Demonoid Domain Names Up For Grabs

hypnosec writes "One of the most famous Torrent tracking sites, Demonoid, which was shut down recently by Ukrainian authorities, is on the receiving end of one more blow, as the domain names for the site are up for grabs. As it stands, three Demonoid domains: Demonoid.me, Demonoid.com and Demonoid.ph are up for sale on Sedo. The time is ripe as of now for the sale of the domain names as it has caught the attention of many on and off the web. The traffic that Demonoid used to attract was huge, and internet marketers would definitely want to bank on this. Initially thought of as being under a series of DDoS attacks, the torrent tracking site was out for a prolonged duration, following which it started serving malware-laden ads."

Comments

geez, this Slashvertisement isn't even disguised

[Trepidity]

Come on, this part of the summary sounds like something I'd expect to find in email or blog-comment spam:

The time is ripe as of now for the sale of the domain names as it has caught the attention of many on and off the web. The traffic that Demonoid used to attract was huge and internet marketers would definitely want to bank on this.

These kinds of stories are often intended as marketing disguised as news stories (news is 'domain for sale', real purpose is to advertise 'domain for sale'), but usually it's not this blatant!

Shame..

[gallondr00nk]

Demonoid was a decent site.

The Sedo link returns a 404, so much for that submission.

Re:Shame..

[alphatel]

Demonoid was a decent site.

The Sedo link returns a 404, so much for that submission.

http://sedo.com/search/details.php4?domain=demonoid.com&trackingRequestId=30649076&tracked=&fromExactMatch=1&partnerid=57405&language=us

Textbooks

[cffrost]

This is very disappointing. Demonoid had the largest selection of textbooks that I was aware of. Does anyone know another good source with a comparable or next-best selection of textbooks?

Re:Textbooks

[h4rr4r]

I would highly suggest the university library. You will have to leave your chair though.

Re:Textbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

The textbook industry is a scam. If anyone deserves to have their products pirated, it's those bastards. Retail prices are insane; resale prices are absurd, especially in light of what book stores will give you for your used books - that has to be on the order of 200%-300% profit on a resale; if resales begin to impact the bottom line of new book sales, they'll just make a minor edit and release a new revision. Certainly profitable for everyone involved except the student, but hardly a business practice worthy of respect.

Re:Textbooks

[Scarred Intellect]

http://www.ebooks-shares.org/

http://LibraryPirate.ph

Re:Textbooks

[Hatta]

Not everyone who wants to read a textbook is a member of an academic institution. A good introductory text to a field you're not familiar with is usually better reading than whatever happens to be on top of the NYT best seller list.

Re:Textbooks

[h4rr4r]

Generally speaking university libraries are open to the public. I went to a private university in the North East and any member of the public was free to read books in the library and only requirements to check one out were to have some form of state ID to get a library card.

Yeah I'll get right on that...

[Havenwar]

Sounds like shady marketers would be the only ones who would actually want it, after all for the rest of us it's just an open invitation for various agencies to start digging for dirt on us. If getting caught for torrenting small amounts of pirated goods is about as likely as getting hit by lightning, then buying this domain would be akin to climbing up onto the highest building around during a lightningstorm wearing your special copper-clad "protection from girls +3" homemade armour and swinging a long copper rod angrily at the skies.

I hope samzenpus is getting a commission

[1u3hr]

He's earned it after posting this slashvertisement "the time is ripe as of now for the sale of the domain names"

What next? Penny stocks? Canadian pharmacy stories?

wtf

[shentino]

So they get hacked, start serving malware, and the ukraine computer police bust THEM for the malware and let the hacker get off scot free?

Methinks the so called "hacker" was an inside job done by a mole of the copyright interests just to give the authorities an excuse to shut them down.

Re:wtf

[icebraining]

According to a Russian newspaper, Kommersant, there was a source in the Ukranian ministry confirming that the raid was scheduled to coincide with the Prime Ministerâs trip to the United States, where he would be discussing copyright infringement.

I think it could not be more clear, even if the "source" is fake.

Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

[gaelfx]

If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.

You got that right. I think.

I miss it already (huge movie buff)

[AbRASiON]

Ok so I'm an evil horrible movie pirate....
*however* in my defence, I'm in Australia - our online streaming offerings are utterly dreadful "Content not available in your region" geo-ip blocking is something you learn to DETEST here.... or of course our internet download limits which would go with them - streaming is often significantly less efficient than a fully buffered, truly local copy of a film. (no stutter, better quality, no need to re-download if you pause half way through and the playback device goes to sleep)

Furthermore my tastes are incredibly obscure, I'm one of those movie nerds who will watch a film, check imdb trivia and forums (80% bad, 20% good) to find more information about the actors, writers, directors, trivia and so on. Unfortunately for almost every movie I watch, I find 2 to 5 more. Yes I'm a movie junkie, I love them.

Problem is here, Demonoid was the only place I know of with really, really obscure stuff - it's not just the Korean, Japanese, Thai, Hong Kong films - it's also the overall older films or the things which aren't a 7 or higher in IMDB. Finding odd Japanese 1970's film under say IMDB 6.5 LEGALLY is damn near impossible in this country or online (out of print DVDs or collector pricing) it's simply extremely difficult to find a legal, simple and reliable solution.

So, long story short is, demonoid saved my ass for a long time and already in the few weeks it's been gone I've been finding less and less of the things I'm after. - the movie houses don't make this easy for us in the slightest :/

RIP Demonoid.

Re:I miss it already (huge movie buff)

[sg_oneill]

Yeah Its fucking bizare the movie industry is still doing this.

I havent pirated an album in years thanks to itunes more or less solving the music availability puzzle for me. I can afford to blow a tenner here or there for a decent album, and now I do.

But netflix is blocked, hula is blocked, itunes has terrible movie availability here, and AMV etc just do the shitty "Not available in your region" crap.

What other options do we have in australia? Sweet fuck all. So australians pirate movies.

Surely fixing that problem should be a priority but this shits being going on for the better part of a decade.

Shoot the lawyers, offer the services here, problem solved the studios get fat cash and we get to have the movies and TV shows we want.

Re:I miss it already (huge movie buff)

[Kalriath]

Your problem is probably the same as ours (in NZ). Foxtel (or Sky, here). I assume they own the content market in Australia as well? And they likely keep spouting how they aren't the reason content is unavailable or slow?

And the other reason - the pipes into your country are likely as expensive as ours. Unfortunately, you can blame NZ for that as the Southern Cross Cable is majority owned by Telecom NZ, but I hear you guys have a couple of other pipes as ours. We actually had someone from Netflix come to NZ just to tell us that they will never launch here because bandwidth is too slow and expensive.

Re:I miss it already (huge movie buff)

[AbRASiON]

Well, really all my post has done has told them that their campaign was successful. Also it's not like I don't speak the truth.

Finally - the movies I'm in to are so obscure I doubt the big American movie houses even give a damn about the films I was obtaining.
FWIW I did mean to post anonymous but oh well.

Re:I miss it already (huge movie buff)

[mgcarley]

Aussie has numerous cables (4 or 5 not including SxC, soon adding another major cable to Singapore) compared to our 1... Would have been 2, but too many of the folks with money are too pussy to put it up for what was Pacific Fibre and now that's been scrapped. They could/should have *at least* got a pipe going from Auckland or Wellington to Sydney for under 1/4 of the cost to get it started so that NZ ISPs would have a chance at buying bandwidth on the Australian market, but alas... anyway, as a result of the cable competition, the price per megabit is significantly less, resulting in better plan offerings from most of the major ISPs: a 1TB plan is AUD$99 whereas in NZ that same plan is over NZ$300.

So the Netflix guy was kind of right, although, something *can* be done about this: cache the files locally and the costs come down dramatically as the content is served domestically and domestic capacity in NZ is actually reasonably cheap,.. it's just that dastardly SxC's hold on international bandwidth that's killing our country.

Re:sad to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice segue into your own, personal gripe-session.

Bottom line is that the methods employed to bring Demonoid down were underhanded at best; potentially illegal at worst. DDoS attack that everyone knows was state-sponsored; inter-governmental collusion to smear, raid, confiscate, and transport data; questionable legal justification for property seizure; no charges filed and no avenue for appeal; etc. The most powerful government in the world just strong-armed a former Soviet republic into bending and/or breaking local and international laws at the behest of a conglomerate of private interests... but you're okay with that because the victim was turning a blind eye to Bad Things (TM).

You're a terrible person.

Re:sad to see

[Shagg]

If you find that a file share site, it being widely used for piracy, then we should be good citizens and try to get them to stop.

Who is "them"? The individual users who are using a filesharing site to distribute stuff that they don't have rights to? Or do you hold the site responsible for what their users are doing? Did the site respond to DMCA requests?

Re:sad to see

[Noitatsidem]

You've got the order wrong, there will be a lot less pirating when companies realize that DRM is what's killing their sales. DRM only hurts the people who buy the software, not the people who pirate it. Really, it's the pirates that are getting superior software (due to removed DRM), and they're getting it for free. There's no way you can logically argue that you can put an end to DRM by eliminating piracy. If you eliminate DRM though, it's much easier to end piracy.

DRM doesn't protect companies from pirates (and companies who believe it does are idiotic), no matter how good of a system they come up with eventually there will be a way to bypass it. The reality of the situation is that developing DRM is a complete waste of resources, because people will get past it - so the cost of developing DRM really just cuts into their profits more.

tl;dr: You have it backwards, end DRM to (help) stop Piracy. Also DRM is idiotic in general.

Only idiot marketers

[deblau]

As soon as word gets out that Demonoid is down, hits will drop to almost nothing. If the standard domain parking page goes up, they will never get any clicks, and they will never get any repeat hits.

Re:sad to see

[evilRhino]

Piracy thrives due to high prices. Monopolies through copyrights, patents, and trademarks have been driving the inflation of IP costs to exorbitant levels. You can present iTunes and allOfMP3 as examples of lower cost alternatives to piracy increasing legal downloading (although in the latter's case it was too low to continue).

Re:sad to see

[SoTerrified]

You missed the point. You are applauding "The ends justify the means", Either you have the intellectual capacity to see why that's bad... "It doesn't matter if my explosives kill many innocents as long as I get one enemy" ...Or you are a moron. If we start thinking the same way as the terrorists, we might as well surrender to them now.