Public Trackers

Archive for the ‘Public Trackers’ Category

July 16th, 2012

BitTorrent Network, File Sharing, Net Stuff, Public Trackers, Special

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Largest BitTorrent Trackers Go Offline in Protest

OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent, the two largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, are on strike. Both trackers are going offline to protest the unresponsiveness of the makers of uTorrent who were asked to introduce a simple protocol enhancement that would save the non-profit trackers thousands of dollars. As a result of the protest, many people are having trouble downloading files on BitTorrent.

OpenBitTorrent (OBT) and PublicBitTorrent (PBT) are two non-profit BitTorrent trackers running on the beerware licensed Opentracker software. Neither service hosts or links to torrent files and both are free to use by all BitTorrent users.

The trackers are the two most-used BitTorrent trackers, and both are generally coordinating the downloads of tens of millions people at any given point in time. However, starting a few days ago the trackers stopped working entirely, and not without reason.

The admin of OpenBitTorrent informed us that both trackers are on strike. Both will remain offline until a solution is found for the massive waste of bandwidth that BitTorrent users generate as the result of incorrect tracker announces.

Trackers on Strike

Both OBT and PBT abandoned TCP support to become UDP-only trackers last year. This was done to save resources. However, because many users keep adding HTTP addresses and since many old torrents also include these, both trackers are overloaded with bogus announces.

For OpenBitTorrent this means that more bandwidth and resources are wasted on erroneous traffic than on legitimate announces.

The same problem also hurts many torrent sites that don’t even operate a tracker. Many novice users add URLs of BitTorrent indexes to the “trackers” field when they generate a torrent. This results in a flood of unwanted traffic to these sites.

The issue has been brought to the attention of BitTorrent developers in the past, and two months ago Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij submitted an official proposal to the developer forum which is operated by uTorrent’s parent company BitTorrent Inc.

Neij’s proposal is to add a functionality that allows website and tracker owners to inform BitTorrent clients whether connections are allowed or not.

The operators of PublicBitTorrent, OpenBitTorrent and many others have welcomed the proposal, but weeks passed by without a comment from BitTorrent Inc. This prompted the operators of BitTorrent’s largest tracker to go on strike.

“We can’t keep paying for a shitload of boxes because they won’t implement simple policy features,” OpenBitTorrent’s admin told us. “PBT and OBT are on strike until the issue is resolved, we can’t continue to pay bills that are much higher than what they should be.”

OpenBitTorrent on Strike

The bills are not the only problem either, as the admin points out that without a fix BitTorrent clients can be abused to DDoS any website.

“If you wanted to DDoS a website now with torrent clients, all you would have to do is hack a few torrent sites and add the URL of the site you want DDoSed to the torrents and magnet URLs they are displaying.”

For BitTorrent users, on the other hand, the strike of BitTorrent’s largest trackers is causing problems. Without central trackers it takes much longer to find peers, and users who don’t have DHT enabled will notice that their torrents stop working entirely if there is no backup tracker.

Luckily most torrent clients have DHT enabled by default, but there are hundreds of thousands of BitTorrent users out there who have it disabled.

We contacted BitTorrent Inc. before the weekend and asked them for a response to the proposal. We will add their statement to this article when it comes in, but for the time being BitTorrent users will have to do without the two largest trackers.

July 12th, 2010

Gang Gang Play, Open BitTorrent, The Pircay Bureau

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Music Industry Threatens OpenBitTorrent’s New Host

OpenBitTorrent is a non-commercial BitTorrent tracker that doesn’t host or link to torrent files. Despite this seemingly neutral setup, both Hollywood and the music industry have declared war against what they see as an illegal service. After Hollywood won its case against the former provider of OpenBitTorrent, IFPI is now going after its new host in Spain.

In the last year or two the entertainment industries have targeted many BitTorrent sites. The majority of the verdicts against these sites have thus far ruled in favor of the copyright holders. Only in Spain have BitTorrent sites been repeatedly found to operate within the boundaries of the law.

Under Spanish law torrent sites and BitTorrent trackers deemed legal even though some of its users may be using it to download copyright infringing content. This might be one of the reasons why the OpenBitTorrent tracker moved to a Spanish host after Hollywood managed to get a court decision in their favor against its Swedish hosting provider.

The OpenBitTorrent tracker, which doesn’t link to or host any torrent files and is not linked to any torrent search engine, merely serves as a facilitator of the communication between torrent users, much like BitTorrent clients do. This means that the site is not breaking any laws in Spain.

“According to all Spanish legal resolutions, a link does not communicate nor reproduces the work under intellectual property,” copyright expert and lawyer Javier de la Cueva told us. “So, linking is not a violation, hosting without the rights holders permission is.”

Despite this seemingly safe legal environment, music industry lobby group IFPI decided to go after OpenBitTorrent’s new hosting company in Spain. A few days after OpenBitTorrent moved to SoloGigabit, its owners received a threatening letter stating that the hosting company could be “liable for aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringements and receiving payments from criminal activity.”

In their communication with SoloGigabit, IFPI argues that OpenBitTorrent is facilitating copyright infringements because users of The Pirate Bay may be using the tracker. “The tracker performs a key function for the BitTorrent file sharing service provided by The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay service has been judged illegal in several countries,” IFPI writes, referring to the Swedish criminal trial that’s currently under appeal.

“The OpenBitTorrent tracker does not itself host any copyright protected works, but enables the infringement of sound recordings and other copyright works to take place by its role in The Pirate Bay file sharing service. The copyright works are made available and infringed by users of OpenBitTorrent and The Pirate Bay,” IFPI explains.

Feeling threatened by IFPI’s letter, the owner of the hosting company decided to inform OpenBitTorrent’s operator that they have to find a new bandwidth provider by the end of July. This means that, again, OpenBitTorrent has to move to a new location, this time as the result of mere threats.

We contacted the owner of SoloGigabit who told us that he was not sure what to do with IFPI’s complaints. After we informed the owner about the legality of BitTorrent trackers in Spain he doubted whether he had taken the right decision. However, successful or not, a lengthy battle in court is a huge burden for a small hosting company. Even though SoloGigabit might have the law on their site it is understandable that the owner is hesitant to fight IFPI.

Whatever happens, OpenBitTorrent is determined to stay online. The tracker’s operators told us that they are prepared to move to a new location again. This time, they hope to find a company that is less prone to threats from the music industry.

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June 3rd, 2010

Open BitTorrent, Public Trackers, Red Hot, The Pircay Bureau, Twist

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Newzbin,OpenBitTorrent Back in Business

Two weeks ago the largest BitTorrent tracker on the Internet vanished. The hosting company of the tracker was ordered to take it offline after Hollywood managed to get a court decision in their favor. Today, OpenBitTorrent returns to the web from a new home, managing torrent connections as if nothing happened. Major Usenet Indexer shuts down last month after a legal defeat. Now.It is up with new owner

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In the last two year the entertainment industries have targeted many BitTorrent sites. The majority of the verdicts against these sites have thus far ruled in favor of the copyright holders. Only in Spain have BitTorrent sites been repeatedly found to operate within the boundaries of the law.

In mid May the ISP Portlane disconnected major public BitTorrent Tracker OpenBitTorrent .Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted said that, “OpenBitTorrent is used for file sharing, and we suspect that it is the Pirate Bay tracker with a new name. It is added by default on all of the torrent tracker files on Pirate Bay” .

In a surprising verdict in a case started by Hollywood movie companies, the Court handed out an injunction to OpenBitTorrent’s hosting provider Portlane, ordering it to cease to provide Internet access to the tracker. Portlane was ordered to provide name & e-mail address of people behind Open BitTorrent else face SEK 500,000 ($63,633) in fine.

Following this decision OpenBitTorrent was pulled offline. We contacted the operators of the site who told us that they would be looking for a new hosting provider to bring back their tracker, so it could continue to coordinate the communications between the millions of people that were using it daily.

Newzbin Story

After losing a legal battle against Hollywood major Usenet indexer shuts down its operations last month.Chris, The real operator , said that Newzbin has been sold twice. About a week later rumors stated talking that some people hacked newzbin & will bring it back online soon. Latert we reported that Newzbin got new Seychelles based owner . “Team R Dogs” ,message ex-members of Newzbin claiming that they would soon bring back the site lat month. In an Interview with DeepShare thay said that they are doing this all for money. They want to provide a good service and take the same profits the Newzbin1 guys did.

Back in Business

Now both are back in business,as we checked OpenBitTorrent started tracking all torrents without any problem & Newzbin is also back online.It is now accepting logins & new signups. Looks like both sites are tecnically stable & fully operational now. Current IP used by OpenBitTorrent is from Netherlands (84.243.202.178) belongs to Sologigabit C.V. . The traffic to OpenBitTorrent is around 11000 now that far less from its real traffic. it is not clear whether Portlane has been supplied identities OR not.

OpenBitTorrent is currently battling for the title of the worlds largest BitTorrent tracker with PublicBitTorrent,OpenTracker, another standalone trackers that runs on the Opentracker software. Both trackers handle the communications of between 20 and 30 million BitTorrent users at any given time of the day.

Although it’s good to see that OpenBitTorrent has been resurrected, it’s worth nothing that the majority of all BitTorrent users probably never noticed that it had disappeared. Most torrents today come with several backup trackers that are used in case one goes down, and even without trackers at all DHT ensures that downloads continue to work.

UPDATE : Open BitTorrent went Offline again. May be some minor problem

UPDATE : Open BitTorrent is working again as on 5.6.10.

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May 20th, 2010

Legal Issues, Open BitTorrent, Public Trackers, The Pircay Bureau

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It came to OpenBitTorrent Now

The Sweden Court ruled today that ISP must had over the operator details behind major BitTorrent Tracker OpenBitTorrent, currently hosted by Portlane. ISP now must provide operator details or be ready for a fine.

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Yesterday TF reported how a Swedish appeals court had upheld an earlier ruling which ordered an ISP to hand over the details of a torrent site operator. If it fails to supply several movie companies with the name of the customer behind the SweTorrents site, ISP TeliaSonera faces a 750,000 kronor ($96,500) fine.

However, TeliaSonera may appeal the decision yet and potentially win, today brings news of a new IPRED case on an altogether bigger scale.

As The Pirate Bay relocated & obfuscated its real location to avoid any detection,it also changedits structure & mode of operation in order to stay alive & online.Last year, TPB shuts down its tracker relying on DHT,LPD,PEX & Third party trackers like OBT,PBT OR OT etc.

“OpenBitTorrent is used for file sharing, and we suspect that it is the Pirate Bay tracker with a new name. It is added by default on all of the torrent tracker files on Pirate Bay,” Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted said.

Last Year

In November Hollywood announced they would sue OpenBitTorrent host Portlane in an attempt to force the closure of the tracker.

In December the Stockholm District Court rejected calls to close down the tracker, a decision that is currently under appeal with the studios claiming that Portlane should take responsibility for the infringements being facilitated by OpenBitTorrent.

Game Continous

While that game of legal-tennis continues, the studios have today won another significant battle, this time in a Stockholm court. While there has been speculation about the identities of those behind OpenBitTorrent, that information has been impossible to verify.

“The Court orders Portlane under pain of a fine of SEK 500,000 ($63,633) to provide the Studios with the name and e-mail address information [ OBT Operators],” said movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted.

The ruling covers the customer behind the IP addresses 188.126.64.2 and 188.126.64.3 and/or any other IP addresses in Portlane’s entire range (188.126.64.0 – 188.126.95.255) which have been allocated to tracker.openbittorrent.com since August 28, 2009. The Court also ruled that Portlane should state whether or not the customer is situated inside the EU. The operators of OBT say they first got together in Lima, Peru, although their nationalities and current locations are unknown.

Portlane has 14 days to hand over the information to the studios but may yet still appeal this decision.

OpenBitTorrent has never portrayed the ‘jolly roger’ style of The Pirate Bay and even has a DMCA-style notice and takedown procedure to stop the tracking of torrents. Even so, it would be surprising if they hadn’t anticipated the possibility of a court ruling like this and taken the necessary steps to hide their identities from Portlane.

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