FTN: I have posted my views on it at https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?p=363469. One thing I forgot to mention is that sysop Brandon, who once asked his own staff to disable his account in order to focus on college, apparently either forgot or disregarded the dangers of being the only person with the keys to the server and backups. Oh well, hope it was worth it for the trophy hunters.Originally Posted by lazybird
Yeah I remember FTN, thank you for reminding me that I'm old now. FileSharingTalk, TorrentFreak (when the comment section was active) those were the days. Some of the drama threads and news were far more entertaining than downloading DVDRip.XviD
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"Reminding me that I'm old": well, then don't follow the white rabbit into https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=32302 and https://www.sb-innovation.de/showthread.php?t=33773.
FileSharingTalk: sadly that particular section of the forum is no longer active, but back in the day, FST was the one-stop shop for BitTorrent drama and news. Guess who's also staff there? Come pay us a visit, we still have NZBs!
TorrentFreak: I never paid attention to the comment section on TF, since they rarely wrote about private trackers (but one of those exceptions was how I got into BitGamer). However, FSF's was pure bologna, especially on articles about "bad" stuff like trading, cheating and country bans. Sharky must have been a marketing major, because he was able to sell anything as the next big thing; see Attachment 21243 for an instance of him failing hard and promoting a "free seedbox company" caught fishing for passkeys and credit card details (Chrome or UnMHT addon for Firefox required).
DVDRip.XviD: ugh, the scene took far longer than they should have to stop using this codec. But at least we had movies that fit on a single CD. You may also remember group ARROW's near-monopoly on DVDR releases which somehow existed despite no one caring about them(?).
All trackers with a public application form ask for evidence of membership and good ratios elsewhere, in addition to several other details, and have different thresholds for admission.On a high level, I don't like that each tracker has to open recruitment topics across multiple private invite forums, why not have a direct application to the tracker itself? and then if you satisfied certain requirements you get the invite. Right now it is just like playing cat and mouse, collecting trackers you don't like or need, jumping from one to another, wasting upload traffic and time, and then maybe maybe you can apply for the tracker you desire.
(Screenshot taken from the 2019 32pag.es staff leak. Note the mention of "accepted" and "rejected" profiles, with IPT explicitly categorized as the latter.)
As I see it, this system would create a credentials paradox situation here: the bar would be fairly high due to "security" (see below), those without good proofs could never join, and those who cannot join would never be able to procure good proofs. In the current recruitment scheme, the ability to access the offers in the first place serves as said proof and is self-validating (i.e. there's no need to cross-check "foreign" profile links). Centralization would highly improve two things: 1. reducing the delay in reviewing applicants, because some recruiters literally take months to answer, and have been known to lash back if you reapply through another potentially faster one; 2. not having to chase potentially mobile and/or volatile recruitment threads whose location you don't even know in the first place! Then staff wonder why people trade or buy invites... supply and demand, that's it.
Summary: the whole thing is crazy but highly unlikely to change.
Security didn't stop PTP from opening signups around the time that Wolverine workprint was leaked, or continuing to recruit on T-I for several years, but staff are always right.This turned it into a job, it is not fun anymore, and it is not open as it used to before. Openness is what made people like torrenting, now it is a hierarchy and a road map, the total opposite of what it should be. And don't get me started on the mods and the stuff that control who walks that road map.
Security is not a valid excuse, like you said if TL can do it for 16 years, then everybody can do it.
TL even had banner ads at some point, which while annoying, means they'd found an advertiser willing to place them on a private site and managed to strike a profitable deal for both parties. Not to mention the countless open signups, as recently as a month ago. I don't know how they do it, but they sure could give lectures.
Thank you for having this conversation, its been a long time, and talking torrent is fun. I will see if I have the will to do that RED interview, and I have ipt, I just thought it is not worth mentioning hh. Have a good night.<- Waffles has also ceased to exist, but the smileys live on. Sometimes it's mind-boggling to think about how many trackers we've seen come and go.
That's pretty much the only thing keeping private trackers relatively safe for now. Monitoring public torrent swarms is always going to be more cost-effective due to their sheer size; lots of hits with little effort required. Nonetheless, copyright agencies can and have done infiltrations as early as 2007 (remember MediaDefender?).
Also, HDBits for 300 dollars? That's heavily discounted
Think there's a little mixup here. The tracker we know as FileList today was created on 2007 by a Romanian who wanted to replicate the success of filelist.org. It took some time to accomplish that on an international level, but needless to say, it happened. filelist.org became filepost.org after the old admin reportedly went missing, stacking up a debt of around 1000 EUR with their hosting and domain providers in the process. Then it restarted from scratch as postfile.org, merged with their sister music and porn sites, became invite-only and got rid of the infamous TTL system, but ultimately died.TL and FL were strong in 2006 and still strong in 2022, even infamous IPT doesn't suffer from that.
IPT is indeed a success case, but in a different way. Their sysop constantly runs "time-limited" promos and fake lotteries, has DDoSed and ghostleeched from other trackers and been doxxed himself once... yet his operation gets him a few thousand dollars in profits on a bad month, because the content and speeds are good, and that's what people care about.
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