TorrentFreak Email Update

Demonoid Faces Prolonged Downtime After DDoS Attack

Posted: 27 Jul 2012 03:07 AM PDT

Demonoid is one of the biggest torrent sites around, and has been for more than half a decade.

Over the years the site has had its fair share of downtime, sometimes disappearing for months on end.

Yesterday, a million plus Demonoid users noticed that they could no longer access the site. Instead of the usual welcome screen users were confronted with a “server busy” message, suggesting that the BitTorrent tracker is facing technical difficulties.

TorrentFreak got in touch with the tech admin of the site who informed us that they are in serious trouble. Demonoid was overloaded by a DDoS attack which hit the server hard, resulting in a series of problems that may take a while to address.

“It started as a DDoS but then it caused a series of problems. These problems need to be fixed before the site can go back up, and it’s a complicated fix this time,” the Demonoid admin told TorrentFreak.

Aside from the DDoS assault, Demonoid’s server may also have been compromised by another attack.

“There might have been an attack from another angle, an exploit of sorts, but it’s hard to tell right now without a full check of everything,” the admin says.

While Demonoid is determined to return to its full glory, it might take a while before the site is up and running again. After an exodus of staff earlier this year there is only one person available to work on server issues, so progress is slow.

“Our human resources became limited in the last few months. All tech issues are handled just by me now and there is no one else to take the job,” the admin told us, adding that his time is also limited by real life issues that take priority.

“I’ll fix the site as soon as possible, but it might be a while this time,” the admin says.

In recent years Demonoid has been in the cross-hairs of several anti-piracy outfits. It was pressured to move out of Canada by the CRIA and most recently the MPAA and RIAA reported Demonoid as a “rogue site” to the U.S. Government. However, there is no indication that the current attacks at Demonoid are anti-piracy related.

For the millions of Demonoid users there’s no other option than to wait, once again.

Source: Demonoid Faces Prolonged Downtime After DDoS Attack

RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:02 AM PDT

In April, one of the RIAA’s key employees informed a group of music industry insiders about the upcoming six-strikes anti-piracy scheme in the U.S. TorrentFreak received a copy of the presentation sheets which include a rather interesting chart on where people get their music files from.

The data presented by the RIAA comes from NPD’s Digital Music Study but has never been published in public in its current form. While NPD’s press release mentioned a decline in music acquisition through P2P file-sharing and hard drive trading, these numbers were not placed in a larger context.

A strange decision, because the chart below is of critical importance for the debate on music piracy.

As it turns out, two thirds of all music acquired in the U.S. is unpaid. However, offline trading is a much bigger source of unpaid music than online piracy. Of all “unpaid” music less than 30 percent comes from P2P file-sharing or cyberlockers.

Music sources

In total, 15 percent of all acquired music (paid + unpaid) comes from P2P file-sharing and just 4 percent from cyberlockers. Offline swapping in the form of hard drive trading and burning/ripping from others is much more prevalent with 19 and 27 percent respectively.

This leads to the, for us, surprising conclusion that more than 70% of all unpaid music comes from offline swapping.

The chart is marked “confidential” which suggests that the RIAA doesn’t want this data to be out in the open. This is perhaps understandable since the figures don’t really help their crusade against online piracy.

The RIAA is lobbying hard for legislation and voluntary agreements to deal with the online piracy problem, an issue that might seem less severe in the chart above.

While not insignificant, the fact that less than one in five music acquisitions can be traced back to online file-sharing isn’t really that convincing – especially when one takes into account that only a tiny fraction represent a lost sale.

Even if all online music piracy disappeared tomorrow, more than half of all music acquisitions would be unpaid.

But maybe the RIAA will go after these offline swappers next. The TSA could perform piracy scans of travelers’ computer equipment, for example. Or perhaps schools could search MP3 players, phones and computers of their students for unpaid music?

Just a thought.

More revealing findings from the RIAA will be published soon.

Source: RIAA: Online Music Piracy Pales In Comparison to Offline Swapping

The Pirate's Press

Friday, 27 July 2012