Demonoid

URL	demonoid.com
Type of site	Semi-public torrent tracker
Registration	Sporadic registration periods for new members, invitations
Owner	Umlauf
Created by	Deimos (retired)
Launched	April 21, 2003
Revenue	Donations, Advertisements (Banners)
Current status	Online

Demonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym "Deimos" and "Zajson". The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It is the second largest,^[1][2] and is the most popular, semi-public tracker,^[3] and is ranked the 499th most popular website overall in December 2008, according to Alexa.^[4] Demonoid's torrent tracker had an estimated 3 million peers in September 2007.^[3] The site had over 252,427 torrents indexed as of May 3, 2009 (torrents uploaded prior to August 4, 2005 were removed to free server resources).

The site went offline on November 9, 2007, reportedly due to legal threats to their service provider, from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. The site then came back online on April 11, 2008. The homepage announced that the site had a new administrator, and that the old one (Deimos) had left for personal reasons.

On September 14, 2009, Demonoid's torrent tracker went down after it was reported that they had experienced a number of computer problems stemming from power outages.^[5] The tracker returned to service on November 5,^[6] and the main site returned on December 13.

[edit] Registration

Registration is periodically opened to the public, when resources permit an influx of additional members. At other times, the only way to join Demonoid is to be invited by a current member. Members have the ability to invite others using invitation codes they can generate from their accounts at the website. Invitation codes are limited in order to keep the site running at its full potential, the ability to generate invitation codes is randomly given and removed from members' accounts periodically.^[7]

The website once featured a publicly-accessible search tool, but membership is now required to search for and download torrents, except a limited number of very recent torrents.

[edit] Features and policies

Demonoid features RSS with different feeds for each of its torrent categories, and their sub-categories. It tracks and displays users' upload/download ratios (the difference between how much a member "shares" and how much they "take"), but currently takes no action against users with low ratios (members who take much more than they share).^[8] Demonoid previously banned users with low ratios, but stopped doing so due to the ratio system being inaccurate for some users, such as those with dynamic IP addresses.^[9] Demonoid prohibits the uploading of pornographic material and viruses.

[edit] Legal issues

Twelve cease and desist letters to users of Demonoid were found in a July 2007 study by Slyck.com.^[10]

[edit] In Canada

On September 25, 2007, the Demonoid website, forums and trackers went off-line.^[1][11] They came back four days later with the exception of the website, which came back the day after. Over the next few days, the website continued experiencing intermittent downtime^[12] until October 2, 2007. The explanation as widely speculated^[13] was that they had received a letter from a lawyer for the Canadian Recording Industry Association threatening legal action.^[12] Demonoid began blocking Canadian traffic,^[14] a strategy similar to that taken by isoHunt and TorrentSpy in blocking American traffic to avoid RIAA complaints.^[12][15] Visitors from Canadian-based IPs would be redirected to the downtime version of the website, which contained an explanation of the legal threats. However, it was still possible for Canadians to visit the website at this time using proxy servers. Additionally, while the website may have been blocked in Canada at the time, the tracker was still readily accepting Canadian IP addresses.

The threats are in spite of the open question of the legality of music file sharing in Canada.^[14][16] The CRIA has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement despite Demonoid's claims.^[2]

On November 9, 2007, the website was shut down, with a placeholder page stating, "The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site on-line. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding." According to the IRC channel, the trackers themselves were not affected.^[14] Six days later, the placeholder page was updated with a link to a new forum, unrelated to file sharing, for the community. On November 29, 2007, Deimos posted on that forum a problem preventing the site from coming back up:

"Money is an issue, but the real problem at the moment is finding a suitable place to host the website. There has been no luck there. And there's some personal stuff I need to take care of that takes most of my time at the moment, and that does not help."

[edit] Recent history

[edit] Administration

On April 10, 2008, Deimos stepped down as the administrator of Demonoid, citing a number of reasons and "distraction with real-world issues"^[17] as the cause. He also stated that he has "handed the reins over to a new administrator "— a close friend of theirs^[who?], which they trust completely and has the knowledge and time to take care of the site. Over the course of the next few days, RSS feeds for the site came back online and by April 16, 2008 a mass email was sent out to all Demonoid users to advise that the site was "finally back online." The servers are located in Ukraine.^[18][19]

The page had stated:

A few months ago, the site administrator (known as Deimos), lacked the time necessary to maintain this website. And for personal reasons, Deimos decided to resign his position as a member of the site staff. Before leaving, Deimos picked a new site administrator from among his friends. The old moderator team remained unchanged and will continue helping with the site. The Demonoid team will try to keep everything running just as it always has been. The trackers and website seem to be working properly, and should any issues arise, they will be taken care of as soon as possible. If we work on any problems over the next few days, the site might be going on and offline. We apologize in advance if this should happen. Welcome back and enjoy! -Umlauf, Demonoid site admin

[edit] Website issues

• On September 14, 2009, the website went offline. A message was posted on the homepage stating that "We might have to shut down everything to fix and prevent further damage," and that it could be "days maybe, until we can change the power circuit."^[20] During the downtime that followed, various messages appeared on the site, mostly promising that repairs were under way and that the site would eventually return.

• On November 4, 2009, the tracker (the portion of the service that communicates with a BitTorrent client) began responding to some torrents.

• On November 17, 2009, the Demonoid tracker returned to full operation. However, the main site remained offline.

• On December 13, 2009, the main site returned with a message stating that further downtime should not be necessary.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Demonoid
• Demonoid.cc – alternative domain