Bitcoin Forum

So, did anything ever come of this project?

Slowly (very) working =) Main functional work already. Need to come with some design for it tho. Can't provide any estimate right now - sudden freelance project and day time job keep me very busy.

Idea slightly shifted from just rapidshare-like website. It became more pay-for-downloads project. Not sure if this is what people will want but it definatelly can be used =)

Anyway, stop teasing. ) I will publish announcement once I will be ready to accept beta  users.

http://ub.yepcorp.com

Try it =)

Following idea:
1) Someone upload file he want to share.
2) Someone opens download page and download file.

Optionally Uploader can pay .02 BTC and will be provided a field to enter his own BTC address. Everytime someone pays for download, Uploader will get 50% of payment.

For Downloader - for every file he wants to download - he need to pay 0.02 BTC (only once per file per session).

Now:

- It's really basic. There is no accounts. This means it takes long time to get confirmation of payment. User accounts with balances will be introduced later.
- It's more suitable to selling files, not sharing like other free/captcha share file sites.
- I am hosting files on Amazon S3. Price 0.02 is definitely just for beta period and later will depend on file size or something else.

Comments/critiques are welcome.

 :o
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1811.0;attach=551

Nice.

Had the graphic ready to go, eh?  :)
 

Cool! Just trying it out with my BTC Technical Analaysis chart from Nov 18:

http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/7 (http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/7)

Don't download it too often because I don't want you to spend too much money on this one. Just to try it out. I may use it for further Analysis in the future to share files.

Great idea hippch!

http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/1

Caught exception in Ubitious::Controller::File->download "Can't call method "price" on an undefined value at /var/www/clients/client1/web39/web/ubitious/script/../lib/Ubitious/Controller/File.pm line 86."

yea, I found it!!1
(upd:You can just change numbers in the url)

http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/5

You are about to download file 65296db7a0.flv.

Description: pthc mom d cp hardcore

Hippch! CP ALARM!

upd2: very slow payments, very :)

Heh. Now I need to develop admin for removing stuff ))) Lol

Thanks! I will add this to TODO.

this is russian bear =))) just like the ones walking on the streets =)) now they promote bitcoins =))

http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/8

A sketch for an idea.

How does payment back to me work, exactly? Refresh?

Hippch, need to write what would happen if the user payed too little or too big amount.

/me hopes to get people to download his stuff and get commission for bitcoin.

The bitcoin art scene market is ON!

To get commission there is two requirements:
1) You have to pay fee after uploading file (after this you will get field to enter your bitcoin address)
2) Convince someone to pay and download it =)

Every time someone pays for file if there is BTC address associated with this file, half of user payment will go this address.

if someone sent less then file price (right now - .02 BTC), nothing will happen. If someone sent more - it will work the same way someone sent correct amount - uploader will get half of sent money.

Very slow downloading: I downloading 13.6 MB video. Estimated time approximately 30 minutes for it will be downloaded.

But I think this is may be killer app of bitcoin!

Any kind of pornography would do the same for bitcoin what its did for the Internet. Seriously, I seen a similar file-sharing service and I know what I'm talking

How can a service like this compete with free?

That's weird. Download happens directly from Amazon S3. Should be pretty fast. I will look into doing CDN if this will take off as an option.

I have no idea =) I just done that. Idea was to replace captcha with bitcoins. So to evade bots we make it costly to download. Also to encourage uploaders - they get commission.

Now I understand that it will not work for the same goal as sendyouit.com, but probably someone here will find it useful =)

Through increasing a price!

Nice picture =))

Economic Advantage of a micropay download site:

1. No Turing test that reject you even if you're a human.
2. No waiting 15 seconds to download.
3. No FRICKING ANNOYING ADS.
4. No bittorrent seeds fail.

Suggestions:

1. Keep it simple and fast to download site. Should be 3 seconds, MINIMUM. The longest process should be the DOWNLOADING OF CONTENT.
2. No ads please. No content to distract us from the act of downloading.
3. Make it easy to find new content to download while without contradicting #1 and #2. Advertise good uploaders on your front page.
4. Keep ANONYMOUS uploading, no account. An uploader should be able to try the service without registering, visiting his email account, etc.

Kiba, thank you for suggestions.

I plan to keep anonymous upload but add accounts in order to speedup downloads since currently it take 10-20 minutes to download file since it take this much time to get  atleqast one confirmation of transaction (and I am really not comfortable with just one confirmation too)

If this going to take off - I think about some sort of ratings or something to show on front page. Tagging as well.

Just accept 0 confirmations and run Bitcoin with -maxconnections=50. It's not a lot of money, and attacks against this are difficult.

BTW, I think you got the upload incentives NAILED. I uploaded a picture, get INSTANT feedback of how much my picture is worth.

.03 BTC in commission for .02 payment. w00t.

Hippch,

File will expire 22 November, 2010 at 9:50. Expiration date will be automatically extended when someone successfully download this file.

For what time zone?

Test my hallucinogenic picture, please:

http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/10

Actually, this is one of the way I thought to do it. But I will need to implement a "queue" which will look for confirmations and do comission payments only when payment confirmed 6 times.

UTC. If someone downloaded file in 6 hours before expiration, expiration date moved to 6 hours from last download. So it keep purging junk files from my S3 account.

I think the benefits of not requiring an account are obvious.

But the benefits of optional accounts should not be overlooked. From the upload side it allows reputations to build. I don't want to buy a fake Kiba after all. There may be other ways to solve this, but an account is one easy way.

And from the download side it would be nice to have credit on account as a convenience. Then you wouldn't have to worry about confirm time at all. If prices rise for some content you will not want to take 0 confirms, if my understanding is correct this is a risk not only because of double spends, but also issues like those non confirming coins, etc.

A "paid" account would be a download buffet. 5 BTC would provide like 250 downloads.(as well, upload)

Agreed, that is another benefit. You don't have to go to the client 250 times and send to 250 different addresses.

WOW. This is weird image!!!!

I revisited the download link. It said "pag".

view-source:http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/8


It must have expired.

Hm. I will check. At least after my download it should extend time till expiration. And it's definitely passed less 6 hours before expiration.

How many hours does a download typically add?

It should add 6. But looks like it didn't, since passed only 5 hours between my download and your report.

I am working on implementing 0 confirmation download revision right now (it will allow immediate downloads, but will keep paying commission until 6 confirmation received). Will take care about expired files too. keep tuned =)

There's been 5 transaction that I counted. So that's about 30 hours. More than day worth of time.

It do not add up, but looks if there is less then 6 hours left and set expiration datetime to NOW() + 6 hours. I will change this to 24 hours and in future will look into more sophisticated way of controlling file expiration.

Your site won't have a free version at all? You should think about it, like the main download sites... free downloads and premium ones.

Do you really want to solve FRICKING ANNOYING CAPTCHA or WAIT FRICKING 15 SECONDS?

well. i want to play with bitcoins, not to attract tons of warez downloaders (i just do not have enough money for later option =)). At least for now - bitcoins only.

Warez downloading would be bad for the image of bitcoin. What we really need is a vibrant copyfree art community.

Yeah. I already implemented 0-confirmations download (read, instant). In next 12 hours my datacenter will be moving servers, so I will wait till this time and upload new version with bugfixes (found, why file was expired - it is a bug).

did not have enough patience and deployed new revision with 0-confirmations and fixes to expiration code =) feel free to try it =)

http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/3 -- lol =))

btw. since now site accept 0-confirmations payments, it will put all commission payments into queue. every 30 mins cron job run and check all not-processed transaction to see, if 6 confirmations received. Once it done - it will send commission to address associated with file.

ok. datacenter guys started moving servers. so both bitcoin poker room and this project are unaccessible (and my email too =))

server moving done, so you can try it out again. please let me know if you have any issues. once there will be no issues, i plan to add more text/graphics explaining all of it and release on dedicated domain, so it can be placed on trade page.

once this done and site take off - i will add accounts/rating/whatever you ask for =))

http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/4

My revised sketch. The girl have legs now.

maybe you should provide hashes of downloads.
this way people could be sure that the file they are paying for is the file they want.

Not quite sure what you meant. Like MD5 hash to be sure no man in a middle attack happens?

nice =))

I see no money yet. So no downloads?

there is 6 downloads. 5 of them already confirmed and sent to 12UfGSQ9S93bp8tXPrdDLYvG4tK4ta4o5q. 6th is still waiting to get 6 confirmations.

I sent 0.02 to that address so I can get 50% royalty.

Mine is 1A7UHtFpNXYGVWs9ypj1YwWgN1KXfZXX3t

Yeah, but I thought of SHA-1 hashes.

oh.. i think i missed variables.. and it looks like it sent it to himself. sorry. will send you your 6 bit cents manualy and fix this mess!

Thank you.

fixed. and downloaded again to test it. seems to store correct address in queue. let me know if you receive 1 cent in an hour.

probably will implement on some point. but i think it's not that valuable yet since site itself is not https:// (and i do not have IP address to put second ssl yet)

So. Anyone wants to sell something? =) Feel free to upload and give address to all your fellow bitcoin holders =) Once expanded, we can upload interesting stuff there and give away links to general community and they will have to know about bitcoins in order to download this stuff )

may be someone can create some cool widgets for bitcoin and also sell them? To make this work I need to find a way to define "right" price:
1) Price should cover expenses on S3 hosting, so it should be related to size of uploaded file.
2) Price should be flexible, so uploader have some range he can use to manage price of his files.

What do you think?

BTW, not sure if it's good idea, but I can mention bticoin faucet on "Download" page, so someone from outside can download files atleast once (with current price it will allow to download two times). Should I do that or we should not exploit Faucet?

If you can keep track, I'll pledge 10 btc to the faucet to reload (0.05 btc is 200 uses)

Is it possible to preview the files before downloading them?

Some people might shy away from downloading things without knowing what they are getting. Even a thumbnail might help.

to track that someone got their coins from Faucet? I don't think so. I can track how much people clicked on Faucet link tho. It should be easily done with Google Analytics.

There is "description" field available after uploading and paying for a file. So someone can post here url to thumbnail, or demo or something. Hm... I need to put html filter here, or this site will xss-ed really quickly )

It works.

Thank you for reporting back. I was not able to caught it 'cos i was testing with my own wallet )) so it seemed ok))

duh. I don't know what I was thinking

I hate when I post in the wrong thread lol.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1858.new#new (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1858.new#new)

I added 30btc to the faucet if you want to increase the amount of people able to download pics when you launch Hippich.  :)

This is awesome by the way. The confirmation went through faster than having to solve a stupid captcha.

+1 internets to you.


A couple of suggestions.

Would be cool if you could pay different amounts if the pictures could be converted to different formats and you could
Rate the files to let people know the quality. I would give Kiba's pic a thumbs up  :)
Also a link back to the site after you download the pic. I had to come back to the forum to get to it.

Great! I will start working on implementing bitcoin descriptions and links in the download page to faucet!

1) different pictures - this will mess UI for sure. I'd like to keep it simple as field and button. But! It's good idea to release API at some point (once accounts with balances will be implemented), and people will be able to build their galleries on top of this. (probably, create photostock site on top of it?)

In mean time - just upload several versions and that's it.

2) This probably could be done with adding "destination" to url. Will think how to do this the best way.

On one of those site(rapidshare), you have to solve a captcha, then WAIT 15 seconds, and then BE LIMITED to slowass download speed.

Yeah that really sucks.


I uploaded a funny pic  :D
http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/5 (http://ub.yepcorp.com/file/download/5)

http://ubitio.us/ !!! check out new graphics! =)

haha =))

nice.

senduit.com

If you want the domain bitcoindownloads.com, let me know. I'll sell it to you at cost.

I started working on a bitcoin downloading site when I first discovered Bitcoin. I actually got pretty far with it including setting up a server and domain (obviously). Unfortunately, I ran into two problems.

The first problem was technical. After Bitcoin changed to require a username and password for JSON-RPC, I couldn't get my server to connect to it for the life of me. I probably could have worked through this issue eventually, but I hit another problem I couldn't work around.

About the time I started working on the bitcoin download site, the *AA groups went on another file sharing website attack. I originally thought I could just comply with the DMCA and delete any pirate files after receiving a take down notice. But, the *AA groups started going after websites even if they complied with the DMCA. This was a show stopper for me. I don't want to be exposed to that kind of legal risk.

Hippich, how have you handled the DMCA issue? Are you even in the US?

Honestly, I thought about all of this, but really do not know how to deal with that. I planned to add "Flag this"-kind link to report pirated files, so I can remove them. Do you have any links to cases with this *AA group and filesharing services?

Gorgeous Angeline Jolie wallpaper? Ain't that pirated?

It was public domain! =)) Seriously, I think here main morpheus's concern is mp3s (and probably videos/software on a smaller scale). I too heard a lot of stories about copyright groups going after music files shared on file networks, but after looking through all file sharing services they just offer you contact them and they remove these files if it infringing someone's copyrights. I think, this covered by safe harbor for online service providers provision in DMCA.

The ubitio.us (http://ubitio.us) homepage looks clean and welcoming. Very nice.

I uploaded some files to see how it works:

http://ubitio.us/file/download/12
01-title.mp4 - First fragment of animated bitcoin movie (no sound yet)
Opening Title

http://ubitio.us/file/download/13
02-currency.mp4 - Second fragment of animated bitcoin movie (no sound yet)
Bitcoins moving around the world

nice! keep up with this video. visual description of bitcoin technology is very important!

You're supposed to be covered by the safe harbor provision in the DMCA, but that won't stop people from suing you anyways. You need the money to take it to court even if you'll probably win. My problem was lack of money.

I couldn't find the specific article that mentioned the problem, but I did find a few on RapidShare which does something similar to your website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidShare#Legal_issues (ok this is really a wikipedia link)
http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-not-guilty-of-copyright-infringement-us-court-rules-100520/
http://escobarmediacartel.com/2010/04/17/adult-star-vicky-vette-files-lawsuit-against-rapidshare/

Turns out, the porn industry really seems to hate RapidShare.

I do hope your website succeeds. I think I'll upload something tonight to test it out.

Thank you for sharing this info - need to read it carefully and see how to act next. I believe at this point I am not a threat to these groups and when I become one, I will find a way around it.

Hmmm, I keep getting an internal server error every time I try to upload an image file. I'm using Firefox on a Mac. If you need anymore information about my issue, pm me.

Is there a file size limit?

EDIT: I was able to upload another image file:

http://ubitio.us/file/download/20 (A sexy elf SFW)

It seems like there is a limit of less than 200k. Not sure where the actual limit is. I guess I'll try to find out. :)

http://ubitio.us/file/download/19

I revised my sketch again. Sorry for the crappy hands but I hope you like the beginning of my GPU cluster scenery.

You'll have to wait until the next several art evolution before I start drawing really good hands. I am a beginner, after all.

Not sure.. Just tried - worked fine. Can you do screenshot next time?

As for file size limit - I did not set any, but it's probably set somewhere by default. What size you trying to upload? Just tried with 15Mb file size - worked fine.

hm. for some reason even 0-confirmation transfer takes for me forever. looks like my client did not send correct transaction or something... hm.. and despite -maxconnections=50 on server bitcoind have only 8 connections. any ideas?

You should put the bitcoin facuet stuff AFTER the user is done downloading.

Why? I thought main idea is to show a way to get first few bitcents in order to download something. Otherwise random visitor will find no way to get coins and just close page.

It's a distraction from the downloading process.


Here's how I would get new users:

1. Offer free download sponsored by a user.
2. After he finish download, then you could introduce bitcoin, somehow.

Your commission fee are in some kind of weird limbo.

Everything seems to be working fine now. I was able to upload all files I wanted to, including the one that kept failing the first time.

I've uploaded the following files:

http://ubitio.us/file/download/22
http://ubitio.us/file/download/23
http://ubitio.us/file/download/24
http://ubitio.us/file/download/25

The first three are wall papers and the last is... um.. not.

See the description for each download for more information.

this one looks like nude merlin manson =))))

I'm just too lazy to copy-paste the address for payment sometimes. When we get working bitcoin browser plugin?! ( https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1411.120 )

Just tried this chrome plugin - seems to work. It would be cool to automate populating amount field as well, but at least I do not have to run bitcoin client or run bitcoind sendtoaddress =)

It is good, except now I have lots of 2bitcent transactions clogging up transaction history (normally for larger amounts)...  Can we have a simple system where we can send like 2BTC and have a balance, no password is needed, just use cookies.  Also have the option of sending a email with a link that re-establishes the cookies. (in the case of removing browser history, or changing computers)

I am not really comfortable with cookies. So probably, I will not implement it now. But I planned to implement accounts (with login/password) for storing balances. I can work on this project right now, since I have something to do for living, but definitely will get back to it later =)

Feature request for paid account: Unlimited time for files uploaded to the server.

unlimited time costs unlimited bitcoins =)) there is no so much bitcoins and will not be. I though about recurring billing for accounts or ability to send email with link to paid extension or something like this.

Fair enough, but how about "every download extends the file hosting by another day". Not by one day from now, but by one day more than it currently is.

That way, you're averaging at least one paid download per 24 hours of storage.

Mmm.. Yeah. This could make sense. I need to check how much I am paying for a file per day + upload (once). I need to find balance - from one side I am paying upload fee every time I am uploading something to amazon, on the other hand I do not want to have bunch of stalled files in amazon, since I am paying for their hosting too. So I think I will need to try different models and find what most benefits both me and users.

You need a proper page when a link expired instead of "pag".

Nyu got a bitcoin.

http://ubitio.us/file/download/40

Not handdrawn, but nice! =) (not very safe for work =))

No private parts showing. Pretty safe for work in my opinion.

mm.. probably, depends on type of work too =))

New version, this time NSFW.

http://ubitio.us/file/download/43

Feature request: Allow the uploader to download their own files.

Nicely drawn! And safe for my work, but then again I'm self-employed.

Finally I done changes I wanted to do for a long time =)

http://ubitio.us/file/download/1

Changes:
- Thumbnails automatically generated for pictures and movies
- Ability to "invest" random amount into file. Price of file download will be equal to "invested" amount
- Uploader get 70% share of all payments
- Expiration window is set to 1 week. If someone downloaded file - file expiration date automatically extended to 1 week.

Testing and comments are very welcome =)

I have a question - I thought about implementing API for uploads. Is anyone interested? If so - please PM me for discussion about actual implementation.