TL Server Costs

[Mistral]

Yes there are private sites where you donate and receive no perks or influence and I'll gladly support such sites.

"and so your saying that paying for access is ok, but donating for a perk isnt."

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. No, paying for access or invites to BitTorrent sites isn't ok. But you're talking about newsgroups which isn't the same thing.

Donating for a perk isn't donating, it's a purchase. That isn't a presumption, it's a fact.


"then i cant see anything wrong with doing anything for a month just to try to keep the tracker ticking over and surviving for another month."

Here's a quote from an article I read recently regarding Sweden's biggest ongoing filesharing case.

"Of additional interest is that this case reflects other file-sharing situations around Europe as it wrestles over the legal status of non-commercial file-sharing cases. Currently, illegal file-sharing is treated as a civil law issue in most of Europe, (there are exceptions) but the pressure from organizations such as the IFPI suggests they would love to bring it into the criminal domain. A conviction in this case resulting in prison time and financial penalties opens up the possibility that police searches could be carried out in search of evidence against petty file-sharers, something which is forbidden at the moment."

As soon as sales are being made it's a commercial enterprise and the situation becomes many times worse. Pay2leech is adding fuel to that fire.


"but again, whatever i say here wont influence you in any way, as it looks you have already got your presumptions wether they are right or wrong."

Right back atcha.

@ersatzp, Whether or not filesharing is stealing is another matter entirely and a discussion for another thread.

[SgtMajor]

Black is black, & white is white, 90% black & 10% white is 100% grey, 10% black & 90% white is also 100% grey, not everyone will agree in what shade of grey is the best, and you can't please all of the people all of the time with your shade of grey.

You can only do your best given what you have been given, and if some don't like it, then so be it, and then there will be some that do like like it, then be happy with those that do, There will always be detractors in all walks of life, we just have to learn to live with them and get on with the rest of our life. The more you fight back, the louder the minority will shout and one thing I learned is never to get into a gutter fight with them, just walk on by and best to ignore them. If they don't like what's on offer, they don't have to hang around, there are plenty of other options on offer to satisfy their needs.

[stoi]

well im actually a tracker owner with 54,000 members, and ran a tracker for the best part of 5 years, and i know from my personal experience that these quotes from the media when a site gets busted and they claim they are making £30,000 a month is a load of crap. im lucky to have taken that in 5 years of running a tracker (and all of that is on server costs btw).

At least i have experience in this and not just hearsay and presumption.

btw you have to pay that little bit extra for anominity and being in a country that doesnt give a shit. everyone could run a tracker on $70 a month if you hosted in the USA, but that is just folly and you wont last 5 minutes if your a big tracker, even if your a small tracker its still folly.

yes we did use to have £ for gigs on the site, but in all honesty we probably get more donations now after we have taken that off than when it was on, so Pay2leech doesnt always work.

also i am trying ads on my site atm, because i do want to get rid of perks for donations like you said, but ads do not pay that well as i am experiencing (and we will never go the donate and you dont see them route) so ads are not the answer.

I am also going to try out a no perks for donations very soon, so no star/VIP nothing. and see how it goes, but i dont think we will get 1/2 the donations we get now.

BTW the things donators get for donating on my site are.

VIP
Star
More downloading slots.
Bonus on the Seed point system (if your not a member its far to detailed to go into in this post).

but trackers do need funds to survive, no funds = no trackers period, no trackers = no bittorrent, No bittorrent = back to kazaa and emule.

My main point is though, posts like this and your replies, are not helping trackers, not just those that have pay2leech systems in place but all trackers that are out there, and just giving more fuel to the fire for the mpaa saying they were making XXXXXXX amount per month.

Mud sticks and usually its realy hard to get off.

[Mistral]

Obviously I already know you're a tracker owner m8. That doesn't change my position on pay2leech but your post does make me think I perhaps misjudged you slightly.

Clearly you're putting the effort into not relying on "pay2leech" and not out to make a quick buck, that's to be commended. I do appreciate the dedication it takes to run a torrent site and the problems that come with it, I've also been involved with BitTorrent for 5 years in one capacity or another. Not as a site owner, but I do pay attention to these things.

I do believe however that the very fact pay2leech systems exist at all on so called filesharing sites is potentially far more damaging than any post on the subject.

You're right about the crap in the media. Now just imagine the size of that crap when they actually do take down profit making sites.
We're already tarred with the same brush to some extent, but at least at the moment saying that you didn't sell anything for profit is a reasonable defense.

Tip: In my experience/opinion, increasing awareness of funding problems on torrent sites is usually enough. You inform the userbase that the site won't be around unless everybody chips in and generally that's enough for a large portion of the membership to cough up. Nobody wants to lose a site they care about. Honesty and openness is key.

Best of luck anyway.


@SgtMajor, Thanks for the advice. I'll keep that in mind in future, but when all is said and done it looks like stoi is an alright bloke after all.

[colombianino]

well they got the content, the seeds and the leechers. what else you might ask for?
very easy to keep ratio there, its because most torrents have good # of seeds and leechers.

but cant deny they're making money out of it........they gotta pay the server costs and leaseweb aint cheap.

edit:its true what you guys say, the RIAA and other anti-pirate organizations try almost anything to take the site down.