operator is only too aware that his work is unappreciated by many private trackers.

“I know that trackers are calling us scumbags or whatever, because they want users to invite only REAL friends on their sites. But come on… we’re in 2013. The power of the net is HUGE and our virtual friends are (unfortunately in my opinion) in many cases more than our real friends,” he told TorrentFreak.

“I find it funny that these guys who are breaking federal copyright laws are calling us scumbags, because we are breaking their (shitty in my opinion) anti-trading and anti-selling invites rules.”

We asked the operator of one private tracker for his opinion of TI and while he didn’t use the word ‘scumbag’ he did get to the point in a four letter word that you rarely hear even in the movies. He also threatened to nuke anyone even slightly associated with the site. However, the admin of TI doesn’t see his operation as the natural enemy of torrent sites.

Let’s be friends

“We are just giving the chance to many thousands of users to join some good private trackers. To users who are not lucky enough to have real friends to invite them. To users who can prove in the near future that they really deserved this chance,” TI explains.

While the trackers’ stance is understandable, to his credit TI does put forward what appear to be some logical arguments in support of his operation being of use to trackers.

“A guy who is willing to pay for an invite is probably the kind of user who is going to donate to a tracker as well. I think it makes sense!” he says.

“Another interesting example. Let’s suppose that an HDBits.org account costs $200. A guy doesn’t really need his account and he is selling it to another user. Isn’t it obvious that the new owner needs it more and will make better use of the account than the previous user?

“What trackers want are good users. Why the hell will they ban this account if they find out
that there was a deal involved? If [the trackers] would let each user to do whatever he likes with his account, after a while they would have the best possible user base.”

Countering, the retired sysop of another tracker told us that anyone buying invites for large amounts of cash should always be viewed with suspicion as anti-piracy outfits tend to have deep pockets. That may well be, but aren’t they also just as capable of infiltrating communities, making online ‘friends’ and obtaining invites for free?

“I’m sure it happens but we wanted to try to reduce the odds,” he said. “I don’t know if it worked or not, all I can say is that it seemed effective at the time. What I hated most was seeing some kid punting our invites all over the place and making good money when we were struggling to pay our server bills.”

Trackers sell invites too

While the sysop above clearly wasn’t prepared to step over the line and sell his own invites, there are quite a few sites who are currently doing that.

Visitors to some of the larger private trackers will be aware that while the sites are advertised as full, room can apparently be made for those prepared to donate in return for an invite. However, while not always advertised as blatantly as this, other sites are indeed involved in selling their own invites.

One trader who asked to remain anonymous told TorrentFreak that over the past year he has obtained an official supply of invites from almost a dozen private trackers which he sells and sends back a cut.

“Some they are wanting me to sell invites only to the best users but others they do not care about it,” he explains. “I give them money and they give me invites, beyond that does not concern me.”

Selling, trading or giving away – can security ever be assured?

TI notes that just because an invite channel is official – whether that is via the site itself or some other sanctioned source – it doesn’t necessarily follow that the quality of new members will be high.

“Just keep in mind that MANY (bad) users are getting invites in a ‘legit’ way, through tracker’s forums or official recruitment threads [on sites such as Reddit etc] and they are selling/trading these invites,” he concludes.

The issue of invites is controversial and unlikely to disappear soon. Trackers obviously have an interest in having some sort of control over who gets them when their security is at stake. On the other hand, however, trackers themselves are giving invites to people that they do not personally know yet are asking their members not to follow suit.

In the meantime sites like TI ignore all the rules in order to give the community what they believe it really wants. Who is right? You decide…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The argument over which is ‘better’ will continue forever, but the differences between private and public sites are clear. Public sites offer content for free on a level playing field. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, you can access the site’s content for free. There are no barriers to entry and there are no rules.

Generally, private sites first require potential users to obtain an invitation and these vary from fairly easy to extremely difficult to get hold of. Once in, users are expected to play by a set of often very strict rules in order to be granted continued access to content. Screw up and the user is out, and sometimes banned forever.

In short, and as strange as it might sound, to a certain extent operators of private torrent sites implement an intellectual property protection regime to restrict access to content. And according to a research paper just published by Bodó Balázs at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, these voluntary IP regimes can go even further.

Balázs begins with a recollection of his attempts to gain an invite to a private tracker via the site’s IRC channel. He was immediately booted by a bot which explained that his entire country had been banned from the site due to users from Hungary proving bad for the community in the past.

“I laughed out loud. In the last few years I got used to the black YouTube screens telling me that ‘This video is not available in your country’, but it was completely unexpected to see that the ‘pirates’ are also locking me out from their musical archives,” he writes.

Not that Balázs does not appreciate the need for control. He understands that by being closed these sites gain a stability that sites like The Pirate Bay cannot hope to achieve and he recognizes the need for rules in order to maintain a flourishing community.

“Most of the rules are there to ensure the long-term survival of the common resource pool of shared files in an increasingly hostile legal and technological environment. They also make sure that the collection is as comprehensive as possible and maintains the highest achievable standards in terms of technical quality,” Balázs explains.

“Other rules establish internal administrative hierarchies, decision-making processes and conflict resolution methods: in other words, they establish the foundations of a self-governing community.”

Throughout his paper Balázs references several private sites but redacts their names to protect their privacy. We’ll continue with his wishes but suffice to say this offers them little extra security – we recognized the sites immediately from his descriptions. One, a site specializing in non-mainstream movies, told Balázs an interesting story about how they handle copyright issues in order to keep their community healthy.

Rather than a straightforward take-down response to a complaint, the site admin described an interesting negotiation, where the complainant was paid off, not with money, but with ‘ratio’, the main ‘currency’ available on a private tracker. Ratio is the comparison between the quantities of data a user downloads versus what he uploads – the more he does of the latter the more he is allowed to do of the former. Site admins have the ability to manipulate these stats to give users more relaxed access to ‘free’ content.

“Most often the producer will ask for [his content] to be removed until a certain date or until they break even on the film. We have also ‘paid’ (in ratio) producers to keep their work on the site,” the admin explained.

Balázs notes that “backroom dealings” like these seem to be better received by site operators and provide an avenue for negotiated settlement rather than the alternative of sending in the lawyers. TorrentFreak spoke to the admin of another private tracker specializing in music who confirmed that deals were in place with at least two dozen artists and label workers who agree to keep the peace in exchange for ratio.

With issues over outside influences aside, private tracker rules are put in place to keep the community healthy. Balázs argues these revolve around keeping quality high, maintaining the completeness of the overall library, and keeping the sharing community strong. These factors take priority, even if that means significantly reducing the usefulness of the site to the individual user.

One of the biggest complaints from users on private sites is that they are restricted by ratio rules. While these are necessarily put in place to protect sites’ libraries and quality of service (transfer speeds) for the rest of the community, they also amount to a copy protection system enforced by site admins, which effectively introduces a price for consumption (download) and a price for labor (upload).

“It is important to note that [private trackers] are not free-markets, and the prices are not automatically defined by supply and demand. On the contrary, prices are set by the not so invisible hands of the site administrators to signal preferred behavior and to address certain shortcomings of the P2P activity,” Balázs notes.

“By rewarding the sharing of certain content and penalizing the sharing of others, such pricing mechanisms are able to ensure that older, less popular, niche, fringe or otherwise archival content stays accessible at all times within the community. By setting download prices to zero [freeleech] these sites play an important role in directing attention to certain works and authors. Such mechanisms help admins to ‘curate the collection’ and shape the cultural canon within the network.”

Content producers are often accused of failing to adjust to the reality that online, content is no longer scarce. The Internet allows infinite digital copies of content to be made at virtually no cost. Balázs writes that while this is the case for open torrent trackers, private trackers counter with the implementation of rules that reintroduce artificial scarcity.

Nevertheless, users of private trackers are generally happy to play by site rules and their admins seem to be more open to deal with rightsholders, even as they break many of the rules laid down in copyright law. Balázs notes, however, that these decisions are less to do with the rule of law and more to do with the code of ethics negotiated within private site communities.

“As long as the main question of the IP field is not how people can be forced to obey the law, but rather under what conditions they choose to respect the wishes of authors and ensure the reproduction of different cultural fields, the survival of different social practices will be a factor of their ethical disposition rather than their legality,” Balázs writes.

“In other words we should expect ethically robust practices to persist even if their legality remains in question, and unethical practices will face considerable public opposition even if they are found to be legal.”

Finally, on the issue of private trackers and their restrictions, Balázs closes with the following thoughts.

“Voluntary IP restrictions in piratical communities are probably the most effective enforcement mechanisms up to date. Closed file-sharing communities have developed tools of social control in spaces where statutory copyright is irrelevant. The enforcement efforts that target these networks destroy not just the resource pools and the communities that built them, but also destroy the social controls that are in place,” Balázs notes.

“Paradoxical as this may sound, the aforementioned piratical communities may be the enforcement allies that rights-holders have been seeking all this time. In any case, it is apparent that they both have at least one interest in common: a sustainable cultural ecosystem. So maybe it is time to ask ourselves: should we set the foxes to watch the geese?”

Set the fox to watch the geese: voluntary IP regimes in piratical file-sharing communities, can be downloaded here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After five or six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures.

While it’s broadly described as an anti-piracy effort, the plan currently targets BitTorrent users, and only those who use public trackers. But, this may change in the near future.

Yesterday the CCI published a review of the evidence collecting technology used by tracking company MarkMonitor. The group decided to make a redacted version of the report public after it was revealed that the “independent” expert Stroz Friedberg previously worked for the RIAA.

The review briefly describes how MarkMonitor tracks BitTorrent users. First, the company identifies possibly infringing files and these are then downloaded in full to confirm that they’re real. Next, MarkMonitor requests a piece of the file from a file-sharer, after which it records the IP-address and sends a notice to the alleged infringer’s ISP.

The review concludes that “MarkMonitor’s evidence collection in connection with P2P infringement is robust, defensible, and will withstand adverse party scrutiny or evidentiary challenges.”

However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for improvements. The report points out, for example, that MarkMonitor only tracks properly named torrent files that are made available through public BitTorrent trackers, not private ones.

“Consider modifications to the infringement file identification process to include works with obfuscated names, or that are sourced from private trackers,” the report reads.

Unfortunately the paragraph that details this recommendation has been redacted. However, it’s apparent that by including torrents from private trackers the catch rate would be improved therefore boosting the deterrent function of the program.

While private BitTorrent trackers are often considered to be “safer” than public trackers, several of the larger ones are already being monitored by tracking companies. Users of public trackers are the easy pickings for anti-piracy companies, but private trackers can easily be targeted as well.

That said, it may be more of a challenge for MarkMonitor. All users on private trackers – undercover companies like MarkMonitor included – are required to maintain a good ratio of content up and downloaded to preserve their site membership. Doing this without actively participating in the large scale distribution of copyrighted content could prove an issue.

In addition to targeting private BitTorrent trackers, the report also recommends a more secure way to send incriminating data to Internet providers. At the moment the data is sent via email, which is relatively vulnerable to interception.

“Regarding ISP notifications, to the extent possible, move away from reliance on email/SMTP and towards the use of other secure protocols such as HTTPS,” the report reads. Again, the details of this suggestion are redacted.

One minor “flaw” in the report is the claim that “MarkMonitor’s Methodologies effectively identify P2P online copyright infringers,” which is strictly speaking not the case as they only identify IP-addresses.

CCI’s executive director Jill Lesser admits that this may not be the best choice of words indeed, and that no persons can be directly identified.

“You’re right, it’s a question of semantics. The more detailed way to describe the process is that MarkMonitor can only and will only identify the IP addresses associated with the alleged copyright infringement occurring on P2P networks,” Lesser says.

Overall the report answers several important questions and the information that’s made available suggests that MarkMonitor knows what it’s doing.

The “six-strikes” plan is expected to start later this month and as time goes by more questions will be answered, including the possibility that private BitTorrent trackers will be monitored.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

TorrentIt, which had 27,000 members at its peak, was known for having a large mix of scene and non-scene torrents, and for a very tight community. In April 2006, BREIN went after the original owner, who lived in the Netherlands, forcing the shutdown of the site under legal pressure. The TorrentIt crew decided it was better to take the site down than to have him take the heat, and took the site down.

Almost a year later in January 2007, some of the former staff members decided to bring the site back, under a new domain, one not attached to the original owner. The intention was to open by the end of May, but that never happened. The deadline was missed, and it took more than a year before the site was ready for its official relaunch.

BlastGT1, one of the original crew members, and an Admiral (equivalent to SysOp) at the new site told TorrentFreak: “Unfortunately, due to real life commitments, we missed that deadline, and after months of stagnation, I took it upon myself to find good coders within the torrent community who could help us finish the site, and try to repair the damage we had done to TiT’s good name.”

TorrentIt teamed up with the coders from DigitalHive, who were looking to start a new side project themselves, and this eventually led to the long awaited resurrection of the tracker. “Now, we’re back with a different domain, a different source and the drive to succeed,” BlastGT1 said.

“We don’t care about racing sites for pre times, we don’t care about having the biggest userbase. We care about having quality torrents, scene and non-scene, and most of all, we care about community. That is what made TorrentIt stand out before, and so many are already loving its return, finding their cabins kept warm and cozy,” BlastGT1 added.

The new and improved tracker changed its domain extension from .info to .eu, and now runs on Gazelle. Two days ago, they sent out almost 10K invites to former members, and many of them have joined the new site since. Unfortunately, an invite is needed to sign up, so not everybody will be able to celebrate and participate.

BlastGT1 has a word of advice for newcomers though: “Bide your time, get a good honest reputation elsewhere, have patience like people did once upon a time. Sooner or later you’ll make the right friend and snag an invite.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Norbits is one of these trackers, a medium sized community with over 10,000 members, most of them from Norway. Norbits has suffered downtime because of DDoS attacks before, but this time the threat may be more serious than that.

In an NFO file obtained by by IT-Avisen, a group called MORRADi takes responsibility for the attack on Norbits. “Once again we show our power! Once again we show your foolishness! This is not the first time we have done it, and it won’t be the last,” they write (translated).

“Enough is enough, you are becoming a real nuisance, and you are also a bunch of idiots that try to hide, so it’s high time we punish you! P2P is not something we want, when will you understand that? Do we have to take it as far as publishing your user database online?”

The message seems to suggest that “sceners” are behind the hack and the attacks, since they don’t want their releases shared on BitTorrent trackers. IT-Avisen journalist Trond Bie thinks this is plausible, as he told Dagbladet: “I know that there are people on the FTP scene that don’t like Norbits. It’s not improbable that such a group wanted to attack the servers. It’s happened before.” Whether the group actually has access to all the IPs, usernames and transfer logs of Norbits users remains unclear.

This would not be the first time that a private BitTorrent tracker has been hacked. Earlier this year the IP-addresses of seedboxes and of top-users on some of the larger private trackers leaked to BitTorrent. Nevertheless, this kind of information is useless to anti-piracy organizations, as it is impossible to verify whether it is legit or not.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to Michael Brooks, a security researcher who brought this issue to our attention, this particular TBDev exploit is down to the fact the developers didn’t protect the administrative interface from Cross Site Scripting attacks (XSS).

The attack uses CSRF in a chain with other flaws to obtain synergy – Michael calls this CSRF Bouncing.

“Unfortunately this Cross Site Scripting attack is accessible by an attacker using a Cross Site Request Forgery” Michael told TorrentFreak. “The Cross Site Scripting flaw is particularly valuable. The XSS payload is stored in the main index.php for the application. This means that an attacker can expose every visitor to their payload.”

Michael goes on: “The CSRF flaw is POST based so it does require the administrator to execute javascript. Finding the administrator account isn’t difficult if you have a user account on the system. Like with just about every SQL powered application the administrator is the first user account created. From this profile you will be able to send a personal message and you may even be able to obtain the admin’s email address.”

Worryingly, even if the attacker doesn’t have a user account, it’s possible to get one using an XSS flaw.

Michael explained how a malicious attacker increases his chances of a success with the exploit, by combining it with a little social engineering.

“In this case I am using the reflective XSS flaw to make it appear as though the administrator is viewing his own web application. The social engineering attack could look something like this: ‘I think there is a bug in your site. Can you check this link, it just does not look right http://localhost/redir.php?url=’ . This now means the flaw is no longer a “Cross Site” Request Forgery, because the request is being sent from the same website.”

After a successful attack it’s possible to deface the site and “hijack every user’s authentication token indefinitely”.

So what can be done to avoid this exploit? Michael told TorrentFreak:

“The most important thing to keep in mind is do not click on links that look like this. The link can be easily modified to be shorter, but the important part is avoiding links to TBDev’s /redir.php.”

“However this isn’t the only way that the flaw can be exploited. If you visit a website that the hacker controls then he can also trigger the attack. If you think you might have clicked on a bad link, change your password immediately.”

So what should an admin do if they already fell victim to the exploit?

“To remove the persistent XSS payload the administrator might have to login to the SQL server manually and delete the offending entry in the “news” table (since they won’t be able to use the web application to delete the news posting) using DELETE FROM news WHERE body LIKE ‘%fromCharCode%’.

The difficult part is that every user will have to change their password. In PHP I suggest defending against XSS using htmlspecialchars($var,ENT_QUOTES); . There are cases where XSS can still be possible without ENT_QUOTES. To defend against CSRF i suggest using PHP CSRF Guard.”

An administrator on a TBDev tracker we spoke with suggested a very quick fix off the top of his head:

in news.php change

$body = $_POST["body"];

to

$body = htmlspecialchars($_POST["body"],ENT_QUOTES);

We put this to Michael who told us: “The fix isn’t bad however the same fix also needs to be applied to $_GET["url"] in redir.php or the administrator account as well as others are subjected to hijack. There are other security problems with this application, but the XSS is the most serious as it leads to immediate attack.”

Earlier today TorrentFreak contacted a number of admins with details of the exploit. Michael tells us he has notified the relevant people of the flaw but it may take a few days until an official patch is made available.

The full details of the exploit are available here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

If you’re brand-new to a private site, it will be difficult in the beginning to acquire a 1.0 ratio. Luckily, users are given a ‘grace’ period to achieve this. Since there are so many more seeds than leechers (a total flip-flop from public BT sites), it becomes harder to upload to others – due to the fact that there are fewer people to share with.

So why go through all the trouble to keep an honest ratio? Because deep down, you’re an upstanding denizen of file-sharing society! Aside from that shameless pat-on-the-back, good ratios offer many perks, including an upgraded account on the tracker (i.e. VIP status), higher download speeds, free “invites” for your friends, and no waiting periods associated with accounts in arrears.

Here are Ten Tips to get your ratio in top-shape as fast as possible:

1. Start out with Smaller Files

Initially, opt for smaller (i.e. under 1 GB) files for downloading. This gives you a greater chance of someone coming along after you and downloading the same torrent (and you’ll be able to upload to them). Obviously a 700MB movie file will be more appealing to other site members than a 30GB ‘Blu-Ray’ rip.

2. Jump on the ‘Newly Released’ torrents

This is a great tip for increasing your ratio in a hurry. Camp out in your favorite private BT site, and refresh the torrent listings frequently. Newly added entries will have many more leechers than seeds, so you’ll be able to share (upload) more data. To maximize this tip, select smaller files – the “TV Episode” category works great for this.

3. Select Files that have a High ‘L’ or upload number

This is important. When selecting torrents, base your initial selections on a high number of leechers (the more, the better). This will ensure you have many avenues to upload to during (and after) the transfer. When starting out on a new private BT site, we would even go so far as to say that you should download torrents that you don’t want – just start grabbing torrents that have lots of leechers. Once your ratio get over the 1:1 (1.0) mark, delete them.

TIP: If one of your seeding torrents remains popular, leave it running in µtorrent permanently. This will always help to boost your upload ratio.

4. Avoid ‘Zero-Leech’ torrents

When you’re new to a private site, steer clear of the ‘zero-leech’ torrents – it is impossible to increase your share ratio when there are no other downloaders. When viewing a list of torrents, look for the “Leecher” column (or just “L”) and avoid anything that has a zero ( “0″ ) in it. After your account ratio has become relatively stable, now is the time to snag whatever you want.

5. Leave some tasks running in uTorrent

After the completed download of a torrent, leave the task running (as a seed) in µtorrent to increase your upload statistics. Don’t delete (or move) the files of a running task! You can, however, extract (unRAR) the files, or copy the files from one place to the next. In the event of a movie/video file – you’ll be able to “burn” or “extract” the *.avi file (or even play it on the PC) without affecting the seeding torrent.

TIP: Always keep a few things running as ‘seeds’ in your BT client. If you notice that they aren’t uploading, replace them with newer ones.

6. Go for the ‘Freebie’ downloads

Many private sites will offer “free” torrents that won’t count against your download statistics (thus, your ratio will remain unchanged). Grab these freebies – especially when searching for torrents on a new account.

7. Use ‘Credits’ to purchase…

A popular feature among superior private BitTorrent sites is the addition of a ‘credits’ feature for account holders. Credits can be used to ‘purchase’ VIP status, increased sharing ratios and other perks. Not all sites are the same, but some credits can be acquired just from staying active in their IRC channel, or from just having the torrents available for download in your BT client.

8. Do NOT try to ‘cheat’ the Private Trackers

There are a variety of ratio cheating tips available out there, but don’t be tempted. Trackers are fairly sophisticated and ever-evolving. If you get caught cheating, you won’t even be warned – it’s a permanent ban for you and bye-bye for good.

9. Set a proper Upload Limit

Setting a proper upload limit in the BT client makes all the difference! You’ll want to supply a high enough limit to maximize uploading, but not have it eat into your download bandwidth. The general rule is to set it at 80 – 85% of your upload limit. To figure this out, visit www.speedtest.net and conduct the simple test. Results are shown in kilobits, so divide the result by 1/8 and then multiply that by 0.85. This will give you the proper number in KB/s (KiloBytes).

In µtorrent, go to OPTIONS > Preferences… > Connection and enter your upload rate. Click “Apply” and then “OK” to save the changes. While your in that same ‘settings’ page, make sure to use a port number from the good list (e.g. 49152 – 65535).

10. And if all else fails…donate

Most sites allow for monetary contributions to keep up with the server costs. If you enjoy a particular site immensely but cannot seem to be able to approach a decent sharing ratio (due to turning off your computer at night, going to work, or sharing your computer with your kids, wife, husband or siblings), think about donating. In most cases even a not-so-generous gratuity will robustly affect your account status – plus you’ll feel good about helping out the BitTorrent community.

Other Tips – Follow ‘The Rules’

Yeah, we know: you hate rules! That’s why you probably moved out of your parents’ basement. Rules are probably why some turned to P2P.

Nevertheless, rules are an important aspect to private BT sites – they ensure healthy torrents and blazing-fast download speeds for all. Each site will have their “rules” posted – the link is usually not hard to find. Below are some general rules / tips that pertain to any private BitTorrent site:

Use an ‘Accepted’ BitTorrent client

Not all private trackers are the same – and each one has different rules in regards to which BitTorrent client is on the “allowable” list. Most sites recommend µtorrent, but only specific versions (or builds) of it. If you stick with v1.6.1 or the latest version v1.7.7 (recommended), you can’t go wrong with ANY private site (avoid any versions in between these numbers). And do not use BitComet on private trackers.

Proper BitTorrent client configuration:

Many trackers recommend that you disable DHT and Peer Exchange (PEX) in your BT client’s settings. To do this in µtorrent, go to OPTIONS > Preferences… > and select the BitTorrent tab. Remove the three checkmarks that pertain to DHT and PEX (see image below):

Do not ‘Hit & Run’ a Private BT site:

A ‘Hit & Run’ (or H&R) is when someone joins a private tracker, and downloads as much as they can before making off without uploading to a proper ratio. While this practice is frowned upon even on public sites such as mininova.org, it is deplorable to private sites. This can (and sometimes will) lead to your IP address being banned from the site – forever.

Stick within these guidelines for HAPPY Torrenting!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Why would anyone bother accessing a private site when you can get great stuff from PirateBay or Mininova? Most users cite better download speeds, great timing and availability of content while others believe they have better security. Most private trackers require that the user maintains a good ‘ratio’ – i.e he uploads back to the community the amount of data that he took. Because this behavior is monitored and enforced by a range of punishments, the user tends to seed more to avoid them. The ultimate punishment for not sharing is banning, which means the member can no longer access the content indexed within, well – that’s usually the case.

Information has been published showing a method for non-members to access and download stuff from private sites, using the (optional) Azureus Peer Injector plug-in and lists of peers (BitTorrent users IP addresses and ports they use) harvested from well known private trackers. Usually it’s the tracker on a site that decides if you can join the swarm or not (while recording your stats/ratio) but by using this method it’s theoretically possible to enter the swarm of a particular torrent without ever connecting to the tracker. The theory says that as long as you can access a .torrent file originating from the site (via a torrent dump site such as mininova, a friend or the site’s unprotected RSS feed for example) plus an accurate and up to date peerlist, you can download without being a member, ratio-free.

However useful this might sound to some, there is a cost. For the method to work, the group needs to harvest user’s IP addresses from each tracker they wish to exploit and make them available for people to download. They appear to have already compromised the privacy of users of TorrentLeech and SceneTorrents by publishing their IP addresses in a peerlist, at the same time claiming the method improves the individual’s privacy.

Its common on P2P forums for people to debate the benefits and drawbacks of public and private sites. Some feel private sites restrict, while others understand that a site’s growth sometimes needs to be artificially limited due to technical, staffing or budget issues. Some feel it’s wrong to ring-fence the available media and that it should really be ‘set-free’ while others feel that it’s neat being a member at a fast tracker with great image and they’re quite happy at being part of an ‘exclusive’ club.

In any event, I guess both parties are on roughly the same side in the end and they would likely agree – although of limited use on their own, the user’s IPs on sites like TorrentLeech, SceneTorrents and any other tracker should definitely be kept as private as possible, even if others believe the torrents shouldn’t be.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Shortly after we published, we had a contact from Milen Georgiev Dzhumerov, a regular reader of TorrentFreak and Mac software programmer. “When I saw the Tracker Checker I thought it was a great idea – so simple and useful” he said, “I’m waiting to start uni in October, I’ve got nothing better to do except write software! As I am a Mac user, I decided to create a Mac version of the app.”

The application arrives in .DMG format at just 221kb. Full installation instructions are included in the README file but it’s simply a question of dragging the software’s icon (created by YellowIcon) into the ‘Applications’ folder.

Launching is achieved by browsing to the app and double-clicking it. The .DMG file comes with a trackers.xml file (containing the tracker information) and is pre-configured with 67 trackers. Simply navigate to the .DMG, select the trackers.xml and import it.

There are 4 main buttons on the toolbar (created by Matt Ball Design):

Reload – Manually “reloads” all trackers
Add – Adds a new tracker to the list
Remove – Removes the currently selected tracker
Info – Opens the “Tracker Inspector” allowing the modification of tracker properties.

In the lower right corner there is a setting for selecting how many concurrent connections to open when checking the trackers. Tested on an 8mbit down connection, 15-20 connections produced ideal results.

Positive match type in the ‘Inspector’ is defined as marking the tracker as open if the find string is found and negative is just reversing the result of whatever the positive is returning, i.e if it doesn’t find the string you have selected negative, the tracker will be marked as open.

One of the criticisms leveled at the PC version of Tracker Checker 2 was that it checked sites for signups at a too regular interval of just 60 seconds. The Mac version addresses this with the chance for the user to choose the update interval.

Milen goes on to explain that he had another motive to develop the app: “The other reason for doing it was to actually see how good Cocoa stacks up against .NET/Java for simple applications like this one. I wanted to prove to myself that you can write applications in Cocoa rapidly. I would say that the app took me about a day/day and a half of proper work (I’m subtracting the time where I jumped in to play some games or watch a movie). I didn’t encounter any problems when using Apple’s well-designed frameworks and I’m very happy with how it turned out.”

More features are planned for the next release:

- Localization (definitely German + unconfirmed others)
- Growl support
- HTTP authentication and redirection support

Anyone wishing to translate the app, suggest features or report bugs, should get in touch with Milen on gamehack@gmail.com

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Update June 26, 2007
Demonoid Offline For a Few Days

Update January 3 2007

Demonoid is currently down for maintenance
Will be back soon

Just to let you know, demonoid.com is open for registration. Demonoid is one of the biggest private torrent sites on the web and the most widely used BitTorrent tracker, together with the piratebay.

Get in before it’s too late.

You will be rewarded!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.