Most of these attack wear off after a few hours, but this weekend three of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet have had to deal with a more serious flood of unwanted connections, which renders the sites in question unavailable.

The music tracker What.cd, TV-tracker Broadcasthe.net (BTN) and the movie tracker PassthePopcorn.me (PTP) are the main targets, and all three have been down for several days.

While the trackers can only be joined through an invite system, the trackers all have tens of thousands of active users who are now waiting impatiently for the sites to return. TorrentFreak talked to several staff members to find out more, but thus far the source of the ongoing attacks remains unknown.

The consequences, however, are serious and What.cd has decided to null-route the site’s IP-address for the time being, to keep the bandwidth bills under control.

“We have been under a significant and sustained DDoS attack for the last few days, and requested our upstream null-route us to avoid wasting bandwidth,” What.cd’s Narcolepsy informed TorrentFreak.

“No person or group has claimed responsibility for the attacks as of yet,” he adds.

Over at PTP they haven’t got a clue who’s behind the DDoS attack either. “[We] haven’t received any threats or anything,” TorrentFreak was told by a staff member.

The ongoing attacks are reminiscent of a series of DDoS threats carried out last year by a person named “Zeiko.” The three above-mentioned trackers were also targeted then.

At the time the attacks are thought to have started because Zeiko was denied an invite to one of the trackers involved. A few days later these attacks spread to public BitTorrent sites as well, with Zeiko declaring war on all things piracy.

It’s obvious that the source of the current DDoS attacks has a grudge against the three private BitTorrent trackers. Whether this is motivated out of anti-piracy beliefs, competing interests, or another annoyance remains unclear for now.

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

Private sites commonly operate a ratio-based system where users are expected to upload around the same amount of data as they download, to ensure that the tracker’s ‘economy’ stays healthy. Some sites experiment with different methods of achieving the same ends, but whatever the technique the result is often more users ‘seeding’ than can be commonly found on similar torrents on public trackers, resulting in higher speeds and shorter download times.

For many in the BitTorrent community, private sites are where the real action can be found, but they also face some serious problems of their own. FileShareFreak has recently come up with a list of more than 300 private trackers launched in 2009 – of these only 179 remain online today. So what is causing the death of these sites before they even reach infancy?

In many cases sites are started by people who have no idea of the scale of the task that lies ahead of them and simply give up. Some sites are started by people who break off from other trackers after a dispute and believe they can do better and find out they can’t. While some thrive, others simply can’t carve themselves an audience or a big enough niche to satisfy their world-beating ambitions, while being hamstrung by their own invitation policy in an attempt to stay attractively exclusive.

Increasingly, however, more and more sites are simply running out of money, which is a fairly curious situation. After all, wasn’t BitTorrent created to make it really cheap to shift data around?

In themselves, the average private tracker and forum don’t cost that much to run, with many decent sized sites managing to operate for less than $150 each month – an amount easily covered by a generous sysop and a handful of small donations. But in recent years many private trackers have become very competitive – particularly with each other – as they literally race to bring content to their sites as quickly as possible and offering their demanding users the fastest download speeds.

What they are trying to achieve are great ‘pre-times.’ ‘Pre-time’ is a term used to describe how long it takes for a private tracker to make available a Scene release after it has been released (pre’d) on Scene topsites. The shorter the pre-time, the bigger the bragging rights, with the ultimate aim of the site winning the ‘race.’

Participating in these ‘races’ costs a lot of money, as the roles traditionally fulfilled by users (providing content and bandwidth) are increasingly taken on by the site itself. For many, this is becoming a crippling burden. So how much does this all cost?

Thanks to a smallish private site (6,000 users) known as StN (StoreTheNet) which chose to make its bills public as it tried and failed to justify turning their previously free site to a subscription model, we have an idea. (Please note: All the following information is already in the public domain, many private sites make no secret that they engage in this activity and StN will shutdown tomorrow.)

Around $200 per month goes to pay for site and IRC hosting and additional features to increase site security. For a ‘traditional’ torrent site setup (users provide all content and content bandwidth), that’s where the costs would end.

But of course, since this site and many others feel they have to become involved in ‘racing’ content to their site and providing ultimate download speeds, from here the costs start to skyrocket.

Around $330 is being paid every month to operators of so-called ‘topsites’ where the latest releases are ‘raced’ from, and while users of the site do contribute bandwidth via their normal sharing, these releases are initially seeded directly to the members via an unmetered bandwidth seedbox which StN says is approx $630 per month.

All these bills add up to approaching $1,200 in costs every month for what is essentially a pretty small site, so what’s the solution to bring costs down and avoid the death of yet more trackers during their first few months?

Well, first of all, many sites can achieve this amount through voluntary member donations, but a lot of private site members are also members of other trackers and they can’t possibly donate to them all. So inevitably, some are favored and others aren’t.

Another option for struggling sites (and many private site users will be stamping their feet with reddened faces at the mere suggestion) is to get out of racing altogether, instead letting users bring content and allowing BitTorrent and its users to propagate it naturally with their own home bandwidth and if they’re lucky, their own seedboxes. This will be much slower admittedly, but probably preferable to a site closing altogether. It also drastically reduces the security risk for the site itself.

Something that proves very successful for many sites is to find a niche. While all the latest movies may be a major attraction, they are also what cause the biggest burdens on a site in a myriad different ways. Niche material sites usually have great communities, great speeds and usually fly easily under the radar. Expect to see many more of these in the future.

There are hundreds of private sites out there that don’t operate in the fashion outlined above and don’t have the accompanying financial burdens, yet still achieve good times and speeds. Time will tell if the craze of the ‘race’ dies down in favor of lower running costs, or if the need for Blu-ray rips at lightning speeds prove simply too irresistible.

If the latter is true, in the end someone is going to have to pay for it.

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

Researchers from the Tribler P2P team at the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands, took an in depth look at the ‘ratio economy’ at various private BitTorrent trackers. Interestingly, they found some striking similarities between this virtual economy and some of the recent events in the global financial system.

In the paper, the researchers looked into the BitTorrent share ratios of members of a private TV-torrent tracker. They found that the current ratio system is heavily skewed towards a small group of people with a lot of upload capacity, often armed with seedboxes. These greedy ‘rich peers’ take away a disproportional of the available upload ‘credit’ so that new peers, or poorer ones have trouble keeping their ratio above the required figure.

In addition, several variations of swarm populations were simulated to see what their effect is on the users’ share ratios. Overall, the researchers found evidence of a credit crunch in the current ratio tracking schemes currently employed by most private BitTorrent trackers. Even when everyone has similar bandwidth limits this credit shortage still occurs.

“We discovered a strange phenomenon in existing private BitTorrent communities,” Dr. Johan Pouwelse told TorrentFreak. “Lack of credit is hampering performance. We have been able to reproduce this effect in a simulator to further understand it. It has many similarities with the credit crunch where the greasing oil of the world economy is drying out.”

“Lack of credit makes for bankrupt states and poorly functioning BitTorrent communities,” Pouwelse added. While it is unlikely that the trackers will collapse from it, the paper indeed shows that the current emphasis on share ratios is not fair to all members of the community.

Previously, Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol has spoken out against share ratios. “A better approach would be to not count it against people when they download from heavily overseeded torrents. Or to just not use total upload/download ratios at all, or if you do only make them advisory and not a source of banning,” he said at the time.

There are indeed hundreds of alternatives to the current ratio calculation, and most of them will indeed guarantee a healthier sharing environment (less favorable towards ‘rich peers’). In the paper, the researchers show that a ‘seeding bonus’ where peers get more credits for their uploads may help and others have suggested to use the total seeding time instead of the upload/download ratio.

While the paper presents some interesting findings, it doesn’t say much about download speeds on private trackers, which tend to be much higher than on public trackers. The parallels with our collapsing financial system are interesting, and with the only difference that a ‘bailout’ or ‘bonus’ would actually help the poor peers on private BitTorrent trackers, we can’t be too sure if that’s also going to work in the real world.

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

Trackerchecker is pretty straightforward. It is basically a huge list of private trackers which are ranked based on their signup status. The sites that have a green dot are open to the public, the red dot indicates that new members are not accepted at the moment. Towards the bottom of the site it lists private trackers that return a 404 error or a server timeout, indicated by a red cross and a blue dot respectively.

What’s most impressive about the site is that it lists and checks over 500 private trackers. Thus far we haven’t seen any similar tools that check this many sites, and there is probably a private tracker for every niche – from Slosoul.net through Pornbay.org to Traillertorrent.com – the list goes on and on. To keep the list growing, Trackerchecker allows users to register (no invite needed) so they can add missing trackers to the list.

Overall we can conclude that the site works well and it’s certainly a great resource. The only downside is that you still have to visit the Trackerchecker site to see which trackers are open. An email alert option might be a welcome addition. The “Tracker Checker” application is a good alternative for those people who prefer to have some software installed to check the signup status of private trackers.

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

The order of the list is not indicative of the difficulty it is to get in; rather, it’s a reflection of what is in hot demand. Without further introduction, here are the hottest Private BT sites of 2008 (that you likely can’t get into):

So, just how many of these badboys are open to new signups? As of right now – a meager three. Just starting out? Perhaps you should check out the btracs.com list for some lower-level private sites.

Or, you can use ‘Open Registrations Checker‘ software that is now in final release. If you’re at all familiar with ‘Tracker Checker‘ – ORC is the same concept. It periodically runs through a list of private trackers for “openings” and displays the results. When one becomes open to new signups, you’ll be notified and be able to join – assuming you act quickly.

Some of you may already be using ORC – this is where we’ve put a new spin on it. We’ve painstakingly taken their “trackers.tlist” database file and completely revamped and updated it with all the newest and hottest private BT sites. Not even the file they offer on their website even comes close to offering the same functionality. Additionally, we’ve removed the public trackers and any other non-working BT sites from the list.

Installing Open Registrations Checker (with the new trackers.tlist file).

1.Download ORC and install. (Requires .NET framework 2.0 or higher).

2.Download our trackers.zip file. You’ll need to unzip it into TWO locations (choose to ‘overwrite’ the old file in both cases):

— C:\Program Files\Torrents Open Registrations Checker\

— C:\Documents and Settings\ [Your Computer Name] \

3.Launch ORC from the Start Button – the private trackers will be updated. The program is self-explanatory – check off what you want it to check; click the magnifying glass icon in the corner.

4.Outwit your next door neighbour the plumber by getting into these sites first!

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

As time went on, torrents became more popular and the membership of private BitTorrent trackers increased. Part of it was speed , such sites tend to have better ratios of seeds to peers. Other factors are the absence of garbage and the fact that duplicates are kept to a minimum. However, such factors made them also prime targets for the anti-piracy groups. After the joint ICE and FBI raids against the US-based BitTorrent tracker, EliteTorrents, in 2005, even though it became clear that such investigators were members of such sites, invites became popular.

The theory behind invite-sharing is simple: Someone you know, who happens to be a member of a site invites you to join. You are known to them, and it should restrict the ability of people with bad intentions to join. “good members” invite their friends, who become good members, and are likely to be ‘safe peers’. In time, these new members would get/earn invites of their own, and they invite people they trust.

The problem is, many of these sites have members that promote their favorite site as ‘the best’, ‘the fastest’, ‘the safest’, or some other praise. Best is subjective, fastest often depends on luck and timing as much as anything else, and I discussed safety almost a year ago. Regardless of the truth of these statements, many sites have a cult following, and demand for invites to private trackers skyrocketed. People started to beg and plead for invites, and to trade them, or even worse, sell them. This is where things get problematic.

The invite system was based on a chain of trust. Yet now, a lot of people trade invites with strangers. They often know nothing about the other except that they’re a member of one site wanting another’s invite, and their email address. The chain of trust is often broken on large trackers, and the entire system is circumvented. Some consider this to be a problem, others believe it doesn’t really matter in most cases, because most people who do get in have to obey the rules anyhow.

There are some negative side effects of the scarcity of invites. Some users have started selling invites on ebay (such as for what.cd or waffles.fm), and trading sites have also popped up, some of which are attempting to profit from invites.

Of course, the final word comes from the admins of the private torrent sites themselves. Every one TorrentFreak spoke to reiterated that if you are found to have sold invites, your account will be deleted, as will the invited account. Still, people will be greedy, and try to profit from their invites. The most important message seems to be, sharing invites is a good thing, but watch out who you’re sharing with.

What do you think?

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

Private trackers are extremely popular, for example, OiNK alone tracks hundreds and thousands of torrents with over a million peers, more than most public trackers.

Most of the trackers listed here are not as big as TorrentLeech or OiNK But, you have to start somewhere, and these sites are worth your while if you want to try a private tracker.

If you’re looking for high speed downloads, a free Usenet trial might be a good alternative.

1. BitNation [BN]

BitNation offers a wide variety of torrents, sofware TV shows, movies, music and more.

2.TVtorrents

The TVtorrents tracker specializes in TV-shows.

3. BitGamer [BG]

The name pretty much gives it away.

4. Cinematic

Cinematic is a great tracker for film fanatics.

5. TorrentBits [Tbits]

TV shows, Movies, Music, DVDs and more.

6. IpTorrents [IPT]

Again a tracker with TV shows, applications, movies, music and more.

7. ILoveTorrents [ILT]

ILoveTorrents indexes all kinds of torrents.

8. GrabThe [GTI]

Again a tracker with a wide variety of torrents.

9. PureTNA

PureTNA is for pron, the biggest tracker in this list with over a million registered users.

10. BitTorrents [BiTT]

Another tracker with different types of torrents..

More open private trackers can be found at Btracs. If you know a good private tracker that is open for signups, let us know in the comments.

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