Files Network: Kasım 2009

LearnBits Open For Signup - E-Learning Torrents

After a flurry of bad news about tracker shutdowns, here’s an open signup update for a change. LearnBits (LB) a well known E-Learning torrent tracker has opened public registrations after several months. If memory serves correct, last time we posted about LB was back in 2008. Since then, we’ve been hit with a large number of invite requests (even on months old articles) for this tracker, depicting the high demand it has in the BitTorrent community. This limited open registration period should be a great opportunity for all those who craved to get into this great private tracker.

During the past few months, a lot has changed at LB. And a lots more improvements are on the pipeline. As you may be aware, LearnBits currently runs on TS Special Edition tracker script. They are however planning to move to a new codebase, namely a heavily modified TBDEV source. Some of the category icons and site logo have already changed and the site is already looking a lot better.

Anyways LB has never been a tracker about looks. It’s known for it’s content rich torrent library which indexes a number of E-Learning, Educational torrents spanning across a number of categories ranging from information technology to medicine. E-books, video documentaries, test engines, magazines are just some of the stuff you’ll find on this tracker. A part of LB’s torrent index can be seen in the screenshot below

As of 30/11/2009 LearnBits tracks around 4000 active torrents. It has around 7500 registered members which is a strong user base for a specialized tracker. Site’s current user limit hovers around 7700 members. Speaking of user limit, there are only around ~160 free spots remaining on LB (unless the current cap is increased). When this limit is reached, public open signups will close. Signups were opened for a limited time anyway - A note on site states “In light of several popular trackers closing this week LearnBits will open its doors to new members for a brief time”. So if you want to be part of this great Elarning tracker, you better hurry.
EDIT: User limit has been increased to 7800. Kudos to MtnVision.

Site Name: LearnBits (http://www.learnbits.me)

Signup URL: http://www.learnbits.me/signup.php

SceneTorrents.The.Final.Notice-ScT

This is probably old news but since we’ve been covering the whole SceneTorrents saga from the beginning, here goes. Earlier we posted about the shutdown of elite private tracker SceneTorrents. ScT shut down without much explanation giving birth to a number of rumors some of which we highlighted in our previous post. Most of these have been speculation and/or unverified claims. For those who missed it, here’s ScT’s official announcement regarding the shut down. We cannot independently verify the facts presented but it’s interesting to note that they’ve mentioned ‘pending legal issues’ as one of the causes for shutdown. The NFO is modeled after a SceneNotice and the full text is quoted below:

By now most of you already know that ScT will be going offline permanently.
However, due to pending legal issues, we are not at liberty to speak freely about why we've chosen to take down the site. Members of our staff were arrested and will be undergoing the entire length of the judicial process. Obviously, in the case of criminal proceedings, it would be downright foolish to comment any further on the situation; Please bear this in mind and wish them the best of luck.

There have been several theories as to where the donation money (of the recent months) has gone. We'd like to take this opportunity to put all skepticism to rest. The money was used to purchase new hardware that would ensure our spot as the fastest tracker on the net. You are free to perform whatever calculations you feel necessary, but in doing so it should become very clear that running a site of this stature costs money. We feel the overwhelming cynicism is just a product of bad timing compounded with general frustration caused by the current situation.

We sincerely hope that you've enjoyed being a part of our wonderful community over the past 4 1/2 years. We've certainly enjoyed our members letting us be of service. We've always felt our user base played an equally important role in making SceneTorrents.org a model environment in the torrent world.

The staff would also like to express their gratitude to fellow trackers for their support in such a chaotic time. Several well known communities have voluntarily opened their doors, and have offered our former users a new home. We appreciate the courtesy and acknowledge the steps being taken to move forward collectively as a community. Your assistance does not go unrecognized.

//ScT Staff

It’s indeed sad if some ScT staffers are facing legal action. We wish them all the best and hope they’ll be able to return to their normal lives without having to face sh1t from anti piracy.

In the meantime Ex-ScT members have founded a discussion forum now that their beloved tracker is gone. The forum has nothing to do with torrents or downloads – it’s merely used for discussions. We’re not quite sure if we should post the link here as it’s supposed to be only for existing ScT members (in other words if you were a member you already know the link). Either way invite trading was rampant there when I last checked and it looked un-moderated. Hopefully things will improve.

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TorrentLeech, PolishTracker Invite Giveaway For Ex-ScT Members

UPDATE 5: HeavenTracker (HT), PeerPortal and LeechersLair are now open for signup for ScT members. Await detailed reviews of these sites later. ScL is now closed but invites are available for ScT members on their IRC.

If you still don’t know about the whole SceneTorrents (ScT) tracker shutting down saga, we suggest you read this post now. As we mentioned in the previous post, lots of other private torrent trackers have come forth to help out the stranded users over at ScT. Among the trackers that are offering free invites to ex-ScT members include high profile sites such as TorrentLeech (TL) and PolishTracker (PT). If you are currently a SceneTorrents member, you can ask for a free invite from either TL or PT (or both) on their invites IRC channels. Invite requests are handled manually so please wait patiently for a response. More information about each giveaway is given below.

TorrentLeech IRC invite giveaway for ScT members

TorrentLeech has helped many other BitTorrent communities in the past whenever they ran into trouble. TL did it with FileList and now they are doing it again with ScT. If you are currently a ScT member, all you need to do is to log into TL’s invites channel and do as the channel topic says. (You have to PM your ScT profile link and email to username mentioned). Note that this giveaway will only last for a few days. Invite channel details are as follows:

Site Name: TorrentLeech (http://www.torrentleech.org)

Stats: 160000+ members and 24000+ active torrents

Server: irc.torrentleech.org

Port: 7011

Channel: #invites

Direct Link: irc://irc.torrentleech.org:7011/invites

PolishTracker (PT) invites for ScT members

PolishTracker, another decent invite only Scene/0Day tracker, is offering invites to ScT members on their IRC. Again, you need to join their invites channel to obtain the invite. Be ready to provide a screenshot of your ScT profile “with current date and without any modifications, hosted only on imageshack.us or tinypic.com”. We reiterate that this offer is only for existing ScT members. IRC channel/site details are as follows:

Site Name: PolishTracker.org (http://polishtracker.org:81 or http://polishtracker.org )

Stats: 11300+ torrents and 15000+ active members

Server: irc.polishtracker.org

Channel: #pt-invite

Direct Link: irc://irc.polishtracker.org/pt-invite

SCC Invites for ScT members

SCC’s user limit has been raised to 18000 and their support IRC channel now hands out invites to ScT users. You need to PM a link to your unhidden ScT profile along with an Email address to users mention in the channel topic.

Site Name: SCC

Stats: 15600 + members and 43000+ torrents

Channel: #scc-support

Direct Link: N/A. Site rules prohibit posting URL or full name in public.

HeavenTracker (HT) invites for both ScT members and non-members

HeavenTracker, a General/0Day tracker with blazing fast pre times and good download speeds, is also offering invites for ScT users. In fact, HT invites channel has been open for everyone for some time now (as we previously reported) so you will be able to request an invite even if you don’t have a ScT account. If you need more information about this tracker, we suggest you read our recent review of it, which can be found here. Current invite channel topic reads “provide us with the link to your speedtest.net results and make screenshot from another tracker you are a member of. Wait patiently for a member of staff/support.”

Site Name: HeavenTracker (http://heaventracker.org)

Stats: 10000+ members and ~18000 torrents

IRC Server: irc.vaultnet.org

Invites Channel: #ht-invite

Direct Link: irc://irc.vaultnet.org/ht-invite

TorrentVault special signup link for both ScT members and non members

If you were a member of ScT you probably are addicted to fast pre times. TorrentVault, albeit not as old nor popular as ScT, is a rising star in the private tracker scene especially when it comes to new torrent uploads and pre times. We recommend you read the full tracker review to get an idea of what this underrated Gazelle tracker is capable of. Special signup link featured in our last giveaway is still live so feel free to register a new account if you need it. This will be valid for both ScT members and non members.

Site Name: TorrentVault (https://www.torrentvault.org)

Statistics: 10100+ users and 12500+ torrents

Signup URL:
https://www.torrentvault.org/friends_of_filenetworks_blog_limited_signup.php

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ScL Tracker Opens Registrations Ahead Of ScT Shutdown

After ScT announced that it was shutting down for good, lots of other private trackers came forth to offer stranded ScT members a new home. Trackers that offered free invites to ScT (and others) include TorrentLeech, PolishTracker, TorrentVault, HeavenTracker, SCC and many more (Most of these invite giveaways are still live, read all about them here, in case you missed them). And now ScL, a relatively secret private tracker that has tight rules regarding publicity, has opened its doors welcoming former SceneTorrents users. Note that since it’s an open registration period, everyone including non ScT members are now able to create an account for free.

As you might have guessed, ScL is a General/0Day tracker. It’s known for its beautiful visual design and tight knit community. Unlike SceneTorrents, ScL indexes both scene and non-scene content, including those pre’d by P2P oriented release groups. It’s pre times however are nothing like that of ScT’s but they’ve been improving over time. During the first few months since launch ScL didn’t have that many users mainly due to their strict rules on publicity and due to being invite only for the most part of its existence. However, lately they’ve managed to recruit several thousand new members through occasional limited open signup periods. At time of this post ScL’s active user base exceeds 8200 members – there is good activity on most of the torrents and download speeds are decent.

Speaking of torrents, ScL currently tracks close to 6000 active torrents. This includes many, many torrent packs as well as regular releases. Most of the packs are unique to ScL tracker. Note that all torrents are not visible from the main browse page. Some of the older releases and packs are moved to the ‘Depot’ section.

As the title of this article states, ScL is currently open for registration. A noticed posted on site homepage reads:

In lou of ScT shutting it's doors forever, we will be having open sign-ups! for an undetermined period of time to help those members find a new home. As a Welcome gift, FREE LEECH is ON!
I would like to take this time to remind all users that dupe accounts will lead to both accounts being disabled.
Lets welcome our new users to ScL!
Account trading is a good way to end up in the level of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theaters.

Even users who do not have an ScT account are able to signup during this time. However keep in mind that making multiple accounts or trading accounts/invites will get you ass banned for life.

Site Name: ScL

Signup URL: /signup.php

Note that we cannot post full signup URL here as it would be against ScL’s rules. If you aren’t aware, ScL tracker rules prohibit anyone from posting full site URL or name in public.

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FTWR Tracker Shuts Down

Today’s been a pretty bad day for private torrent trackers with ScT deciding to shut down and CaratNetworks getting DDOS’d – here’s more bad news. Just hours after SceneTorrents (ScT) decided to close down, FTWR (aka ‘The Rabbit’), another veteran general torrent site known for its tight knit, closed community too has shut down probably for ever. FTWR’s elusive homepage (which not many know of) now states ‘The Rabbit Is Dead. Long Live The Rabbit’. Unlike in ScT’s case, we can safely rule out any anti piracy involvement as the cause of downtime seem to be a massive hard drive failure. A current screenshot of FTWR’s homepage can be seen below:

FTWR’s IRC channel now has the following topic:

'The Rabbit has died - massive hard drive failure. May he rest in peace. watch out for the phoenix.

We’re not quite sure what the phoenix reference is all about. Perhaps that means the the site may return in the future or it may be resurrected in the form of a spinoff, etc. We have so far not been able to confirm anything and for the moment, FTWR remains down, with no ETA.
EDIT: Something that was posted on FST:

Yes, the Phoenix is reborn from it's ashes in mythology. No, FTWR is not going to be "reborn". We lost all our database. The latest backup we have is from December 2008. The staff had three options:
1. Close the site.
2. Start from the 1-year old backup.
3. Start from scratch with the code.
The owners of the site decided to go with #1.

ScT Tracker (SceneTorrents) To Shut Down, Rumors Galore, Alternatives

Update: TorrentLeech (TL) and other trackers are giving away free invites to ex-ScT members to help them out. Read this post for more info.
As per information posted on SceneTorrents (ScT)’s forum & IRC channel ( and sent via mass PM) , both the site and the tracker will shut down for good in a few hours. If ScT indeed shuts down, it will be a huge blow to the private tracker community as the site was truly a veteran in the BitTorrent scene. It was nearly 5 years old tracker that had amazing pre times, awesome packs and of course blazing fast download speeds. Exact reason/reasons why such a decision was taken has not been clearly mentioned, either on-site or on IRC. This has probably given birth to a lot of rumors some attributing ScT’s (impending) death with ‘Loop’ topsite raid which we reported about earlier.

Rumors

To be honest, we really don’t know if BREIN taking down ‘Loop’ has anything to do with ScT’s shutdown. Affiliated servers getting raided isn’t new to ScT. Back in 2008, TV Land (TVL), a P2L site that was used by a lot of ScT uploaders was shut down. However the torrent tracker continued to live on despite suffering from delayed pre times for a few days. Either way current topic on SCT IRC channel looks something like this:

* Now talking in #SceneTorrents
* Topic is News : Site Closing - Sunday 29th Nov 2009 10PM GMT. RIP SCT - 25/08/05 - 29/11/09 : CHECK PROFILE FOR BLACK DESIGN LAYOUT'

ScT’s IRC channel which was invite only has now been made public. Currently there are over 1000 users online but the place has turned into a spamfest with invite requests and trade offers. If you want to access the IRC, details are as below:

Server: irc.scenetorrents.org
Channel: #SceneTorrents
Direct Link: irc://irc.scenetorrents.org/scenetorrents

Some long time ScT members are not taking the news too well (understandably) and have come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories. Some claim the news about shut down is just a distraction to launch ScT v2.0, the next major site overhaul which was planned earlier. They quote images embedded in site (such as this https://www.eu.scenetorrents.org/themes/blue/pic/about_banner.png and this https://www.eu.scenetorrents.org/about.php) to support their theory. Then there’s been other rumors related to finances and tax which would be wrong to post here without any proof.

Alternatives

As of 29/11/2009 there are nearly 20000 registered, active members on SceneTorrents. It’s safe to assume majority of this userbase has access to seedboxes and/or high bandwidth internet connection. It can also be assumed that these members are aware of P2P best practices, having survived on a difficult-to-seed tracker like ScT. In other words, these are the type of users any private tracker would love to have.
UPDATE: See this article for details about TorrentLeech and PolishTracker invite giveaways for ex-ScT users.

More Rumors

There are rumors flying about that speak of shutdown of other trackers such as SCC, GFT and so on. We’d like to clarify that as of this moment these are all false. One of the reasons why a lot of private trackers are down/unstable today is that CaratNetworks (which hosts a number of private trackers) is suffering from a DDOS attack (credit to ‘Red’ for the info). And the following prespam (which came from a P2P channel if I remember correctly) didn’t help things much.

CaratNetworks.RAIDED.BY.FBI.DOZENS.OF.SITES.OFFLINE.LARGEST.
CANADIAN.P2P.RAID.EVER.HAS.JUST.HAPPENED

Anyways if ScT indeed is shutting down for good, R.I.P. It was without a doubt a great tracker and one of the best scene only sites that ever existed.

17 BitTorrent Trackers and Indexers That May Replace Mininova

It shouldn’t be news to you that Mininova, one of the largest torrent indexers on the planet, deleted their torrents index and went ‘legal’. While not completely shut down (their content distribution service is still alive), this move has rendered Mininova useless for many who used the site daily. However what’s important is that Mininova didn’t bend over and shut down – they went down fighting. After losing in courts to BREIN, there was very little they could have done to keep the site running. This move however doesn’t mean it’s all over for BitTorrent – there are hundreds of sites that are waiting to take Mininova’s place. It goes like this – Before Mininova there was Suprnova, after Mininova there are others.

If you are a long time reader of this blog, there is a high likelihood of you being a member of a private torrent tracker (if you still haven’t, we strongly recommend you check out our private trackers section – they are not that hard to get into). But if you depend on public trackers, indexers and search engines for your day to day torrenting needs, this article should help. It summarizes information about several such sites you can use. Some of these sites use a BitTorrent tracker of their own (Mininova did not have a tracker expect for their CDS – it merely indexed and hosted .torrent files), some index .torrent files and others are real time search engines. Hope you’ll find at least a few of the above listed sites useful.

KickAssTorrents

Site Name: KickAssTorrents (http://www.kickasstorrents.com/)
Stats: 2.8 million indexed torrents
Description: A new and promising torrent indexer with a host of usability features. Allows torrent downloading via HTTP, Magnet links and regular BT. In addition to the neatly crafted user interface, they have a regularly updated blog and a Twitter account. A FireFox search plugin and a vuze search template are also available. Easily one of the best public torrent indexers around.

ExtraTorrent

Site Name: ExtraTorrents (http://extratorrent.com/)
Stats: 1.4 million torrents tracked by 45000+ trackers
Description: One of the promising new public BitTorrent sites. Has a nice set of features including trusted uploaders, detailed torrent descriptions, bookmarking, one click hosting links and so on.

Darkside_RG

Site Name: http://94.75.224.58/forums/
Registration URL: http://94.75.224.58/forums/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00
Stats: 160000+ members
Description: Unnoticed by many, DarkSide_RG is a forum based BitTorrent community that has releasers and rippers of their own (Register an account on site and login to see torrents section). You can read a full review of DarkSide in this recent article.

1337x

Site Name: 1337x (http://1337x.org/)
Stats: 30800+ torrents and 64600+ members
Description: l33x is a free leech community that has no ratio rules. They are currently upgrading to a new version but you can still access the site using the old interface via http://1337x.org/old/. Their homepage states “RIP MiniNova we will all miss you as you were.”

H33T

Site Name: H33T (http://h33t.com)
Signup URL: http://h33t.com/account.php (Optional)
Stats: 95000+ torrents
Description: This is probably one of the most underrated semi-private trackers of all time. Comics, portable applications, All-In-One packs, movies, music, games – they are all here. There are almost no fakes here. We posted a detailed review of H33T sometime back and the article can be found here.

Monova

Site Name: Monova (http://www.monova.org)
Stats: 2.8 million torrents
Description: A torrent indexer that has a ‘confirmed torrents’ feature. In other words, chances that a confirmed torrent being a fake is nil. For those migrating from Mininova, you can claim your Mininova username through this page.

TorrentFly

Site Name: TorrentFly (http://www.torrentfly.org)
Stats: Searches 12 large BT sites
Signup URL: http://www.torrentfly.org/signup
Description: TorrentFly is a real time BitTorrent search engine which crawls multiple external sites for a given search phrase. It does not host any .torrent files or operate a tracker but points to external sites in search results. Optional registration allows access to advanced features.

ArenaBG

Site Name: ArenaBG (http://0.arenabg.com)
Signup URL: http://0.arenabg.com/register.php
Stats: Around 250000 members and 25000+ torrents
Description: For those crossing over from public trackers to private sites, ArenaBG should be definitely one of the easiest sites to use. It’s always open for registration and there are no mandatory ratio rules. Look here for full review and read this to troubleshoot tracker connectivity issues.

ISOHunt

Site Name: ISOHunt (http://isohunt.com/)
Stats: 4.1 million active torrents across 128000 trackers
Description: We all know this one. ISOHunt has been fighting the good fight for several years. They’ve been sued by anti piracy and they have sued anti piracy in return. One of the largest and best torrent indexers on the planet. ISOHunt also operates the Podtropolis tracker which specializes in mobile content as well as Hexagon P2P portal.

BTJunkie

Site Name: BTJunkie (http://btjunkie.org/)
Stats: 4.1 million + torrents tracked across 17000+ trackers
Description: This one is f’ing huge. BTJunkie is a veteran torrent indexer that’s been around for several years. Over 25000 new torrents are added daily. It ndexes torrents by some private trackers as well.

SuperFundo

Site Name: SuperFundo (http://superfundo.org/)
Stats: Unknown
Description: Superfundo does not operate a BitTorrent tracker of their own but hosts a large amount of verified, non fake movie torrents released by a number of p2p encoders such as FxG, FxM, KLAXXON, etc. Full review can be found here.

TorrentBox

Site Name: TorrentBox (http://torrentbox.com)
Stats: ~24000 torrents
Description: With an Alexa rank of ~11000, TorrentBox is a popular BitTorrent site that operates a public tracker of their own. TB now comes with SSL encryption for added security. TorrentBox tracker is run by the same crew behind BitTorrent giant ISOHunt.

SumoTorrent

Site Name: SumoTorrent (http://www.sumotorrent.com/)
Stats: If site stats are correct, there are 4.5 million indexed torrents
Description: SumoTorrent is another huge public BitTorrent site that operates a tracker of their own (SumoTracker). Has an Alexa rank of ~1300. ST now comes with a improved layout which is more user friendly.

AliveTorrents

Site Name: AliveTorrents (http://www.alivetorrents.com)
Stats: Unknown
Description: A decent torrent indexer with bookmarking features, related torrents display and more. AT does host .torrent files although they do not operate a tracker. You can follow them on Twitter as well.

BitTorrent.am

Site Name: BitTorrent.AM (http://bittorrent.am/)
Stats: Unknown
Description: BitTorrent.am operates a huge public tracker along with a torrent index and search features.

Torrents.to

Site Name: Torrents.To (http://www.torrents.to)
Stats: 4.1 million torrents across 128000+ trackers
Description: Another torrent search engine with a sleek user interface. Does not host .torrent files but links to those found in external sites such as ISOHunt.

TorrentZ

Site Name: TorrentZ (http://torrentz.com/)
Stats: 6 million + active torrents tracked by 900+ live trackers
Description: TorrentZ is a huge meta search engine that fetches torrents tracked by hundreds of external trackers. Great interface and informative torrent description pages. It’s actually an excellent tool to find other public trackers.

Last but not least, we take this opportunity to thank Mininova for the great service they’ve rendered to the file sharing community in general. 5 years is a long time and they will be remembered by millions of torrenters who used the site in many more years to come.

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BREIN Takes Down ‘Loop’ Topsite

Those interested in BitTorrent, Warez Scene and file sharing in general should familiar with the name BREIN, the Dutch anti piracy outfit. Over the past couple of years BREIN has been responsible for taking down many BitTorrent sites (most of these returned, but that’s a different story), P2L sites and scene topsites. After their last major victory of defeating Mininova in courts, it seems BREIN has scored yet again. A new article posted on their news page glorifies taking down ‘Loop’ topsite. According to that two servers with 40TB storage capacity were raided. Note that we do not have much information about the takedown and we don’t know if it really was a topsite that got raided or lower level P2L site. A translated version of the news item is posted below.

Today BREIN foundation through a judicial ex parte leave the servers seized by a 'ranked topsite. A topsite is a closed website by "release groups" used to store illegal files to the newest content, especially movies, music and games. A 'ranked' topsite belongs to a relatively small select top layer. These top sites are the source of piracy on the Internet and beyond. The topsite "Loop" was hosted in Amsterdam by a Dutch hosting provider. These were two servers with 28 hard drives, the estimated capacity of the site is approximately 40 Terabytes, which equates to around 8500 DVDs or 57,000 CDs. To prevent the content from the servers would be moved and evidence would disappear, BREIN has the ex-parte court asked permission to seize the server. This means that the leave is assessed based on evidence of brain and without the other party to hear. That game can be set as a waiver case he wrongly believes that the leave is granted. Also ban granted against the hosting provider to provide services to the site itself or infringement. After service of the leave by the bailiff, the hosting provider cooperated by the servers to point to the data center in Amsterdam. BREIN also demands release of any identifying information concerning the customer (including name, address and bank details) for whom the servers are hosted. These are issued according to law and jurisprudence when the infringement is likely and there is a legitimate interest for the injured party. In this case, the widespread infringement and the importance to claim damages and to avoid obvious repetition. Release groups and ranked top sites are the source of the availability of illegal files on Internet content and beyond, especially as films and games are concerned. From these places are not only widely accessible Internet sites such as P2P and usenet (newsgroups) are served, but also trade in illegal DVDs. BREIN protects authors, performers, publishers, producers, distributors and (online) retail movies, TV series, music, games and interactive software against infringement and abuse of copyright and neighboring rights.

Yeah it’s not a perfect translation (done via Google Translate) – if you need it, the original article may be found here. Anyway at least it doesn’t look like anyone got arrested.

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Share The Remote – New Gazelle Based TV Tracker

With Demonoid temporarily down, Pirate Bay shutting down its trackers and now Mininova finally going ‘legit’, one would think BitTorrent as a community is collapsing. This assumption however is far from the truth. Smaller, yet promising new trackers are being launched all the time – they may not be as popular as the likes of TPB but most of the time they do the job just fine. Today we’re going to talk about another brand new addition to the BitTorrent scene – Share The Remote (STR). STR is a gazelle based TV tracker with TV episode torrents and full season packs in both High Def and standard formats. If I am correct, this is probably the first specialized TV tracker to run on Gazelle.

It hasn’t been long since STR was launched. The site has been online in beta test mode for around three weeks but the official launch was only around 10 hours ago (at time of this post). Following is quoted from a news post on site:

Hi,
We've officially launched the site today. Special thanks to all of the users who helped us test and develop the site, we couldn't have done it without you! To thank all of you who have joined the site so early, we will have freeleech on ALL TORRENTS for the next 48 hours. This should establish a decent seed-base on most of the torrents and ensure that none of you encounter any issues with ratio.
We will have open registration until we reach five thousand users, so make sure to tell all of your friends about the site! After we've reached this amount, we'll be implementing special ways to earn invites, so make sure to watch the news for that.
Make sure to familiarize yourself with the rules. While we'll be fairly lenient with the rules in the beginning, we will not tolerate overt abuse or genuine intentions to cause trouble.
If you have any questions, feel free to use our myriad of help options. The Knowledge Base currently contains a handful of useful guides (Including a very in-depth guide on how to log into the website!) that should assist you in performing many basic actions on the site. If you have a question that the Knowledge Base does not cover, feel free to post on the forums or send me a private message.
Again, big thanks to all of you who have joined the site. We are looking forward to seeing this site become the best private TV torrent tracker on the net!
Also, feel free to join us on IRC at irc.sharetheremote.org channel #ShareTheRemote.

For a very young tracker, STR has recorded some pretty impressive stats. It’s already amassed over 1300 registered members as well as over 450 torrents (150+ active). Behind the site are some familiar names in the BT community – several STR staff members are also staffers on popular movie tracker PassThePopcorn (PTP).

As mentioned at the start of this post, STR is a specialized TV tracker. You can find and download English television series (both currently airing and previously aired shows) torrents from here. They do seem to focus a lot on complete season torrents as even now there’s a good number of packs indexed on STR.

As for the layout, STR runs on Gazelle script. Right now there aren't many customizations apart from logo, category icons, etc (no custom themes yet - apart from those available in out of the box Gazelle). Staff are currently ironing out bugs and tweaking the site – don’t forget it’s only been a few hours since their launch.

Signups for STR are currently open. As noted in site homepage, they will remain open till user count reaches 5000. IMHO it’s a good move to initially build the user base without imposing restrictions such as interviews and invite application (not saying they’re bad though). Anyways if you are interested go check it out.

Site Name: Share The Remote (http://www.sharetheremote.org)

Signup URL: http://www.sharetheremote.org/register.php

Special thanks to Remy for the information. This story was first broken on @filenetworks – our Twitter feed.

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Transmute – Convert Bookmarks Between FireFox, IE, Chrome, Opera and More

With a sh1tload of different web browsers around, lots of folks tend to use more than one type of app for their day to day browsing needs. If you belong to that category, here’s something that you might find useful. Transmute is an application that allows you to convert between different browser bookmark formats. That is, it allows you to import/export, sync and update your bookmarks across different browsers. It’s actually a quick and easy way to keep your bookmarks organized, up to date and available in all the web browsers you use.

As of now transmute supports a number of different web browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Apple Safari, Chromium, Flock and Konqueror!. There are advanced features such as duplicate bookmark removal and web services bookmarking but those are only available in the Pro version (which is not free :p ). The basic version however is suffice for the average user and has all the core functions you’d expect from Transmute.

The software is lightweight but that’s not what I like most about it. It’s portable (there is a separate build) – you can carry it around in your flash drive or portable hard drive and run on any machine without installation.

Download

Transmute’s download page kinda forces you to download the Pro version. Even if you choose to download the ‘Free’’ version, you’ll be taken to a trial offer page for Pro. Since this can be an annoyance, we’ve included the direct download link to free version below:

[Click Here] to download Transmute 1.66 Free

[Click Here] to download Transmute Portable

TVSource Open For Signup – Private TV Tracker

About four months ago we featured TVSource, a new specialized TV tracker based on SweDVDR’s source code. Few months into the launch, TVSource is doing quite well, but it didn't’ grow as fast as we expected. There’s nothing terribly wrong with the site but TVSource’s Swedish interface may have lead to the assumption that it only tracked Swedish releases. This may have slowed down their growth due to lack of interest by English speaking users. In case you’re wondering, TVSource is not a Swedish-only TV Tracker. Around 80% of all torrents tracked by it are actually English. You can find individual episodes of most shows aired in the US here – both High Definition content and XViD encoded releases are available for download.

Although many don’t know, TVSource is actually the sister site of DVDRsource – a tracker that has caused quite a lot of stir in the BitTorrent community recently. Both of these sites are based on the source code recently made public by SweDVDR when it shut down. As of 25/11/2009, TVSource currently tracks close to 1500 torrents and has an active user base of 3100+ members.

Speaking of the content, you’ll only find TV series on this tracker – there won’t be any movies, games or anything else. Right now one of TVSource’s main weaknesses is the lack of packs – there aren’t many full season packs around (when it comes to a TV tracker lots of these are expected). Individual episode torrents however are readily available. In addition to English releases, TVSource indexes Swedish and Nordic TV shows as well. There aren't many of these (only around 200 torrents) and they can easily be distinguished from English torrents thanks to the Flag category icon. TVSource currently tracks ~250 HD torrents and 1000+ XViD encoded releases.

If you care about them, pre times are pretty good for most of the uploaded torrents. Download speeds are decent but torrents could definitely do with some more leeching/seeding.

Last time we featured TVSource readers could only get in through a promotion for SvartaKatten members. But now the site is having totally legit open signups so feel free to check it out if you are interested.

Site Name: TVSource (http://www.tvsource.org)

Signup URL: http://www.tvsource.org/happysignup.php

In other news DVDRSource (TVSource’s sister site – a full DVD tracker) is also having open signups. You can read all about it in this article.

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Two Best Sites To Download Dragon Age : Origins Mods, HD Textures and More

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Dragon Age : Origins. It’s well crafted world, deep RPG elements and challenging combat made the game quite addictive for me (and for a lot of others as well, judging by user response on gaming forums). Anyways this article is not about DLC or other updates for Dragon Age. It’s about mods – one of the best things that could happen to a PC game once it’s released to the masses. Thankfully an active modding community has already been formed around Dragon Age. During this very short time since the game’s release, some cool mods such as HD Textures pack as well as ‘camp storage chest’ have surfaced.

So if you wanted to download a mod, where would you go? Here are two great sites that I’ve found to host a lot of DA : Origins content. Since both these require free registration, reg URL has also been included.

Site Name: FilePlanet Dragon Age Mods Section
Description: DA : Origins mods section of popular FilePlanet gaming portal. Hosts a ton of mods related to 11 different categories.
Link: http://www.fileplanet.com/112081/0/section/Mods
Registration URL: http://www.fileplanet.com/subscribe/subscribe.shtml

Site Name: Dragon Age Nexus (http://www.dragonagenexus.com)
Description: Another community that has a good number of mods. Two notable ones indexed here are HD and HDR texture packs. Go to the ‘Files’ section on right panel and hit browse by categories to view mods.
Link: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/categories.php
Registration URL: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/modules/register/

Above sites feature a lot of modifications for DA : Origins ranging from nude skin patches to new faces for your characters. Note that not all of them may work perfectly so use these at your own risk. Two of my favorite mods are the ‘Storage Chest’ (spawns a storage chest at party campsite so that you can store extra items) and the HD textures pack (replaces in game textures with sharper, higher quality images).

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Zamunda Site/Tracker Offline & Inaccessible – Another Update

As you might already know, popular private torrent tracker Zamunda has been inaccessible for some users for several weeks now. As we highlighted in a previous post the site is not actually down; both the web interface and BitTorrent tracker of Zamunda is actually up and running – it’s just that you can’t access them from non Bulgarian countries. A temporary workaround (as mentioned in the previous article) was/is to use Bulgarian proxy site to access the tracker. However during all this time there has been no communication from the site’s admins about the outage – or at least that’s what we thought. However it seems the issue was indeed discussed in the site’s forums.

Although not many are aware of it, Zamunda has two main sections in their forums – International section where everything is discussed in English and Bulgarian section in which everything is done in their native language. Latter is only visible for users who have ‘Bulgarian’ language selected in their profiles. It seems the reachability issue was only discussed in Bulgarian forums and a lot of folks who were actually having problems with the site didn't notice it. One regular Zamunda member ( a power user) was kind enough to post a brief translation of the discussion in the site’s ‘International - bugs and reports’ section. Since he’s done a damn fine job at it, we’ve quoted the post below:

Well this topic is about foreign users who are accessing Zamunda with some kind of a proxy or modifying their browsers network proxy connection.
Well I'm posting this here ,because this is the place that most of people will go to ask some kind of question about the foreign restrictions.I saw lots of topics about that the foreign Zamunda users can't access the tracker.With this topic we can save lots of useless topics asking why someone can't access Zamunda from UK , Spain , Canada , Holland or any other place all around the world.
The problem is not from you.Its not your internet provider ,you are not banned or whatever reason you believe.The tracker has problems and as soon the problem is resolved you will be able to download & share files with anyone.The Zamunda staff is working hard to resolve this problem ,so stay tuned.I saw people that twit Zamunda for the restrictions and that the tracker shares only with Bulgarian people and doesn't want to give access all over the world.Zamunda is not a selfish website that shares content only with some people.As you can see Zamunda shares FREE any kind of files without any viruses inside or requiring any fees that you need to pay!
This issue can be found within this topic answered by the staff ,but in Bulgarian.I will translate it for you and for further to stop asking dummy questions.Well you can anytime read this topic and know what is the real problem.So tell your friends that they are not banned or somehow suspended from Zamunda.NET

-credit to alexxpk who originally posted the above on Zamunda forums (and to Christos who posted the same in previous thread)

It doesn’t tell much about the current progress but this confirms our previous assumption of the tracker having international peering issues. At least it’s reassuring to know that this is not the result of some legal action and that Zamunda’s admins are working to fix it. If all goes well the site should return to normal soon. Until then, you can continue to use Zamunda using Bulgarian proxy sites and servers, as specified here (although this method may be slow and dependant on the uptime of proxies).

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FlazX – Direct Download Computing & IT EBooks

In the past we’ve reviewed BitTorrent trackers as well as sites that offer Direct Download (DDL) links for books in electronic form. FlazX is another website that offers DDL links for Ebooks – this however is a specialized site, rather than something like Gigapedia or EBOOOKIE which index books related to almost every category under the sun. FlazX’s specialty is IT – you’ll find a lot of books related to computing, telecommunications, software engineering, information systems, etc indexed here. If you are in the field of information technology (either as professional, student or a mere enthusiast), FlazX will be a site that’ll definitely come in handy.

It’s not clear how many books are in FlazX’s index. However the lengthy categories and subcategories list as well as search results for a particular query indicate that they have quite a lot. Just like other similar sites, most of the indexed books are available for download through one click hosting sites such as RapidShare and Easy-Share. But here’s the good part – FlazX offers true direct download links with books hosted on their server, in addition to one click hosting links.

Searching for a book you want on FlazX is pretty easy. You can either browse by category or use the built in search function (if you are looking for exact matches, use double quotes just like in Google Search). In addition to main categories, this site has a really useful feature where you can browse by popular book series. For example, if you browse by the ‘Dummies’ series, all available books in the ‘For Dummies’ series will be shown.

In case we forgot to mention it, FlazX has a useful feature where you can preview books before download - Download details page for almost every book has a preview powered by Google Books. With this feature around, you won’t be wasting time (and bandwidth) downloading books you don’t need. Another great thing about FlazX is that you don’t need to register to download books. Registration is optional but it’ll provide additional features such as the ability to upload books directly to FlazX’s server as well as to make requests.

As said earlier this will be a useful site if you have an interest in Information Technology. Check it out.

Site Name: FlazX (http://www.flazx.com)

Signup URL: http://www.flazx.com/register.php

Note: FlazX has a release blog for eBooks which can be accessed via http://blog.flazx.com/

20 Free Google Wave Invites – Giveaway 01

If you thought we were only handing out invites to private torrent trackers, you were wrong. While we were all busy trying to get Google Wave invites sent to our personal E-mail accounts, one of my fellow editors was kind enough to register FILEnetworks contact email with a wave request from Google. Not only the account got activated but we’ve begun receiving invites too. Since it would be a terrible waste for the invites not to be sent out, we though of giving them away for free via the blog. Right now we only have 20 remaining – more will be given away as we get them.

While everyone’s been busy trying to ride the Wave, here’s a little reality check:

(I found the image on Digg - through this link. Credit to original author whoever that might be)

I’m not saying the service is bad but I really do feel sorry for the idiots who traded What.CD (and other private tracker) invites for this. Google are very good at building hype around a product (remember Gmail invites sometime back?).

If you want an invite, just post your email as a comment to this article. Keep in mind we only have 20 invites. First come, first served :)

Note: It may take a while for your invite to arrive – It says “Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.” on the Invites Wave.

Know All About Scene Rules, Standards, Nuking And Nuke Reasons

If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you probably are familiar with our occasional updates on the warez scene, scene rules and group status. The scene has a complex set of standards and rules and all releases must adhere to these if they are to survive being ‘nuked’ (invalidated release). To add to the complexity, scene standards are constantly updated; new rules are devised, old rules are removed and some rules are changes. Groups who specialize in releases would know these like the backs of their hands. But for the average internet user, scene rules and nuke reasons would look like an Alien language. Now here’s a site that’ll help those interested in scene standards. It contains an up to date list of scene rules as well as some well documented articles on nukes and nuke reasons.

Site (or rather, the web page) we are talking about is http://rules.nukenet.info – a very little known site that contains tons of info related to the aforementioned topics. It has a simple but well organized layout. There are two main sections of the site – Rules and General Notes. Rules section contains current standards scene governing following sub-scenes: AUDiOBOOK, BDr, CONSOLE, COVERS, DOX, DVDR, MAC-OSX, MDVDR, MP3, MViD, PDA, PRESSBOOKS, S.I.R, SPORTS, TV-x264, WMV-HD, X264-ANiME, X264, XViD and XXX-PAYSiTES. It also has links to old rules as well as standards governing non-English releases.

The ‘General Notes’ section on the other hand provides some useful information about Nukes and Nuke reasons. Current available topics include:

Basic nuke channel rules
NukeCouncil rules
Explanation of recent mp3 mod.0 nukes
Explanation of Minor Updates (MU)
How to interpret "Key Words" in rules
Max/Min release sizes
Miscanellous information.

Note: The [p/t/n/d] keys next to a ruleset can be used to view the full NFO in detail.

p – NFO in image format
t – NFO in txt format
n – NFO with numbered lines
d – Download NFO

Anyways enough blabbering. http://rules.nukenet.info should provide you with plenty of information if you are interested in scene standards, rules and regulations. There is no signup required to view or download any NFOs or other documents available on site.

[Click Here] to visit http://rules.nukenet.info

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iTune Music Tracker Open For Signup

When iTune (it’s iTune, not iTunes :p) first made it’s way into the BitTorrent scene, it created quite a stir in the community. iTune was/is another music torrent tracker based on Gazelle codebase. It rapidly added new members and torrents and quickly made a name for itself in the BT scene. Since the early days, iTune has continued to prosper – new member recruitment has somewhat slowed down due to closed for registrations but activity on new uploads and indexed torrents is still high. As you might see from the comments to this article, there’s been a lot of iTune invite requests by our readers. Just sign up during this open signup period and you won’t need to beg for invites again.

During the first few weeks since launch, iTune attracted members by the thousands – this was when the site was constantly open for signup. However it soon went invite only and as days progressed, lots of inactive members were pruned from the tracker. As of 21/11/2009 there are around 2600 active members registered on iTune. It’s torrent index has in the meantime continued to expand. iTune now tracks over 5800 torrents which includes 5500+ music albums by over 5000 artists. Around 30 new torrents are uploaded daily, which is a good number for a music tracker.

Content on iTune mostly comprises of MP3 music albums. Music related to a number of different genres is available, ranging from hiphop to dnb and funk. Gazelle’s tagging and search features should help you discover your favorite music very easily. There is also a seed bonus system present on the tracker – bonus points are called cookies. Every 15 minutes you are awarded 0.01 of a cookie for each completed torrent you're seeding.

iTune is a beautiful tracker – in fact, it has one of the best interfaces I’ve seen for a private tracker (running on default skin). Nice clean layout, organized toolbar, cool category icons, more themes to choose from – they’ve really got their visual aspects sorted out. Combine the visuals with optimizations and features of Gazelle codebase – you’ve got yourself a decent music torrent tracker.

Signup for iTune is currently open. Max user limit is set to 10k but it’s unlikely that open signups will continue for that long. In fact, registrations could close any time so register an account while you can.

Site Name: iTune (http://www.itune.ro)

Signup URL: http://www.itune.ro/register.php

Left 4 Dead 2 Crash To Desktop (CTD), Sound Issues and Freezes – Possible Fixes

As you may already know valve’s cooperative FPS Left 4 Dead 2 was released to the public on the 17th of November. The game subsequently leaked online on the 20th. While Left 4 Dead 2 seems to be a well optimized & relative bug free game, we’ve got feedback from several readers who seemed to run into crashes to desktop (CTD), for example right after the intro movie is played. There can be numerous reasons as to why this happens and aim of this article is to list possible fixes that you can do to avoid similar issues and improve game performance. Note that we cannot guarantee listed solutions will help everyone – but it sure as hell won’t hurt to give them a go.

Left 4 Dead 2 Crashing To Desktop

One of the major reasons why the game crashes seems to be due to a system folder (CSC – Client Side Caching) not having necessary permissions and thus becomes inaccessible from within the game. This problem can be rectified by giving full access to the folder in question.

Browse to your Windows Directory. This is C:\Windows by default for Windows XP/Vista and 7.
Open CSC Directory.
Inside you will see another folder usually named after a version number (i.e. 2.0.6). Try to open this folder.
If you get the error message ‘You don’t currently have permission to access this folder’, Left 4 Dead 2 crash is probably caused by this. If you do not get any error at this point, the crash is not caused by CSC permissions issue.
If you do get an an error, you’ll need to give full access to the folder so that it may be access by L4D2.
Right click the folder and select properties. Open ‘Security’ tab. Press ‘Advanced’ button. Go to the ‘Owner’ tab and press edit. Set Administrator to be the owner of the object. Press ok to all windows and close. Now run the game.

Random crashes may also be present when multithreading is active. This is fairly easy to fix.

Run the game. While in game open the console by pressing the ~ (tilde) key.
Type the following command and press enter mat_queue_mode 0
This will effectively disable multithreading in game. If the game was in fact using multi threading, you may observe a performance drop after you invoke this command. On the upside all bugs and crashes related to this function will be gone.

Note: This will reset every time the game starts so you will have to enter it whenever you exit and re-open the game (or you can edit the config file to make it permanent).

Another possible cause why you may be experience a crash to desktop is because you use a pirated version. Lots of folks using Razor1911’s leaked version has been reporting similar issues. It looks as if the custom installer used by Razor1911 in inconsistent and sometimes does not properly install the game (Note – this seems to happen only for some people). If this is the case you can either buy the game or wait for a PROPER release.

Audio Issues and Random Freezes

You may also try the following to minimize the possibility of random crashes in game and slow, stuttering, looping audio performance.

Disable VSync. This is known to fix some CTD and stability issues.
AMD users – try the solutions mentioned in this forum thread.
Update DirectX to the latest monthly build. You can download it from here.
Update your drivers to the latest version. NVIDIA GPU owners can try installing the release 195 beta drivers (use at your own risk) as they contain a ton of fixes. You may search and downloading matching release 195 beta drivers through this link.

Note: This article is a work in progress. More bugs/solutions will be added as they are discovered.