BitCoinTorrentz.com - Torrent Download Service

[mjcmurfy]

Woot, just in time for Game of Thrones.

I'm actually about to watch both new episodes myself. w00t!

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[mjcmurfy]

For those of you who were asking about magnet links, I have some good news.

I just finished writing the code that will allow bitcointorrentz to support this. All that remains now is to implement it into the site, which should be done by the end of the week. I'll post here and update this thread when the new functionality comes online.

Also, I plan to include a health indicator on the status page that would give the user some idea of the availability of the torrent during the download, and am working on bulking out the members area with a download history and the ability to cancel torrents that have become stuck.

[Kluge]

% downloaded in tab title would be pretty snazzy, too.

Glad to see service up.

[mjcmurfy]

% downloaded in tab title would be pretty snazzy, too.

Not a bad idea Kluge. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Kluge]

Ouch. Had ~11gb of 22gb file downloaded, then interrupted (not by me), and didn't think to use DL manager with resume support. Almost feel like I should apologize. 

[xzion]

torrenting seemed to work great, loving the download progress page.

only complaint is the speed i get when direct downloading, sitting on about 85kB/s at the moment =[

[2weiX]

torrenting seemed to work great, loving the download progress page.

only complaint is the speed i get when direct downloading, sitting on about 85kB/s at the moment =[

torrent with ~12k seeds downloads to your site with  < 20 kB/s
seems like everyone is going at it with all their enthusiasm :-D

[2weiX]

I was thinking...


Could this be a subscription like service?

https://bytesized-hosting.com/ offers a variety of combinations of space / uplink / downlink for 15-25€/month.
This could easily be handled by increasing prices a little wee bit (or an admission fee?).

One would "Only" need to implement the bitcointorrentz software into their servers.
Just sayin - increased protection from "The Man" etc etc...

[mjcmurfy]

@2wieX: Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not quite sure what you mean. Are you proposing using bytesized-hosting for scaling the site? They do not accept bitcoin as payment, so that's not really a feasible option since the site revenues are in bitcoin not usd. Or are you suggesting running bitcointorrentz in the same way as they do with their monthly subscription type plans? If that is what you mean, I don't really see the benefit of that compared with the bandwidth bundles that are already available. If you mean something else entirely, please elaborate.

And while I am here, just a quick update on magnet-link support.

Unfortunately, I have hit a snag while trying to integrate the functionality into the site. The problem is that the vast majority of magnet links do not include the filesize of the torrent in the uri scheme, so the cost of the torrent cannot be easily calculated. Magnet links only contain the torrent hash and the tracker address (and sometimes the name of the file). When you load the torrent into your client it connects to the swarm and downloads the metadata rather than it being provided in a .torrent file.

The only way I can think of obtaining the filesize would be to immediately load the torrent into the client after the link is provided, wait while the metadata is downloaded (can take up to 10 seconds) and then query the size using the client API. This would require some ajax magic and since the client pre-alocates hard drive space, it could potentially consume a lot of server resources. Since the user has not yet paid for the file, this would leave the site vulnerable to attack by malicious users loading lots of large torrents without ever paying.

I really don't want to set this up in a way that allows torrents to be loaded into the client before payment has been received.

Does anyone know a way to retrieve the filesize using just a magnet link and php?
Maybe it's possible to query the tracker using a curl command or something along those lines?

[mjcmurfy]

I found the perfect solution. w00t! I can proudly say:

Magnet links are now fully supported by BitCoinTorrentz.com!

[bitfoo]

I found the perfect solution. w00t! I can proudly say:

Magnet links are now fully supported by BitCoinTorrentz.com!

That's fantastic! Care to reveal the solution?

[2weiX]

@2wieX: Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not quite sure what you mean. Are you proposing using bytesized-hosting for scaling the site? They do not accept bitcoin as payment, so that's not really a feasible option since the site revenues are in bitcoin not usd. Or are you suggesting running bitcointorrentz in the same way as they do with their monthly subscription type plans? If that is what you mean, I don't really see the benefit of that compared with the bandwidth bundles that are already available. If you mean something else entirely, please elaborate.

O YES do they accept bitcoin!
http://wiki.bytesized-hosting.com/wiki/index.php/Bitcoins

I was suggesting renting their server space for upping and downing.
you could sell premium services (SFTP) etc etc...

[mjcmurfy]

@2wieX: Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not quite sure what you mean. Are you proposing using bytesized-hosting for scaling the site? They do not accept bitcoin as payment, so that's not really a feasible option since the site revenues are in bitcoin not usd. Or are you suggesting running bitcointorrentz in the same way as they do with their monthly subscription type plans? If that is what you mean, I don't really see the benefit of that compared with the bandwidth bundles that are already available. If you mean something else entirely, please elaborate.

O YES do they accept bitcoin!
http://wiki.bytesized-hosting.com/wiki/index.php/Bitcoins

I was suggesting renting their server space for upping and downing.
you could sell premium services (SFTP) etc etc...

They need to update their FAQ, it says that they only accept paypal as payment. One thing that may be a problem using their service though is the fact that they do not support web hosting, but it might be possible to have all torrenting done remotely on one or more of their servers and keep all the content off the main server. Like you said that would prove to be an added layer of protection. Hmm, interesting.

I found the perfect solution. w00t! I can proudly say:

Magnet links are now fully supported by BitCoinTorrentz.com!

That's fantastic! Care to reveal the solution?

I'm using a reliable third party service that returns torrent metadata based on the provided torrent info hash which can be extracted from the magnet link. It is much faster and uses far less resources than actually loading the file into the client.

[mjcmurfy]

Someone tried to attack bitcointorrentz using the contact form on the site today. I'm pleased to say that they were not successful in their attempts. Also, after testing it out quite extensively, I have found that it seems to only work intermittently at best anyway. Therefore, I have just removed it and put up the support email address instead.

If you have sent an email via the contact form on the site and have not received a response, my apologies.

I've also added torrent availability to the status page. There will be more coming on that front soon, but I feel that availability is an important piece of information that should not be left out. An availability <1.00 means that a torrent will not complete.

[molecular]

wow, nice to see so many positive changes and work being done. makes me happy!

[HorseRider]

mjcmurfy,

I'm interested in your shares. However, you have none of your ID information verified by GLBSE. Could you please elaborate your consideration? thanks.

[mjcmurfy]

I'm interested in your shares. However, you have none of your ID information verified by GLBSE. Could you please elaborate your consideration? thanks.

Nefario approached me a few weeks ago before the migration to GLBSE 2.0 asking for copies of my national ID, passport, driving license, facebook & linkedin profiles, home phone number and address as well as details of my professional life in order to allow the asset to continue trading on GLBSE. At the time, there was no mention of this being an optional thing. It felt like a demand from the GLBSE, with the threat of freezing the asset should I refuse.

Needless to say, I was reluctant to immediately provide this information. As you are probably aware, the nature of the service bitcointorrentz.com provides means that I value anonymity greatly. I am extremely hesitant to provide any of my personal documentation to any individual without justified legal grounds for doing so. And I don't even like giving these details to legal money service businesses.

I have not entered into any agreement with the GLBSE to provide this information, and was not under the impression that my use of the service would necessitate the provision of this information when I first listed the asset on the GLBSE. Nefario has no legal obligation to demand this information, nor store it securely, and when I explained my concerns about security and privacy he told me that my sensitive information would be 'kept on a hard drive underneath my tv cabinet' and would be released to the general public if I 'buggered off with peoples money' - his words. The whole thing seemed very unprofessional and did not instill much trust, so I refused to provide him with my info.

He came back a few days later and told me that he forgot to mention that it was optional, so I opted not to provide the information.

My identity on the GLBSE is represented by my private GPG key and asset name, which represents my domain name and associated DNS information. It is also represented by my interactions on the bitcointalk.org forums. If you want to learn more about my character then my posts on this forum should be sufficient for you to assess my trustworthiness. I have >600 posts and am a hero member. The users of the GLBSE who have already invested in my asset are satisfied with this or they would not have bought shares.

So to sum up, if you are not satisfied with any of this, then do not buy bitcointorrentz shares.

[Nefario]

I'm interested in your shares. However, you have none of your ID information verified by GLBSE. Could you please elaborate your consideration? thanks.

I am extremely hesitant to provide any of my personal documentation to any individual without justified legal grounds for doing so. And I don't even like giving these details to legal money service businesses.

I have not entered into any agreement with the GLBSE to provide this information

Our Terms of Service clearly state that we may request proof of identity, by using GLBSE you agreed to the TOS (it's at the bottom of every page, we've had a TOS since only a few months after GLBSE began).

mjcmurfy, your details would be kept on an ENCRYPTED drive under the TV

We've come to the conclusion however that the decision as to whether to invest in a share/asset is best decided by the GLBSE user themselves, and whether they are happy to give their money to someone they don't know the identity of.

Verifying your identity, as an asset issuer is optional.

We're not playing police, just trying to run a market.

[mjcmurfy]

Our Terms of Service clearly state that we may request proof of identity, by using GLBSE you agreed to the TOS (it's at the bottom of every page, we've had a TOS since only a few months after GLBSE began).

mjcmurfy, your details would be kept on an ENCRYPTED drive under the TV

We've come to the conclusion however that the decision as to whether to invest in a share/asset is best decided by the GLBSE user themselves, and whether they are happy to give their money to someone they don't know the identity of.

Verifying your identity, as an asset issuer is optional.

We're not playing police, just trying to run a market.

Nefario, yes you had a TOS from the beginning, but you and I both know the original TOS that I agreed to did not specify anything about the requesting of proof of identity. I made a copy of the old terms when I signed up which I can repost here for posterity if you like. You added the proviso about identity after our discussion. Yes, you had that line at the bottom stating that the TOS can change at any time without notice, which you are entitled to do, but asset holders must agree to the changes before they can be enforced. Simply using the service does not constitute an agreement to changes to the TOS, especially when many are probably unaware of these changes.

I very much appreciate the fact that you have made it optional, which is the way it should be, but when you first approached me it was in a demanding fashion telling me that it was required in order to allow the asset to continue trading. I'm not trying to be difficult, and I think you guys do a fantastic job for very little reward (I actually think you should charge more for trades and listing assets). I also appreciate the pressure you are probably under, but I really did not like your tone and felt that you approached the matter in a very unprofessional way.

Anywho, as already stated, I will not be providing this information now or at any stage in the future.
If asset holders do not like this, they are free to sell their shares in the asset.

[HorseRider]

As this company has a very clear and transparent business model,  I'm not really worried about the ID compared to some mysterious assets. I'm just asking for a why, not a should.

It is always a compromise between the downside risk and the upside risk for make a decision. I feel that this is one of the companies which have the most growth potential on GLBSE. However, if it's this is the way you will go, the shareholders will perceive more downside risk than get the ID information verified (while the upside is huge). Maybe people buy it and hold the shares, but buy and hold it at a level less than if the ID is verified.

Running a public company, if you give up some of the privacy to a certain degree, it will benefit all the shareholders, including yourself. You have your freedom to make any choices as in the TOS of GLBSE, but wish one day you will change your mind towards this.