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Thread: I have stood at the gates of all those "elite" trackers.

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    faltu (16.07.20)

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    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    Hitting Power User was easy. Becoming Elite took a few days of continuous work. I wanted to go all out and reach Torrent Master, but gave up at around 120 torrents (out of 500 required), because it was getting too repetitive and boring.
    Here are the final stats for that account, long after I got bored with What.cd.

    "I just remembered something that happened a long time ago."
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    faltu (19.07.20)

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    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    Those speeds were absolutely insane back then, when gigabit lines were slowly beginning to become a thing. Then again, if you visited the forums on ScT and SCC, there were quite a lot of people who apparently spent hundreds of dollars a month on the fastest of seedboxes. Do the names splic3 or SpX21 ring a bell?

    I have read some of those ScT vs. FTN threads, where indeed the sysops of both often participated personally. The girl you mention may have been kimii? In hindsight, though, the Feeling vs. Brandon rivalry was likely an act they pulled rather than any serious hostility. In any case, I think FTN couldn't hope to compete with ScT in anything besides seeding difficulty.

    Brandon was an ex-FSC staff member who decided to create his own tracker, and was doxed at least once, as was Feeling who apparently lived in England and used his real IP everywhere. As for the engagement ring, the rumor had been circulating since at least 2008 and the ring itself allegedly was for michelle from Waffles. Who said love can't bloom in the torrent world?
    Spx21 was sysop at Tehconnection iirc but that's a familiar nick. 172 MB/s in 2005-06 LOL. Let that sink in.

    Yes it was about Kimii and she was a member of FST too. What drama LOL. FTN had exclusivity up their sleeve over SCT and also a supposedly friendlier staff. Feeling was a bit of a dick to pretty much everyone but that was just him haha.

    So FSC was the mothership for both Brandon and Feeling? Wow I didn't know that but I do recall Feeling have the English flag in his accounts. I looked up their names on Redacted,BTN,PTP but couldn't find them. Not sure why these sysops dont register on the more content driven sites.

    Waffles had a nice community, friendly staff, nice site design, it was actually better than wcd and more in demand than wcd before wcd went gazelle. What an invention gazelle was huh? I remember michelle and Shinikaru who was the 'syrup king' but michelle was very active in the forums.

    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    Send me a message if you want an invite. As for the rest, I'm in complete agreement. It's insane how TL and IPT have hundreds of thousands of users (the former even opens signups regularly) and big monthly expenses, yet apparently have never faced any sort of legal trouble in the 15 years or so they've existed, whereas many smaller and harder to get into trackers have disappeared in the last decade (see http://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=33773). It's like they're untouchable... not that I have any problem with that!

    Hosting or operating a torrent tracker on a Five Eyes country is suicidal nowadays, but then again I think everyone already knows it, and only uses them for reverse proxies if at all.
    I don't think I'll be able to maintain another account and will most probably end up cheating and get myself banned and inturn get you banned too so I'll pass but thanks a lot. Ya it baffles me how TL and IPT, too of the biggest money making torrent sites probably havent been busted yet. Long may they continue. Yes but then again the what.cd takedown was shocking as it was in France.

    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    True, but I think most people would have already had ScT and TL by the time they joined FTN or FSC.
    Yup. It would be easier for an FTNer or FSCer to get into a fellow leet site like Exigo or iTS etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    I don't blame them for wanting people to be active, but I don't think mandatory downloading works well on a small and fairly niche tracker. As I recall there was also a strict anti-overseeding rule, and if you had a ratio higher than 3:1 or so on a torrent you'd get a warning?
    Yes it was tough to stay an active cheat on that tracker cause you couldn't just download a 200/300 mb file so the bigger the files the harder to keep a sustainable ratio.
    They did and I think I got warned for overbuffering a torrent cause I used to look for torrents to cheat on in Pedros and it wasn't straight forward cause a lot of torrents had 1 or 3 leechers. I think pedros banned countries like Romania, not fair but who can blame them if so many cheaters come from a single country?

    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    Lossless World had open signups initially, that's how I got in. I had access to a shared seedbox at the time, and thought I could put it to good use on an upcoming global freeleech at What.cd. Autodownloading every new FLAC torrent would have worked well, but I felt it was possible to do even better... the answer was taking files from L-W and VIPMusic (a long-defunct scene music tracker) and reuploading on What, to build buffer and reach a higher user class. I also filled several requests in the same manner, because some people were apparently too lazy to do even the simplest searches.


    Hitting Power User was easy. Becoming Elite took a few days of continuous work. I wanted to go all out and reach Torrent Master, but gave up at around 120 torrents (out of 500 required), because it was getting too repetitive and boring. Also, L-W staff noticed my deed and banned me shortly before the freeleech ended. Funnily enough, some of "my" uploads eventually trickled down to RuTracker, with me being credited as the original ripper in the description, and those torrents are still there! A small monument to the days when ore-sama was a high school boy and had lots of time for this shit, I suppose
    I was a member of VIPMusic and later it went down and came back as VIPV2 which I was a member too. Easy to get in. I think you were lucky to catch lossless world when they were open signups cause they closed pretty quickly. Amazing you were able to do the cross uploading files to What to become Elite, I did have the idea but was just too lazy to rip and upload. I just wanted to cheat gbs and have enough buffer to download and get into their invites forum to trade or move to other sites. I'll try to find your uplaods on rutracker, are they uploaded by "anon"?

    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    From memory, the thread was titled "anyone want a UK-T invite?", and in the first post he acknowledged that while they were unlikely to offer anything an experienced torrenter couldn't already get content-wise, the security aspect might be attractive. One or two people took him up on his offer, then it was basically an FST thread.
    Interesting. Clearly you were in some cool, mystical places on FST that I wasn't privy too, perks of being a FST mod huh? But that's the only UK-T invite thread that I've ever heard about on the internet. Funny thing was when UK-T went down, all their members were panicking and wondering where to go when there were all these regular sites like TL etc that they could easily join. It's like UK-T was the only torrent site that existed for them. It's cute haha.

    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    Not all trackers have opposed trading, indeed (see https://web.archive.org/web/20100811...hates-trading/). Personally, I've always been of the opinion that the "security risk" rationale to disallow it is greatly exaggerated and never saw a problem with it, as long as both parties involved are genuinely interested on what they're trading for (see https://filesharingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=3336460); account trades, giveaways or sharing can also be okay depending on circumstances (see http://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=21339 and http://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=24222). If trading was seen as more acceptable in the past, it was likely and simply because these good traders (so to speak) outnumbered rarity seekers and sellers looking for merchandise.

    FST allowed tracker staff to become official community reps on the forum and disallow account (but not invite) trades for the sites they belonged to. However, said rank was relatively short-lived (see https://filesharingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=278399) and the relationship between both fell apart from 2008 onwards, as we discussed above.

    The anti-trader thing was as stupid as it sounds. Sticking a label on yourself so that it was really clear that you were a good, trustworthy guy who deserved to be invited everywhere "for the community". Not surprisingly, some of those "anti-traders" were just pretending to be nice at all costs to get what they wanted, were collectors, actually traded in secret with dupe accounts, or a combination of the three. The premise of forums run entirely around the concept of obtaining tracker invites was not healthy, and led to this sort of behavior (see http://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?p=350819).
    Agree. The whole anti-trading stuff killed off the drama which made FST interesting.

    Quote Originally Posted by anon View Post
    Streaming services have been responsible for a big decline in filesharing in general, even if there are occasional bursts of activity. However, I want to believe that tracker collectors grew up and realized there was no point to that shit anymore
    Unfortunately streaming services made it impossible for the torrent drama to flourish so I dislike them for that. Plus when FTN, FSC,SCT,UK-T, FTWR all went away it reduced the collectors a lot. Now you just have Exigo, AOM and FSC out of which it's just Exigo and FSC that collectors are more interested in imo.
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  6. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by faltu View Post
    Spx21 was sysop at Tehconnection iirc but that's a familiar nick. 172 MB/s in 2005-06 LOL. Let that sink in.

    Yes it was about Kimii and she was a member of FST too. What drama LOL. FTN had exclusivity up their sleeve over SCT and also a supposedly friendlier staff. Feeling was a bit of a dick to pretty much everyone but that was just him haha.

    So FSC was the mothership for both Brandon and Feeling? Wow I didn't know that but I do recall Feeling have the English flag in his accounts. I looked up their names on Redacted,BTN,PTP but couldn't find them. Not sure why these sysops dont register on the more content driven sites.

    Waffles had a nice community, friendly staff, nice site design, it was actually better than wcd and more in demand than wcd before wcd went gazelle. What an invention gazelle was huh? I remember michelle and Shinikaru who was the 'syrup king' but michelle was very active in the forums.
    SpX21 was active in a lot of trackers. When SCC struggled financially three years ago, he allegedly promised to make a five-digit "bailout" donation, although it's clear from the end result that such a thing did not or could not happen. As I recall, he was a fairly colorful character in the torrent world, his name even showing up on many scene notices.

    Code:
    Scene.Access.Owner.SpX21.Discussing.His.TopSites.KILLTHEPRICKS-FUCKSAKE
    
    [12:56] (SpX21) TiT ?
    [12:56] (SpX21) torrentit?
    [12:56] (******) lol i'm marked as an upper there, but don't do anything
    [12:56] (******) i race for a couple sites
    [12:57] (SpX21) ;>
    [12:57] (SpX21) couple sites.. as in torrent or ftp
    [12:57] (******) i mean i race nascar :/
    While I recognize the potential security benefits, I don't consider exclusivity an advantage in this case. It meant there was much less going on at FTN, and I've never heard of anyone getting copyright strikes for downloading from ScT. Nicer staff, that may have been possible; Feeling, Terska and Eezee did have a bit of a reputation. Whether it was deserved I don't know, but a March 2009 poll puts them second only to BitMeTV, which "wins" by a large margin (see https://filesharingtalk.com/poll.php...do=showresults). Interestingly, two years prior to that, OiNK would earn the award to the worst staff by a landslide (see https://filesharingtalk.com/poll.php...do=showresults).

    FSC is amongst the oldest places still operating, and itself was spun-off an even older one that no longer exists (can't remember its name), guess it's a small world after all As for the "missing" staff members, not finding their names on modern trackers doesn't mean they aren't there, although these are well-connected people who could likely cut the middleman and get a slot on a topsite if they wanted. Or perhaps they simply moved over to Usenet, as have so many other torrenters, staff or not. However, Brandon is or at least was active on TL for sure (see https://filesharingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=3370091). Also, keep in mind that Gazelle logs your searches and visited profile pages, because that's how toxic things are now.

    Gazelle and Ocelot are indeed two huge contributions to the torrent world, ensuring What.cd's legacy will live on for a long time. Regarding Waffles, if it had a higher initial popularity, it's likely because they attempted to keep the OiNK feel as much as possible when the memory of OiNK was still fresh in people's minds; they even had a copycat pink layout, and you could choose "OiNK Island" as your country flag, which I did Anyway, thanks for mentioning them, because it reminded me of Woodenhead and how he was the nicest and best staff member from any tracker I've interacted with. It's a shame they had to go out like that: long downtimes, usability issues, the sysop's complete disappearance leading to a de facto site closure...

    I don't think I'll be able to maintain another account and will most probably end up cheating and get myself banned and inturn get you banned too so I'll pass but thanks a lot. Ya it baffles me how TL and IPT, too of the biggest money making torrent sites probably havent been busted yet. Long may they continue. Yes but then again the what.cd takedown was shocking as it was in France.
    No worries. The offer still stands if you ever want it in the future.

    I pictured France as a somewhat safe location (so many OVH seedboxes; Hadopi law eventually repealed) but the 2016 raid clearly proved me wrong. Even though only a reverse proxy had been compromised, it's clear that the What.cd staff decided to call it quits rather than risk something worse down the road. WhatMan had a "if 'they' ever connect the site to me in a personal level, it's game over immediately" policy, and it must have only been tightened after he stepped down.

    Yup. It would be easier for an FTNer or FSCer to get into a fellow leet site like Exigo or iTS etc.
    iTS has had public invite applications, so it's not as l33t as the others, sorry.

    Yes it was tough to stay an active cheat on that tracker cause you couldn't just download a 200/300 mb file so the bigger the files the harder to keep a sustainable ratio.
    They did and I think I got warned for overbuffering a torrent cause I used to look for torrents to cheat on in Pedros and it wasn't straight forward cause a lot of torrents had 1 or 3 leechers. I think pedros banned countries like Romania, not fair but who can blame them if so many cheaters come from a single country?
    I don't know what things are like nowadays, but back in the day Romania, Egypt, India and Israel were the "G4" of countries banned for excessive cheating and trading (see http://fsfmirror.blogspot.com/2008/1...al-ban-of.html). I'll never understand why Romanians cheated, their connection speeds have always ranked among the fastest in the world. In any case, there was no shortage of other trackers, both domestic and international, willing to welcome them. And if their country was also banned on BTM, that's somewhat ironic and/or hypocritical as Pedro is himself Romanian, or at least had that country flag on ScT.

    I was a member of VIPMusic and later it went down and came back as VIPV2 which I was a member too. Easy to get in. I think you were lucky to catch lossless world when they were open signups cause they closed pretty quickly. Amazing you were able to do the cross uploading files to What to become Elite, I did have the idea but was just too lazy to rip and upload. I just wanted to cheat gbs and have enough buffer to download and get into their invites forum to trade or move to other sites. I'll try to find your uplaods on rutracker, are they uploaded by "anon"?
    I didn't know there was a VIPMusic v2. Remember STMusic and SoftMP3? The former was a sister site of SuperTorrents, and often recommended as a third-rate alternative for those who couldn't get into What.cd or Waffles. The latter shut down on May 2009, but released their source code, and a few unofficial sequels followed; SceneSound was my favorite, and I used my account there a lot until they also closed. Anyway, scene music trackers had already lost their raison d'être at the time; their 0-day counterparts were good enough at catching those releases (which are somewhat narrow in terms of artists and genres covered), and dedicated music trackers perfectly fulfill the need for stuff that's less popular and/or in different formats.

    Getting What invites to share was partly what I had in mind when trying to reach the highest class I could, but in the end I only invited a single person, cheatuga from this forum. My username there was RndmSmash. I don't know if/how RuTracker deletes inactive torrents, but last time I checked they still had a handful where I was credited under that name. Other perks of having the Elite rank included: "access to an exclusive section, with enlightening discussions such as 'would elites have sex with a pregnant woman?', invites that were 'better' than those in the regular invite forum, torrent editing privileges and the possibility of becoming an interviewer" (see http://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?p=355346).

    Interesting. Clearly you were in some cool, mystical places on FST that I wasn't privy too, perks of being a FST mod huh? But that's the only UK-T invite thread that I've ever heard about on the internet. Funny thing was when UK-T went down, all their members were panicking and wondering where to go when there were all these regular sites like TL etc that they could easily join. It's like UK-T was the only torrent site that existed for them. It's cute haha.
    Fufu, there's been plenty of stuff on FST hidden away from regular members. TTC, VTG (Veteran Trade Group), a staff section like every forum has, the infraction logs and discussions, two trash cans (pre- and post-2011), and all deleted posts and threads. A lot of it was lost after the current admin took over on 2013 and started deleting old data; only the staff section, trash can no. 2 and deleted posts remain. To this day I'm surprised they made me staff, but I genuinely like the place and stuck around long after more "respected" members had moved on, guess that counted for something.

    This is not the first time I hear about UK-T members not having accounts anywhere else, and considering their history and clientele, it's very much possible. FSC opened its doors to these "refugees" (ugh, I hate using that word in this context ), as did less exclusive sites like TL and PreToMe.

    Agree. The whole anti-trading stuff killed off the drama which made FST interesting.


    Unfortunately streaming services made it impossible for the torrent drama to flourish so I dislike them for that. Plus when FTN, FSC,SCT,UK-T, FTWR all went away it reduced the collectors a lot. Now you just have Exigo, AOM and FSC out of which it's just Exigo and FSC that collectors are more interested in imo.
    I don't like them for several reasons. First, there is no way of making anonymous/cash payments. Secondly, you're forced to use their proprietary platforms and DRM, you can't just add a stream to your player of choice. If you're in the "wrong" country, you may not be able watch/listen to certain things unless you also pay for a VPN, i.e. spend more money for a workaround, assuming what you're interested on has been licensed for any country at all. And obviously, if you're in a situation where Internet access is slow or non-existent, any sort of streaming will be unusable. In other words, they're fairly good for lowest common denominator scenarios (a market they have obviously excelled at capturing), but streaming won't become the complete end of piracy for a very long time, if ever. When you download something from a "pirate" site, you have the actual files, they're not encrypted, you can copy and use them anywhere you want, as often as you want, and no one will track this or remotely delete them. Not to mention the possibility of finding very old or rare things that are outright impossible to obtain legally, because they're no longer sold or never were, like VHS rips, old TV captures, Sega Channel/Satellaview ROMs...

    With regards to the drama, I'm indifferent. I liked reading it, but it's not like I can't sleep because Spotify doesn't steal donations or Netflix doesn't DDoS their rivals. /r/trackers remains a relatively active source, if you're interested. Anyway, here are the last great drama threads that pop into my mind right now.

    https://filesharingtalk.com/threads/...d-Oh-the-drama
    https://filesharingtalk.com/threads/...ssTheChildPorn
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