loveislife: TorrentFreak Email Update

Saturday, July 30, 2011

TorrentFreak Email Update

Posted: 30 Jul 2011 03:07 AM PDT

The administrator of a growing private BitTorrent tracker is reporting that he has been raided by the authorities. The admin of XtremeSpeeds says that he was questioned on suspicion of being involved with leading P2P release group IMAGiNE. While the investigation is underway, XtremeSpeeds will remain offline.

XtremeSpeeds is a multi-focus private BitTorrent tracker now well into its third year of operation. According to information from its administrator, it may never see its fourth.

On July 28th, the admin of XtremeSpeeds had his house raided by the authorities.

He says he was questioned under suspicion of being part of IMAGiNE, one of the leading P2P release groups.

Although the allegation is denied, the admin notes that “I did rent a server to a guy who rented it out,” which seems to suggest that he now has suspicions about who might have been using the equipment in question.

“I’ve tempory [sic] closed the site till after the investigation. I’m expecting a court case in coming months,” he concludes.

A meeting with a lawyer is planned for August 1st and up until recently a PayPal link to donate money to a legal fund was displayed on the site. That has now been removed.

At this stage it is unclear where the admin is based, although the site took donations in British pounds.

Readers may have noticed that TorrentFreak does not regularly report on the world of private trackers. While some might thank us for keeping their communities low-key, our motivations are often quite different.

Aside from a limited interest in these communities in the wider world, the fact is that some private sites simply love to fight. In fact, if some of these disputes were in the flesh, people would be seriously injured. Sorting out who threw the first virtual punch and why is extremely difficult making even close to accurate reporting impossible.

However, what we can say with relative certainty is that P2P group IMAGiNE (who also have their own private tracker) had enemies, enemies like rival release group EP1C whose recent threats included revealing the personal identities of IMAGiNE members.

Equally, IMAGiNE made multiple allegations about EP1C having connections to the FBI. What the allegations all have in common is they have proven impossible to investigate through sources without a vested interest.

That said, a fairly lengthy notice posted on the FTP server of EP1C last month ended with the words “Get ready for a War”, hardly a sign that things had been patched up between the groups.

Whether or not this dispute between IMAGiNE and EP1C is directly or indirectly connected to the arrest of the XtremeSpeeds admin is yet another question which will disappear into the private tracker black hole of muddled information and rumor. The nature of these communities means that we may never know the truth.

Source: XtremeSpeeds BitTorrent Admin Busted

Diglo: Social Networking For Avid File-Sharers

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 12:53 PM PDT

Have you ever wanted to share terabytes of data in public, or just a few gigabytes with a select group of friends? With Diglo you can, totally free. The site is a mashup between a social network, a file-hosting site and a media search engine, allowing its users to share, search and download files all in one place.

diglo Diglo is a relatively new service that can be best described as an unlimited hard drive for communities.

The site allows its users to store massive amounts of data, either totally privately, shared with a few selected friends, or completely public.

Unlike standard social networks users don’t have to say who they are, a verified email address is enough to get started. Once an account has been created users can start uploading files in public without any transfer or hosting restrictions. These public files can also be easily shared with people who don’t have a Diglo account, by sharing a public link.

Not everything has to be shared in public of course, but there are some hosting restrictions for private files. There’s currently a storage limit of up to 15 gigabytes for files that only the owner can see, and for files shared among friends the limit is 10 GB, plus an additional gigabyte for each friend one has.

Although Diglo started less than a year ago, it has already amassed a healthy user base of file-sharers who together share millions of files. A quick look at the top 5 users shows that these alone share nearly 2.5 terabytes of data in public.

The upside of such a massive file-sharing community is that users can also discover and download files uploaded publicly by others. Diglo has a fully functioning search engine with direct download links to movies, music and much more. A true candy store for file-sharers.

Diglo’s Public Search

diglo search

The Diglo team, who are veterans in the file-sharing world, told TorrentFreak that they wanted to make a service that would give users full control over their privacy settings while allowing them to share massive amounts of data.

“Diglo is unique because it’s not a file sharing service with social add on, but a social network site where you can really share everything. It also doesn’t invade your privacy like all popular social media networks, but gives you perfect control over what you share with others,” the Diglo team said.

One of Diglo’s features that avid filesharers will certainly appreciate is the ability to access all files via FTP accounts. This makes managing ones media even more flexible, and it also means that users don’t even have to visit the Diglo website to get access to their library.

The above is just a summary of a few key features. Diglo also allows users to play music via their on-site music player, create albums, join one of the many groups, and so on. Those who are interested should just give it a spin to see what it’s all about.

There is little doubt that Diglo will he useful to a large group of people. Although it will certainly not be used as a traditional social network, the community feel and the ability to share files with selected groups are definitely appealing. And perhaps best of all, it’s totally free.