R.I.P. what.cd

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Originally Posted by Quarterquack

Yeah, PTH is going with the exclusivity angle, recruiting at the traditionally 'hard to get into' trackers. I'm not sure if that's the right strategy. BUT, PTH does already have a request and active collage sections, which I think are vital if we want to rebuild as quickly as possible.

Xanax's advantages are that it has more torrents and more users. And that in general it seems more open to having the same recruitment policies as What.

Likely history will repeat itself and Xanax will win out.

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This is exactly what I thought at the time, but as I see it, Redacted ended up "winning" on all regards. The fact Apollo was down more often than it was working didn't help either. Now they're doing a reboot on a different domain with a mid-2017 backup... oh well.

I'm still appreciative of any and all attempts to (re)build sites that enable me to steal music, mind you ;)

Attachment 181819 never expected.

I am sorry if this question has been asked and answered before, but why did what.cd end up on the radar of the French police in the first place? After oink.cd closed, the people who were about to create the new tracker called what.cd should have told themselves, "Okay, we need to do things differently to prevent our new tracker from meeting the same fate as oink.cd. We need to learn from the past mistakes." What was the Achilles heel of what.cd? Was it the fact that it had more than 100,000 members? Does it mean that if the site had had less members, it would never have been noticed by the French police?

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Originally Posted by OlegL

After oink.cd closed, the people who were about to create the new tracker called what.cd should have told themselves, "Okay, we need to do things differently to prevent our new tracker from meeting the same fate as oink.cd. We need to learn from the past mistakes."

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And they did. Minor incidents notwithstanding, What.cd staff were very talented at running a tracker securely. Unfortunately, no matter how smart or capable you are, being the biggest music piracy site in the world paints a huge target on your back that both law enforcement and the music industry will want to shoot, and that's fighting a losing battle. It's beyond amazing that they lasted as long as they did and reached so many milestones (Gazelle, Ocelot, and two fucking million torrents).

Also, as I recall, the server that got raided in France was a reverse proxy and held little/no incriminating data, but at that point they decided to pull the plug rather than waiting for the cops to get the right one and going through another OiNK. Unfortunate, but it sounds very much like learning from past mistakes if you ask me.