Private trackers are seen widely across the
bittorrent scene as a means to a “free” end. At its most basic level,
we need to start with: “Why do you join a private tracker?” The answer
is to get all kinds of free content shared by the members of the private
tracker community which you have joined. Yet, are private trackers
really free? What are the economics behind private trackers? What allows
private trackers to maintain their speeds and permits them to rapidly
upload content at such a blazing rate? All these questions might to the
un-trained eye be answered simply by saying that private trackers are
able to do what they do simply by their members all having the same
goals when it comes to sharing. I disagree, and as you will see, there
is an entire micro-economy within the torrent world.
There are established strata of factors which contribute to how successful a private tracker is perceived as. What makes a tracker: sugar, spice, and content, speeds, and the ever notorious pre-times.
Content is the range of material the private tracker allocates and distributes to its members. The sheer amount of TV shows at a television tracker, (BMTV, Freshon, TVT, etc.) or movies at a movie tracker, or games at a game tracker; all these contribute to a tracker’s worth. As well the speed the torrents are hosted at (ie how fast they can be downloaded or leeched at) also contribute to the worth torrenters see in the tracker. Finally, the faster files are released on the tracker compared to the same releases at other trackers (ie pretimes), give an additional level of value to trackers.
We know how trackers are valued, but what does it take for a tracker to compete for these categories of interest with other trackers. The answer is simply money: the dough, the moolah, that cash-money, that is what makes a good tracker. What? How is it possible that what makes a tracker good comes only from its pecuniary intake? The answer is simple, nothing is free.
Let’s look again at the factors we discussed before, but this time let’s look at them from the monetary perspective. How does a tracker win in the category of content? Simple, the tracker has to promote uploaders uploading more than downloading. How does a tracker win speeds? It makes sure that torrents are uploaded from fast internet connections, and it makes sure that the everyday member has to seed from a fast connection of their own. Finally, how does a tracker make sure its’ members are uploading files before other trackers; it makes sure their sources are better than the other trackers sources.
How does a tracker make sure that it accomplishes the above-stated goals, the answer is they follow three simple natural, yet always effective rules.
- 1. Ratio=Speed
- 2. Members=Content
- 3. Money=Pre-times
Let’s go through these, how does ratio=speed? If a tracker makes it harder to maintain a ratio on their site, by either artificially changing how seeding is counted by the tracker, or by paying for all content to be uploaded by ultra-fast connections which take away the chance of the everyday member to help upload to new leechers than they force their members to do something to compete. How does a member get their ratio higher if it is beyond their average means of their standard isp? A seedbox of course! Force your members to use a seedbox, and now all torrents are hosted at incredible speeds, since even the average user can upload as fast as physically possible. Why does SCC have such fast torrents, all you have to do is look in the peer list of your torrent. When half of the peers are uploading from a hosting data center, and the original uploader is on an ultra-fast connection, we now know what that translates into: a forced migration to paid seedbox hosting resulting in the tracker attaining high speed torrents.
How does What or Waffles get so many torrents uploaded? The easy answer is that they allow more members into their trackers than most other sites. Why? Easy, the more members, the more access to content they have and the more torrents which are uploaded. What does that result in, more donations to the tracker, and there for the tracker can invest more in advancing its factors of competition. Yet, how does a tracker with less members get a comparable amount of content to a tracker with more members?
The answer is that smaller trackers can achieve similar results to bigger trackers by paying “the scene” to do their uploading dirty work for them. You don’t have enough members to upload, get all of your content uploaded from a high speed box connected to a FTP at the top of the piracy pyramid. The more you pay for your FTP provider of releases, the faster your pre-times, the more content you get, the better your tracker gets.
So the more the tracker puts in, the more it gets out of its members and inversely the more it can give to its members. Yet, seedbox sales do not go to a tracker, and scene access also does not go to a tracker’s PayPal account. How does a tracker get money? Simple, the tracker makes its members donate by exploiting their artificial micro-economy.
If you look at the tracker market, the better the tracker, the harder it is to maintain a good ratio. What if the seedbox is not enough to keep your ratio up to par? Easy, the tracker has upload for a price, your donations. I want in to this awesome tracker with awesome pre-times. Okay, well someone is going to have to donate to get you an invite. How does the tracker get donations, it bets on its own intrinsic value. The better it becomes, the more it costs you in donations and in seedbox costs, and in your time.
So what does this all mean; it means that there is a reason why you were banned. It is not because your ratio was bad, it is not because you cheated or traded your account. You were banned because you could not afford to buy what trackers actually are, a market for a service. I don’t know about you, but it seems pretty hypocritical for anyone of us in this system to criticize content providers for charging for their content. We are paying for their content with bittorrent, just secretly.
[[ This article was written by Buddha’s Son, a personal acquaintance who wanted to express his opinion to the readers here at FileShareFreak. As a potential editor-in-training, perhaps there’ll be more from him in the future. Feel free to leave a comment to the author. ]]
Buddhas Son Says:
If you guys have any comments for me,
what you liked,
what you didn’t like,
or anything you disagreed with,
post below…
lol Says:
IMO this is a very narrow minded view , yes lots of members donate to keep the trackers going , but ive never once been forced (as you put it) into making a donation on any tracker and ive been using only private sites for more than 3 years.
A lot of private sites now have other options for members to maintain their ratio ie: bonus points for seeding regardless of how much you have seeded . And did it never occur to you that some members have to rent seedboxes because of other factors ie: unfriendly isp’s ,crap connections etc.
I think instead of pointing the finger and accusing private sites of forcing members to pay , dont you think it would have been a better story to say that the chances of getting an mpa /mpaa letter or a virus is greatly reduced by not using public sites or are you a TPB lover?
Public sites are for dinosaurs , privates sites are the only way to go now .
mnp Says:
I do agree!
Nice post and style of writing.
RS Says:
This is pretty silly. That’s about the politest way I can state that this article is absolutely horrendous.
If we assume the author (as a potential future editor) actually has some knowledge of the material he writes about, then we can’t blame the faults here on ignorance but instead a purposeful failure to report relevant facts in order to bolster his point. So, without further ado, some select facts the author has not deemed worthy of mention:
How does SCC “force migration” to seedboxes? Entire sections of the site (archive, mp3, 0day app) are on permanent freeleech. Anybody willing to put in even the barest minimum of effort into downloading and seeding these torrents on a regular basis will have no difficulty maintaining a ratio there. If even that is too difficult, it’s not difficult to set up a RSS / IRC feed to automatically download these torrents to save even the minute hassle of occasionally logging onto the site.
What of a site such as What.CD? It doesn’t pay anybody for scene axx, although some of its users are without a doubt members. It doesn’t allow anybody to pay for upload credit, so it’s not a pay-to-leech site such as TL. Although you can gain invites by donating, that’s very different from forcing people to donate. Invites aren’t worth money; anybody willing to put in a bit of time to educate themselves on encoding can pass an IRC interview and join for free.
The biggest flaw in this article, however, is the failure to acknowledge the biggest current tracker trends. There’s a huge migration at the moment towards ratio-free trackers. One of the fastest growing (and, at this rate, soon to be among the biggest) TV trackers, BTN, is entirely ratio free. This methodology, in the past reserved for the most private of trackers (FNT, iTS, etc) is becoming common even on decreasingly elite trackers. Furthermore, Waffles, PTP, X264, What, and hundreds of smaller tracker names, in recognition of ratio difficulties, have seeding incentives based on time and torrents seeded as a substitute for pure upload credit, so as to ensure ordinary users with ordinary connections don’t get shoved out. Private trackers, as a whole, are more forgiving to casual users than ever before. This article is either horribly researched or purposely misleading.
Sincerely
-A multi-tracker home internet user who has never paid a dime.
Francisco Says:
humans being are not rational beings.
there are other things to take into account into this micro economy: honor, fame.
people donate for several reasons, many are not purely rational.
Buddhas Son Says:
RS, LOL
I will address your comments in a follow up article very soon
tanner smith Says:
I agree with RS. But money does have an impact on pretimes, and content. Torrentleech, no doupt, has a lot of money, through donations from their large community and adverts. And that is what they use to achieve steller pretimes and content, even though they are not “leet”. Money is used to pay the scene and buy ultra fast connections to download from topsites.
RS Says:
Originally misread that as LOL @ RS. Whoops!
Look forward to your response.
Warking Says:
Fabulous post, loved the way you wrote it, congratulations and I hope to read more posts from you soon.
dev Says:
totally wrong. u’re not in the system..
a/s/l Says:
interesting post, a good read.
although i’ve never donated to tracker
i don’t run a seedbox
i don’t go through a VPN
i’m a member of SCC, what, waffles, ptp, bg, tvt and all the rest and have very nice ratios on each without having uploaded anything and i leech whatever i like.
biggie Says:
“Anybody willing to put in even the barest minimum of effort into downloading and seeding these torrents on a regular basis will have no difficulty maintaining a ratio there.”
Sorry RS but I don’t agree that you should have to put in any effort other than allowing my uploads to get to a minimum of 1:1 (shouldn’t have to be FL items). I have no problem uploading equal or actually more than what I download - I just disagree that I shouldn’t have to put in too much effort for it.
e.g. - snatch a fresh movie (or w/e) and let it run for 24-48 hrs is how it should be. I shouldn’t have to snatch from a special list in order to maintain a decent ratio. I hate it when I snatch something fresh on my 100/100 connection yet I don’t get my ratio back. That’s just f’d up
FryLock Says:
I’ve never donated for upload and the few times I’ve dished out cash for a box it was because I was to lazy to buffer the old fashioned free way .
Your article was made some sense up until the last paragraph. I think that’s where you lost 99% of the readers.
Regradless of if the masses agree with you or not its good to see some thought provoking material here instead of the usual tracker news. Hope to see more from you Buddha’s Son.
ne Says:
quote ::::: =article
If you look at the tracker market, the better the tracker, the harder it is to maintain a good ratio.
;;;;;
NO… wrong…. Your ONLY talking about “”scene”” trackers. With BOTs uploading.
.
.
.
PROOF:
The best U.K. tv site is ? ? ? thebox.bz
average +100 torrents each day.
* the “”scene”” don’t release 20% of the stuff that the cappers and users , upload at thebox.
easy to maintain a good ratio.
ONLY a ratio system. NO seed bonus / H&R crap , because of bot’s and seedboxes.
.
.
.
Nearly 100,000 ACTIVE users to serve……………….. NO adds , So donations are the way to keep the site alive.
.
.
You are painting all private trackers to be greedy.
True MOST “scene” ONLY trackers are greedy.
&
ONLY EXIST TO MAKE MONEY.
.
But some are a comunity.
That survive by co-operation , sharing of resources.
Don’t forget that.
DigItaly Says:
I agree on the article, but the economics of our particular site have drastically changed. We solely rely on a small number of contributions to keep the server alive but have stopped racing content. Not even 0-day access anymore. We rely on our community to bring the content from other sources. This way we have a small but fast community. Not the fastest 0-day but that’s less important. Any user may upload. Any user may request files. We have shifted focus from business to community.
snail Says:
sorry m8 but your article is a load of shite full of stupid generalizations . At a guess you are one of the people who got disabled for being a whinny fuk up on some of those sites
paradox8 Says:
I’ve never bothered to post a comment here before but this is without a doubt the most ridiculous article I’ve ever read…
One main example springs to mind which renders this article stupid -
GFT has some of, if not the fastest pre-times around and its ratio free
No need for a seedbox, no need to donate except to help pay the trackers fees should you so desire, all you have to do is seed every torrent for 48 hours and you can live a long and prosperous life there. You don’t even need to upload to advance through the userclasses, you can advance simply on your average seed time….
The author is obviously quite inexperienced in the torrent world today… a few years ago this article might have made some sense, but in todays torrent world its just a load of uninformed rubbish.
Wit Says:
With some many different types of trackers out there it’s asinine to generalize. A decent economic analysis must be done on a per-site basis, otherwise fallacies will typically emerge in the argument. Some trackers may be for-profit but it seems to me that most of the popular ones are there for the good of the community.
itsme Says:
lol looks like u got banned from scc & wrote this
castle Says:
> I don’t know about you, but it seems pretty hypocritical for anyone of us in this system to criticize content providers for charging for their content. We are paying for their content with bittorrent, just secretly.
I have never seen or heard anyone criticize content providers for charging for their content. maybe people have scoffed at the price. but the fact that there is a price? I think everyone expects content providers to want something for producing their goods. You must be hanging around some real radicals.
I can’t think of a single private tracker that requires a member to pay for access, either directly through donations or indirectly with a seedbox. It’s only a problem for people that cruise a private site like it’s TPB, download everything in site and stop seeding after 48 hours (I’m looking at you BIGGIE). It’s a problem for members who don’t really want to share, or don’t even want to learn how to share.
Bringing up SCC is ridiculous. Anybody joining that site knows what they’re getting into. If you weren’t told, your inviter is an idiot. If you can’t handle the speed, you should be at another site. Period. There are plenty with good pre times and the same content where you can do just fine with your home connection.
But the real problem with this article is that it paints tracker staff as greedy capitalists that are only in it for the money. I’m pretty sure that 99% of them are not. 99% like to share and like to help people at their favourite site.
IMHO.
NiNE Says:
@02
Dude get teh fuck out, you’re a fucking noob, get teh fuck out, if you been using private trackers for 3 years you should know better, there were a lot of cases when some trackers did force you do donate some money or your account would be disabled, I would give examples, but eh if things are as you say and you’re such a fuckin uber 1337 private tracker user - you should know these things already. As for the article, I agree with the author, and thanks for his time and effort into creating it.
Kali Says:
It’s not about the money, it’s about the game.
Anon Says:
How would you explain a ratio-free tracker then? Take GFT for example. The have pre-times second only to SCC, no required ratio, and have all new scene content served from a fast seedbox. Even invites are free if you get the points.
That said, I agree that seedboxes are a bit of a scam.
cube Says:
http://torrentcube.org my new private tracker site and yes we are not in it for the money we are in it for the love off shareing
Danny Aston Says:
Good article
DDT Says:
Ummm very Anti Private tracker site this …lol
None of the private site charge users to join or to download.
Donations are an important factor of any site as servers do cost money the owners can not afford on there own.
Pure ratio driven systems can mean normal ISP users do feel forced to donate as suggested due to the fact the torrents are over seeded via fast connections and seedbox owners.
To deal with this H&R systems were bought in on some sites so that normal users did not get punished for not seeding to a 1:1 ratio due to high speed users hogging the uploads to others.
On my own site users are even allowed to H&R any number of times - however after 5 such warmings downloads are disabled untill theyt drop there total to below 5 H&R warnings or they wait 2 weeks where we remove them anyways for them free of charge and there account is then back to normal … NO MEMBERS EVER BANNED ….Hell a tracker is there for users to download and share so why would we ban them for doing just that ?????
We have many 1000’s of torrents on free leech and also have bi-daily free leech on all torrents new and old ….
http://dididave.com - one of the oldest and fastest torrents trackers on the net …..
Anon Says:
In theory most of this is true, without donations most sites will stop. I’m not sure how aware people are of the operational costs of running a torrent site, a tracker and a ftp dump are. As well as having to deal with time and the constant DDoSing and other crap. If you think they aren’t relying on substainly donations you’re all very wrong. Look at how oink.cd operated and the money it had. Many torrent sites work on a similar (obviously and usually) far smaller amounts.
noboy Says:
I have to add some thoughts besides what was already commented on.
You can make an initial investment into a seedbox, but its only making your way to the better trackers faster, if you have the right internetconnection like 10MB/s at least which makes it like 1 MB/s upload.
I had no idea what a torrent was and it took me like 10$ in seedbox investment to become a member at several trackers like What, Waffles, PTN, SCC, SCL(RIP) and several others.
I build a small buffer on each of the trackers and can live with it, while seeding from my homeconnection not even 24/7, the rules are simple and quiet the same.
Keep seeding, dont cheat, dont get caught with beeing invited under false terms…
and you will have faster access to the content.
So all in all you didnt consider building a buffer, which is a faster and better way beeing a status member like PU and above, which you can once achieve maintain nearly anywhere. Thats like a litte inflation but thats why you prune accounts right?
inviteforumfag Says:
why an artificial economy?
Dreamer Says:
@Buddhas Son
whatever the article says,
dude 1st get a life by getting a good nickname!! you are fucking insulting a religion aren’t you?
sharky you sucks as well!!!
ImEveryWhere Says:
I like your news site, it’s informativ, and this article was interesting.
But i very disliked the end of it.
I have a small upload connexion (70KB/s) and i was never banned of any trackers.
I seed all the time at hdbits but it would be impossible for me to download something if there weren’t bonus points. They know about the fact they have too much seedbox, and they act as to limit new seedbox coming as i remember they announced one time… and they offer bonus points to allow small connexion like me to stay on their trackers, and help the way we can with seeding.
Trackers like MyAnonamouse are small but it’s the best trackers for audiobooks. I don’t it can compete with any other site with factors you mentioned, but they do have a nice community and people willing to contribute to their site despite the fact we are all virtually billionnaire of fake upload stats (bonus points are so generous that you are ready for hundreds of GB uploaded just with seeding). They ruined their economy. They didn’t follow any of your rules… despite that tens of torrents are uploaded everyday, and within few months (?) there were 10,000 more torrents despite no one is really forced to seed as we are all too rich… Sometime things are not rational !
If you take free trackers as already mentioned, you are wrong. Trackers like FreshOnTV that has almost everything free live on people that have huge connexions. It’s like they upload for all of us. But they don’t do anything to you as soon as you follow the really simple rules… seed of X hours. If we really were following that rules, i’m sure the site would fall.
Well maybe when you have too much you don’t care anymore of counting what is seeded or not… maybe you just seed… well i always seeded.
One time i was in trouble at ThePlace because my inviter cheated and invited too many people… I was disabled as well, but after talking a few with a mod/admin at their irc, he knew all the story about where i knew him…etc they knew i wasn’t in any kind a bad user (cheaters…etc), and it’s really not for any of the bad user factor you mentioned. They told me i was on the scope and i should not try to do something bad or… but they reinstate me as a member. At that time i wasn’t a really active user, but my ratio wasn’t bad.
Well i don’t believe in any of your evil analysis. I think till you follow rules and you don’t break any of them, you have no reason of being banned. And even if you break some of them you can loose your invite/upload abilities or be warned… but the only reason you would be banned is for cheating, or things that make them think you cheat or that you are a trouble maker.
I’m at most all dedicated trackers and i know as well what i’m talking about.
ImEveryWhere Says:
Correction :
If we really wereN’T following that rules, i’m sure the site would fall.
ImEveryWhere Says:
Btw… i’m agree with all comments here opposed to you.
There is many trackers not that bad where i’m not active at all… but i wasn’t banned.
They have rules to inforce auto disabling account… that not something they do manually, expect if you were on scope for cheating or something.
Btw maybe you are not wrong. I don’t know how they are getting their pre-time at BTN, but maybe they pay a top site. I’m not a member of anything else than private trackers… i can’t tell.
But i do know that trackers like bitme has a lot of content because their members leak stuff from other trackers. There is tracker like ThePlace and all their chain, and bitme that has Group Buy and this is how they also got content. You didn’t mentioned that !
Well it’s money, but you are not forced at all to contibute to Group Buy, neither you are forced to donate.
In fact you don’t even have to pay… some others do : Seedbox, Group Buy, Donating (Server)… and at the end you benefit from all the money others have invest.
Well i would say you would totally be right if your article was equilibrate. We all benefit from others investment : Money, Work (source supply, encodes…), and time !
Furthermore you could also add that trackers really need small users like us. Otherwise who would leech ? Nobody. And you would had a Pay2Leech site, or GroupBuy2Leech Site…
And they do benefit from small connexion, because thanks to all of them torrent stay alive. (bonus points or not).
Some Seedbox users do seed a lot, but some of them have just rent it for a month or two to build a ratio in order to leech like hell…
If you check out more deeply you would understand that trackers economy could survive without all it’s members, and even the smallest one.
NiNE Says:
trololololface.jpg
(: Nine work OP
blah Says:
Pretty well written article, I however do not agree with it. Almost no tracker ever forces you to donate anything and there is no site out there that you can’t keep a 1:1 ratio even with the worst of internet connections. For a couple years I had a max up speed of 30kb/s and belonged to 90% of the top tier trackers and was able to get over 100gb buffer on every one of them. You may have to seed for a longer time but that is the price you pay for a crap internet connection.
tracker admin Says:
I’d like to say that all the people who have replied saying “this article is silly” or whatever, really are clueless. How can you pompously pontificate that this article is wrong based merely on your own assumptions, especially when you are just a tracker user, not a tracker operator?
@RS (and anyone else who criticised the article for being incorrect) There are thousands of trackers on the Internet, just because there are a handful of exceptional trackers that do not follow the general rules that this article discusses, there are many hundreds, possibly thousands more that do, so before you arrogantly dismiss this article as being incorrect, I suggest you try starting your own tracker - you will soon realise that it’s not as simple as you think.
I run a niche tracker and have overviewed the development of several others, and the key to success is mostly down to the points made in this article. Albeit this article is not 100% accurate, the general points made are correct.
From my experience as an admin, probably about 95% of users are solely there to leech. They don’t participate in forums, donate, upload, sometimes even seed (but these people are quickly banned). People usually only donate if they have something to gain, i.e. ratio boosts. If you do not offer ratio for donations, the chances are you will very rarely get any donations, no-where near enough to fund the site.
The rose tinted view that the torrenting community is a friendly place and will help in any way is purely a myth. Of course you do get the occasional user who does donate out of generosity, and uploaders who are uploading with genuine intentions of sharing, but most donators and uploaders only do it to fix their ratio.
To make sure users do seed, you need to ensure that they have reason to seed. Incoporate methods to lower the average ratio, theoretically you want it at 1, but in practice I have found that 1.1 - 1.3 is a better average ratio, as people don’t have enough buffer to stop seeding entirely, but have enough so they are not afraid to leech and risk being banned for low ratio. The goal is to reduce the users’ ratios, which is easier said than done. Users are happy to get ratio for free e.g. freeleeches, but there is no way you can actually take it away from them. The point about seedboxes forcing users to upgrade is a good method, as seedboxes generally steal all the seeding to be done, it basically forces users to either seed for ages or get a seedbox, either is good for the tracker.
I’m not saying this article is entirely accurate, as it has been written purely theoretically, and in reality the admin is forced to comprimise about how things operate, but overall it is correct.
No doubt I’ll get a load of people who think they know better from their experience using what.cd or something very limited, and quite frankly I don’t really care how people respond to this comment, I only posted it because I think it’s absurd that so many clueless people have such strong opinions about stuff they clearly have very limited knowledge about.
silversurfer Says:
agree with
036 @ tracker admin
says couple points missed
the pay for scene pre is correct and to get scene axx [ if you no were to look/ide ]
and some sites cheat on pre times by just upping the nfo to get #1 pre time slot [ will no say what sites do this ]
Bitbrain Says:
IMHO this article refers only to the bad trackers. I know several tracker which do no even ask for donation. But once u are really good torrenter u know what is good and what is bad and what is shite. The primary reason to get into tracker is content and retention rate. People love trackers where old torrents don’t die soon. Private community is created by keeping in mind that only those users who know to share should get access to content.
someone Says:
first
no tracker i am member of ever forced me to give money , buy seedox etc and if a site do that to you it doesn’t worth it , i agree that we must help the site once in a wile but again no one forcing you
And something i didn’t like about your article is that you make trackers look bad because they need money , it’s a business of course it needs money
and when you compare pirating with real life … i downloaded more than 100 movies and tv shows this year which will cost me more than 3000 euro so no it’s not the same as someone give 10 or 50(and believe me more than 85% members of a tracker don’t give money at all)
and i will agree with the guy who said
With some many different types of trackers out there it’s asinine to generalize
i mean if you are stupid enough to enter a site that it’s impossible(for you) to keep a ratio then is your fa* fault so it will be a good idea to make this thread about ‘’some private trackers” not all of them
p.s. i never gave money to trackers or to buy a seedbox and my home connection is less powerful than companies computers but i am power user to almost all my accounts because i seed a lot of hours and i know how to be active on a tracker
Someone Else Says:
TLDNR
ImEveryWhere Says:
TRACKER ADMIN
If we think about statistics you are right… there is a distribution of people that are only here to leech…etc
Those people act rationaly for self interest. And their self interest go to cheating, exclusively leeching… that’s why they are considered bad users.
Dedicated private trackers exclude bad users from their community in order to bring in the same are people willing to contribute in many ways to community interest (Uploading, Encoding, Seeding, Donating…etc).
It’s true dedicated private trackers are niche that try to attracted very special people that don’t act according to statistics.
If you have trackers that has collected bad users it’s normal you have community trouble because a lot of your user act rationaly for self interest.
But in good trackers, they have manage to bring good people together that contribute to the community in various ways and respect rules.
Till rules are respect Trackers economy is maintain.
Of course Money is an important aspect for paying servers, seedbox, pre-time, group buy… But nobody is obliged to donate. Otherwise most of them would leave for an other tracker.
In fact apart from payings servers wich is a serious need, the other expense are your choice. It’s your choice to rent a seedbox, it’s your choice to participate to a group buy.
And if pre-time are paid to top site wich i know nothing about, then it’s the tracker choice.
The article was right about the fact that if you want to be good and grow fast you need money. We contradictor should be aware about that.
When Waffles, What.cd, BTN were launched they grow very fast… they had skilled people behind, servers paid, maybe pre-time are paid at BTN… without that they wouldn’t grow as fast.
In fact it’s like Capitalism. You can grow very fast and be good, but you need to go straight to the point, you need good people and money.
But apart from this point, i’m in contradiction with you. There is many trackers wich particularity goes against rationaly, but they still work.
How can a site like MyAnonamouse still exist (donation, uploads everydays, seeding), whereas they are so generous with bonus points (hundreds of GBs (?!)), they give weelky freeleech, donating don’t give you any advantage, and when you want to upload you have to have special upload rights… They are doing everything against rational economy.
And Free Ratio Tracker how the fuck can they still exist whereas i can download TB of warez ?!
We can give you so many example of trackers working because of their community against any rational logic…
When there is barrier you always try to cheat on it. That mean you are smart. It’s a game. You want to gain the power of having and being smart.
But when it’s spread for nothing you have nothing to gain of those sort, so you don’t abuse of anything. In fact you only answer your consumer needs, and then you continue to uploads, to seeds, because it’s answer social needs.
In fact as you can see there is rational logic behind what seems illogic and particuliar work. That explain why there is good and bad trackers.
So then of course you can always have a different experience as regard to your bad trackers but it’s only people there is bad people inside… and their logic is very different from the good one that were accumulated around the same community. And well when you are part of good trackers you don’t even try to go to tiny trackers.
There is good tiny trackers out of there, but they die more fastly than big organised one.
So maybe the article is right… when you are small and cannot attract good users you need money to try to be as good as the trackers that are good because their members bring the goods at the good place (encodes, cappers, group buy… well there is a lot of trackers that live without pre-time and kick ass). But then those one still suffer from bad users, and that’s maybe why they die as fast as they were created. Even more when you think at some 0day example where they made you think they were going to be a top site and that you had to pay for this…
And before you argue about good and bad users… think why What.cd offer so many invite for multiple trackers directly from torrent owner…. only because good users act good and make all the difference in a tracker.
Well money is a point, but good users make all the difference.
someguy Says:
another Point is rared and unrared people like unrared torrents saves them time that why torrentzone is doing so well
987654 Says:
surprise surprise, it costs money to run a good website. whether it’s a tracker website or best buy’s website. no money = crappy website usually(except for the few trackers out there that keep their websites simple and don’t even want your donations even when you offer.)
But yeah, nothing surprising about a website with lots of money and donations being the websites with the best pre’s and speeds. You think the guys that go through all the illegal trouble of upping these releases to servers for others to snatch would never come up with the idea “hey, i’ll let you access first if you pay me some money” geez, i can’t even imagine how ppl with the scene could even have real jobs with real hours. so yeah, them getting some money to keep doing what their doing, instead of quitting what their doing because it’s time to get a real job and stop living off mountain dew and dollar cheeseburgers, i’m cool with it
987654 Says:
oh, and shame to the author for trying to paint what is normal economics as a shame and scam for your money. sure, prolly a few out there are, but you gotta be smart when it comes to spending the money you earn
strandez Says:
anyways this is an exception for sure
http://www.empornium.us
they say “We will NEVER ask for donations. PLEASE do NOT send any money to us.”
minicab Says:
Dear Buddha’s Son,
I’m afraid I have to disagree with the sweeping generalisations asserted in your otherwise well penned article.
At thebox.bz (and indeed all our sister sites) we do not ‘force’ anyone onto seedboxes; we do not pay for any expensive access to the Scene (who are extremely unreliable these days and generally slower to upload shows, if they bother at all past the first few episodes); we encourage seeding and uploading of content over donations as the means of helping ratio and give away vast quantities of upload credit in regular site competitions and free-leech torrents (for example, the first episode of each new series if free alongside the ‘Free Leech Of The Week’ pick). We also have many members who give away large chunks of their own ratio towards said competitions out of their desire to help others on the site who might have slipped.
The fact that our hosting and other costs are covered purely through the generosity of our member base - without a single prompt or plea, let alone coercion, in the 3 years+ we have been running - stands in direct contrast to your statements. We even took the unpopular step of reducing the upload credit per donation to discourage ‘pay-to-leech’, and anyone found using the site to do so (i.e. having appalling seeding times) is offered first the chance to reform, and then ultimately a refund of monies purveyed and then the exit, something we try our hardest to avoid.
At the risk of dipping into hypocrisy by mentioning the plethora of other sites which do not follow the hypothesis you lay out in your article - What.cd, Waffles, MyAnonamouse, BrokenStones etc - I also would add that the one-size-fits-all brush you paint your picture with is based on unsound reasoning. Certainly, I do not profess that there are no sites operating in the manner you describe (indeed, I am a member of several aggressively monetized sites, though I chose not to donate there because of this) but I take rigorous issue with so broad and unbalanced an opinion, which neglects the detail necessary for an editorial opinion piece to be read seriously.
I look forward to your future responses to the points raised by myself and others here.
Kind Regards,
minicab
test-agent Says:
what a load of bullshit, generalisations and oversimplification. go write for fox news. you’ll be a star.
ME0W Says:
50 euro for a 200gb leech slot on a good dump site, or 30 euros a month for a usenet account, or 30 for a Rs account, or donate so your trackers can be awesome sauce…..
Either way, someone has to pay….
Anon Says:
When you run into those types of torrents you turn to the ‘dark side” and realize what a “normal setting” for ratio master is and find a popular torrent..
Trying to impose their wills just bites them in the ass, even if they don’t know it..
lol Says:
#021 • NiNE Says: 27.09.10 at 11:49 pm
@02
Dude get teh fuck out, you’re a fucking noob, get teh fuck out, if you been using private trackers for 3 years you should know better, there were a lot of cases when some trackers did force you do donate some money or your account would be disabled, I would give examples, but eh if things are as you say and you’re such a fuckin uber 1337 private tracker user - you should know these things already. As for the article, I agree with the author, and thanks for his time and effort into creating it.
If your joining trackers that are forcing you to donate then your the fkin noob mate not me , in my experience ive never been forced to donate as you obviously have , and no im not an uber 1337 user , just a normal torrent user who know’s a shit tracker when he see’s it , not like you obviously so why dont you name the sites like you said in your post ? or just fuck off back to the pirate bay where you obviously belong , fkin noob!
MaNi Says:
[quote]
how does a tracker make sure its’ members are uploading files before other trackers; it makes sure their sources are better than the other trackers sources.
[/quote]
No shit author, tell us something new…
“free tracker”… wtf!
drmike Says:
Gotta admit I think poorly of the article as well. I stopped reading right from the beginning. Really sounds like Public Tracker bashing to me.
That and how BS states that the tracker is sending the packets. Packets are coming from the other seeds and peers, not the tracker.
Another Tracker Owner Says:
I feel bad for some of you.
Have you ever heard of the saying. “there is no such thing as a free lunch”
There are 3 types of users as far as I am concerned
Ones that like to seed which helps trackers out with being able to keep torrents on site much longer.
Some people like to donate, sometimes these are people with poor upload or people that dont want to seed and normally VIP will let them do hit and runs.
Others are just damn right shit people, people that should stick to public sites, they feel everything should be handed to them on a sliver platter, they cruise from site to site, hit and running as much as they can. These are the people no site wants.
Sites need a good balance of the first two types. Good seeders and donators, with a good balance of both of these the site will thrive (also good content being uploaded).
I have donated to many sites in my time before running my own and even know I put as much money and time into the site as I possibly can. What all users need to remember, is that sites cost the owners alot of money. Servers, Seedboxes, Scene axx, Coding and time. Its always nice to show your appreciation in what ever way you can.
deviant Says:
I’d say this was an enlightening article to a few users who are probably unaware of the behind-the-scenes activities of a private tracker, however the last paragraph sounds awfully bitter from the author.
Many people on private trackers believe they’re in an elite clique, especially those who participate frequently on the forums (or heaven forbid the IRC). Quite often these users believe they can hit’n’run because their overall ratio is high, something which goes against the whole bittorrent ethos. If these people get banned from a site for hit’n’running they’ll kick up a fuss trying to say it’s about donations, but from my experiences this is never the case.
On the whole pay-to-leech scenario; if a user wants to pay for some upload credit, then sure, why not? Nobody is forcing anyone to pay, it’s a totally free site that people are using. Staff and Coders spend hours running the site for absolutely nothing (apart from some Admins, but that’s another story), so why should these staff have to fork the cost of servers, axx or hosting costs, if users are willing to pay for GBs/VIP perks and in turn this money can help keep the site free for everyone else then it’s win-win.
Screen Says:
Being a private torrenter for years I have to say this is a load of bullshit. I’ve survived fine in every longed for tracker I’m a member of without need for a seedbox or any means of payment. I use it because it’s free, and in my case, besides my internet bill, it is free. No good tracker has ever forced its members like you say into buying anything, most of us torrent as a hobby, some like putting money into their hobbies. You don’t have to pay a dime to do well in private trackers, you just need to be smart.
shitty Says:
This article is 95% BS.
P.S. You suck.
frillyd Says:
for those interested we are an old service with a new domain name.
its direct http downloads, categorized sections, all scene & p2p releases posted for download
hosted with 2 gigabit links for maximum speeds.
we do charge a small fee to cover bandwith costs, but it is way cheaper then any of these *share* sites, and there is no ratio or anything like that.
check it out.
http://www.xvidspot.com
Vali Says:
I am a cheap bastard , and I never donate.
I win.
OMG Says:
Bye bye Xvidspot.. You cant charge people to download copyright material. Thats just stupid.
WTF are u thinking, forcing people to pay for pirated material. Come on, get a fucking grip pal
darkhosis Says:
why would someone pay for this stuff nowadays? how bizarre. is it so bad to wait an extra few hours til it propagates to other places?
it isn’t the 80’s or early 90’s anymore…. many ppl that ran the “elite” BBSes took $$ for access…. except then, it would take two weeks+ for stuff to filter down to those shitty WWIV & Telegard boards
i wasnt even aware there was a “scene” anymore, besides the cracking aspect.. so the best uploaders spend $$ on seedboxes. wow. color me impressed
OMG Says:
DARKHOSIS
Without seedboxes downloading would be sooooo slow. Just think, if someone upped a 1gb dvdrip movie but only had an upload speed of 30kbs. 10 people then jumped on that torrent to download. How long would that take to finish.
NiNE Says:
#050 • lol Says: 29.09.10 at 11:06 am
#021 • NiNE Says: 27.09.10 at 11:49 pm
@02
Dude get teh fuck out, you’re a fucking noob, get teh fuck out, if you been using private trackers for 3 years you should know better, there were a lot of cases when some trackers did force you do donate some money or your account would be disabled, I would give examples, but eh if things are as you say and you’re such a fuckin uber 1337 private tracker user - you should know these things already. As for the article, I agree with the author, and thanks for his time and effort into creating it.
If your joining trackers that are forcing you to donate then your the fkin noob mate not me , in my experience ive never been forced to donate as you obviously have , and no im not an uber 1337 user , just a normal torrent user who know’s a shit tracker when he see’s it , not like you obviously so why dont you name the sites like you said in your post ? or just fuck off back to the pirate bay where you obviously belong , fkin noob!
tl;dr
GET THE FUCK OUT NOOB.
Pandemonium Says:
I would accept this article a lot better if it had some actual evidence in it.
Obviously the author is not well informed and talks about some of the trackers, even throws in some names that should not be there (like what/waffles).
There is a good part of the tracker-cake this article applies to (25-30%) but for the rest of them it is just plain wrong, because the user always gets more than he gives (and most of the time the user gives nothing).
I would think looong and hard before following up this article.
RIAAtarded Says:
No private tracker that I’m on forces you to donate. The problem your having is not working within the limitations of the bandwidth your ISP package supplies. Limit the volume of content you download and you’ll have no issues. Go to the forums on any site and make sure your client is setup properly. Setup RSS feeds for your reoccurring downloads so your on them early and can upload them without worries. Like everything in this world however folks tend to try and take everything then can get their hands on and that does have consequences. Whether that is a donation for upload credit, server rental, better ISP package etc the requirement to do so is strictly based on the end user’s content demand not the trackers.
GoodSeeder Says:
Get yourself signed upto http://leech2seed.info if you want the lastest torrents at the fastest speeds.
Great new tracker with lots of content going up daily. Dont see what you want, stick in a request and someone will have it up for you in no time.
Friendly staff and members always willing to lend a hand where needed.
DigItaly Says:
Well, if you still want to try a decent private site, we have open signups:
http://www.pisexy.org/
Private torrent ratio based site, no nags about donations, no advertisements, come see for yourself. Still a lively community, good crew. small irc channel available.
TTG Says:
Post deleted - invite codes no longer work.
HarmoniousVibe Says:
I think you are right in the sense that I think it is an illusion to think that you do not have to invest anything. Maybe you don’t have to invest money, but you do have to invest something. If not money, then time and/or bandwidth (rip, cap, encode, upload). I think everyone can agree on that. A completely incentiveless tracker will not succeed.
But you are seeing this point way too narrow. You think of an economy in financial terms, which it is not, or at least doesn’t have to be. You basically claim there are two choices: donate or get a seedbox. This is nonsense. If you do not want to donate or get a seedbox, you can do other things, like seeding many torrents 24/7 on your home connection, upload your own stuff, wait for freeleech, download elsewhere seed back, etc. There are plenty of other options. Donations and seedboxes are just two of them.
So you are right. There is an economy. But there’s always an economy for everything (scarce). And the economy is not at all limited to a financial economy.
On my favourite tracker, donations for upload credit are not even possible and seedboxes (at least hit-n-run seedboxes that seed only 24 hours or so) are frowned upon.
Tilly Says:
I think that your article by and large sums up the ‘darker’ side of P2P but nevertheless makes a lot of valid points.Once seed boxes arrived and became affordably popular, sharing became ever increasingly difficult.This is very much the case with ‘0Day’ mainstream trackers.Luckily there are more specialist sites that have a bit more integrity .i.e. THC,CG etc where bonuses and freeleech allow people to take up the slack.This is a great way to avoid the ’sell-out’.People still use seed boxes and so speeds remain high but ratio can be compensated by good will gestures from the guys that run the sites.
There seems to be 2 schools of thought on this depending usually on ‘connectability’.
The ‘haves’ who pay externally for seed boxes with ridiculous speeds or live on top of the exchange and have technical nous and the ‘have nots’ who either struggle with the tech-side, live in the back of beyond or have a long contract with a dud ISP who constantly move the goal posts by throttling P2P traffic.
h0nd Says:
i have good ratio on ALL trackers without seedbox or donating. still i ve made a few donations towards server spendings
SIMPLEST ANS Says:
everything in this world is directly or indirectly money
The staff members give time and they earn money, if those staff members would have invested their time they would have also got paid, and i think better than what they are paid thorugh.
No one can become a millionaire with a tracker, at the end every staff member knows that they invested time at a wrong place, it would be better if they invested time some other place.