Private Quality RS Community vs. Private Quality BitTorrent Community

[vfreak]

I wanted to start a discussion/debate basically along the lines of RapidShare vs. private torrenting, BUT with the following parameters. Look at the following comparison:

A
- A quality MP3-only music tracker, using either TBDev or gazelle (or whatever), and using the standard ratio system.

B
- The SAME exact MP3 site (using TBDev or gazelle codebase), BUT instead of torrents, you have RS links. So you still have EVERYTHING that a quality private tracker offers, the organized indexing, strict moderation for quality, search functions etc, BUT you have the links where maybe the torrent desrciption would be.
- Assume all users use RapidShare premium, NOT the crappy free method which is slow and annoying.
- Assume all users download with something like JDownloader or cryptload, with auto-unrarring.


Which would you prefer? Firstly, let me assure you, I'm a private torrenter of the highest degree (like, really...) BUT I also upload content to RS myself (as well as uploading to trackers), so I know both systems very well. And in this case, my preference is RS. I say THIS CASE, because I don't believe RS works for large files - they have a daily limit of 2GB or 15GB maximum "accumulated" quota, and for anything much more than MP3 sharing or maybe software apps, or casual XviD movie downloading, it's not really practical in the long run. It used to be, until they suddenly lowered the limit last October.

There is so much dislike for RS in the torrent community, but I've come to realise that the RS experience, as long as you use the right tools and the best ways to use RS, coupled with a private indexing site as good as your average torrent site, with a forum, IRC, site donations, you can get something actually better than torrenting.

The biggest advantages of RS, I find, are:

- no need for seedbox. If you ARE a seedbox user, RS premium account is way cheaper.
- For uploaders of content, way more efficient with bandwidth. No need to constantly seed stuff, and in that way you can also upload things quicker, and not have to delay releasing multiple things at once.
- For everyone else - also way more efficient with bandwidth, no need to EVER upload a thing.
- No ratio worries. How much time and effort (and even money!) do we spend on things ONLY to do with ratio. seedboxes included.
- Safer. Sure, it's not as safe as usenet, but it's still a notch safer than torrenting, even private torrenting. I've stopped downloading 0-day movies from sites like TL now, and even ScT I'm not trusting. It's either RS, usenet, or much smaller trackers for me now.
- Speeds (for RS premium) are very good, and consistently close to 2MB/s. Beats many poorly seeded torrents on so many trackers.
- It's just as convenient, if not more, when you use JDownloader and auto-unrar. I find the experience becomes very much like the torrenting experience, it's elegant, convenient, and RAR links are no longer something that conjures up pain in your mind (i.e., the thought of having to individually download the RARs from your browser and then manually unrar them).

And, my counter arguments against common "cons" of RS, are:

- Con: "links can get reported and deleted" - well, there's ways to greatly minimize this - you name the RARs to something inconspicuous, and also putting encrypted passwords on the RARs. Even so, sometimes they get deleted, BUT compare the chore (and bandwidth usage) of occasionally re-uploading some files, to "100%, all the time, seeding" the files. It still is better.
- Con: "you have to pay, that's crap" - ok, well this is fine and valid, but SERIOUSLY, I'm comparing private torrenting with RS use here. So, seedbox users, please leave the room. People who donate to trackers for P2L, P2I, and all the other common reasons for donating, please leave the room. People who have upraded their ISP plan JUST so they can get a better upload speed or more bandwidth usage so that they can buffer their accounts, please leave the room. People who buy invites from ebay, please leave the room (ok jk jk). Alright, are there now many private torrenters left in the room? Probably still a fair amount of us, but C'MON, 55 euro a year? For all the above advantages of RS stated above, it is worth it. If you would use RS enough, it is worth it.
- And I will also get people who say "I just don't believe in centralized sharing" or "Rapidshare is evil" or "I don't trust rapidshare" or "I believe in free, unrestricted sharing" whatever. Do note, that this debate is ONLY about which file sharing system is superior, not the ideologies behind it. Sigh...

So, if I was to start up a private MP3 sharing community, I would do it the RS way, not torrents.

Which would you prefer? Let's hear some more thoughts....

EDIT: thought of another pro for RS: the files, if never reported, last forever, effortlessly. Pwns for retention, no need for re-seed/re-seed requests. And also, another con: RS could get shut down some time, since it's centralized. Well, it's a valid con, but how likely is it to happen? They take down every file reported, and they're not there explicitly for the piracy...

[AssassiNBG]

Hello,

That's an interesting topic. I don't have much time to discuss right now, but the first thing that comes to mind is why use a script built for torrent for stuff like RS? Obviously you want a private community which could easily be done with something like Wordpress. You just need some custom template to display the posts in a different way. I mean not like the normal blog style where posts are displayed with post excerpts and you only see like 5-10 posts and you have to scroll down like crazy and you still don't cover all new releases in case the site gets very active.

If you don't like wordpress there are other content management systems like Joomla, but personally I'd use WP any day - it's simple and easy to modify yourself. They have a great documentation. Still if you like something absolutely custom you'll have to find a couple of php coders for example and a designer (or hire them) to create something different, better suited to the requirements for sharing links and protecting them, etc.

So much for now. Hope for more people joining.

[Funkin']

Great topic. I would most definitely rather download music from a quality, private(keep it private and links will probably rarely ever get deleted) , RS forum than a tracker. More secure, guaranteed speeds, and no seeding is what hooks me. Sure it costs money, but it's only a few measly dollars a month(or year) to use RS. So those pro's I listed definitely outweigh that one con for me.

[mbucari1]

(keep it private and links will probably rarely ever get deleted)

Not the case. I've posted files via RS on small private boards that eventually get deleted. The problem is that users of these private "communities" steal the links and post them on public boards. Google and RS search engines index them, rights owners find them and RS deletes them.

[Cabalo]

i agree with much of the above posted by the op, as concerning files under 200mb.
i do use a LOT rapidshare, usually for music, webdesign stuff ( fonts, scripts, photostock, vectors) as there are huge amounts of stuff i couldn't find anywhere else.
many small apps i usually get them there too (i use SCC as my daily feed for released apps).
and, finally, many of those small games (great for the GF), i also get them via RS.

i used to think RS was evil, but it has indeed many advantages.

just pity that i can't find anywhere else those free premium accounts, nowadays.

[vreu00]

I prefer a private quality RS community
With rs there aren't seeders and ratios, with a low money you can download what you want.
There are a lot of rapidshare forum/contents

File hosters are the future of file sharing, every person share what he want with no limits
sorry for my english

[shipwreck]

They are not the 'future' - some of the major ones have already come under serious pressure from anti-piracy groups, there are quite a few trials pending. Being 'the future' implies 'future proof', which is not necessarily the case, but time will tell.

Bittorrent's decentralised architecture laid down the foundation for a 'future' filesharing network. Such a network would ideally be completely independent of a central index (e.g. tracker in the bittorrent world), have similar performance while being fully encrypted (both ways). A filesharer's dream, a content lobby mafia's nightmare.

The Freenet network comes actually close to this ideal. What it still lacks is simply performance.

[vfreak]

Hello,
That's an interesting topic. I don't have much time to discuss right now, but the first thing that comes to mind is why use a script built for torrent for stuff like RS?

Well, I just like the organisation of torrent trackers, especially gazelle. There's no RS site I know, that has as good an interface as gazelle/tbdev. A forum layout is yucky and I prefer the clean, seperated layout of trackers. They really are the ultimate way to index and present a database of files.

The layout of Avaxhome (ok, that's a public site but anyway), is inelegant and inefficient, the private site HD-BB.org (a quality private RS site), is forum-based, and the only other quality private RS board I know is RetroFlix, does anyone know the layout of that site?

I'm not actually creating a site myself here, I'm just tossing up ideas. It'd be cool for more quality, private rapidhsare communities to emerge. Does anyone know any others that already exist (I mean invite-only sites, like trackers)?

File hosters are the future of file sharing
sorry for my english

Thank you, I fully agree with that statement actually. I think there will always be a place for p2p sharing, as it is truly unlimited, decentralized, uncontrolled and there IS an advantage there.

BUT since the internet is going to become so capacitive, file hosting of even large files will be nothing compared to what the internet can hold. File hosting will become SO convenient (and cheap) - RapidShare only happens to be the current most popular hoster.

I do also believe BT will evolve (ther's p4p but that's a marginal improvement really) or some trackerless, encrypted protocol will be developed, but that's still p2p and a lot more effort/resources are put on every sharer.

Either way, we're in for a good future I think

[Sonnentier]

They really are the ultimate way to index and present a database of files.

Your opinion, I don't see what makes it so great and superior.

File hosting protects the user, and that's a big pro - sites can be open, instead of being paranoid.

[vfreak]

They really are the ultimate way to index and present a database of files.

Your opinion, I don't see what makes it so great and superior.

File hosting protects the user, and that's a big pro - sites can be open, instead of being paranoid.

No problem, but what would you say is better than?

And as for RapidShare, it's only 100% safe if you only ever download (which is legal and not dangerous). IF you do happen to upload to RS, it's still not 100% safe because RapidShare has your IP address and you can even see it in the logs of your premium account.