“I’m stuck at 49.1%, seed please!!” or similar comments are fairly commonplace on BitTorrent sites. Normally the case on older torrents, essentially all the full 100% seeds have gone, leaving people all stuck at the same amount completed. Without a seed reappearing, or many other users that between them have the remaining 50.9%, the download will not complete, which is pretty frustrating.

Of equal annoyance, is a new torrent which the user knows is well seeded, yet for one reason or another it is impossible to connect to the tracker in order to complete the download. Maybe the tracker has gone down or is simply too busy to accept the connection - either way, the download isn’t getting very far without it.

The good news is that with a little perseverance it’s possible to resurrect a seemingly moribund torrent. The key to bringing the torrent back to life is the hope that an identical release is available on another tracker, and in that swarm there people that have enough data to complete the download. But how is it possible to find the same release on other trackers?

There are manual solutions involving Google, but quick and easy is my preferred method and btReAnnouncer offers just that. The site is really easy to use, so, although it is well seeded, here is a walk-through to find more trackers tracking Michael Moore’s ‘Official’ ‘Slacker Uprising’ torrent - the same technique can be used for any release, especially ones with tracker or seeding issues.

First of all I downloaded the .torrent file from The Pirate Bay onto my PC and uploaded it to btReAnnouncer. Within a few seconds the site displayed the current primary tracker - http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce. However, it also displayed a list of 17 other tracker URLs identified as tracking the same torrent - any one or combination of which could help you to complete a stubborn download. Note that it doesn’t make sense to add more than one tracker from the same url (e.g. thepiratebay.org) because they often track the same peers.

At this stage it is possible to select a new primary tracker for the torrent by ticking the checkbox and pushing the ‘ReAnnounce’ button. Then check any of the other trackers in the list to be used as an alternative and click ‘ReAnnounce’ again. To finish up and start downloading the .torrent, download it by clicking on the hyperlinked text underneath ‘Download ReAnnounced Torrent…’ and import it into your favorite client, not forgetting to point it at your previously incomplete download.

btReAnnouncer can also be used to find public sources for otherwise private torrents, just don’t forget to remove any passkeys etc from the announce URL in the torrent. If your BitTorrent client doesn’t allow you to edit or add trackers manually, this can be achieved by using another online service, TorrentEditor.

Post from: TorrentFreak

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

How to Bring Dead Torrents Back to Life torrent downloads.

CurlyFries has been running a tracker for around two years. His site is called ‘TorrentFries’ and already you’re reading this saying “Who? I’ve never heard of this site?” and quite rightly so. Although CurlyFries is a real site admin, (as are his pair of co-admins), for security reasons they’re using pseudonyms. CurlyFries describes himself as idealistic and unmotivated, OnionRings is a general Linux and security geek, while Ketchup is “the only one that isn’t too lazy busy to deal with the finances and research.”

TorrentFries is the codename for a medium-sized tracker that thousands are using right now, and the inspiration behind a brand new site which is a must-read for potential tracker owners of the future.

The TorrentFries blog is a unique insight into the inner-workings of running a tracker, via a retrospective look at the actual developments in the two year lifespan of a real-life site. “We need more trackers out there, and it’s up to you to make them,” says CurlyFries. “So, learn from my mistakes and the things I’ve accidentally done right and you’ll do just fine.”

The first post on TorrentFries sets the scene and provides some of the background, with further posts covering many aspects of running a BitTorrent tracker. From conception, to choosing the right software, staff management, contingency plans, finance, and techniques for getting traffic to the site. Further updates are promised at regular intervals.

TorrentFreak caught up with CurlyFries who told us: “I think it’s something that the torrent community has needed for a while.”

Indeed, the site truly is unique and a very interesting read, invaluable for anyone looking to expand their knowledge before taking the plunge into tracker ownership. TorrentFreak spoke with someone taking his first steps as a site admin and asked him what he thought of the site: “I’m pleased to see this blog. I’ve lurked on the TBDev site for a while but found it a bit intimidating and felt embarrassed of my noob-ness so I’m happy to get these tips.”

CurlyFries is promising an update every 5 days to the site, until he runs out of things to say.

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

The Secrets of a Running A BitTorrent Tracker torrent downloads.

At TorrentFreak we have written quite a few speed guides, but we are not as knowledgeable as the people who work with BitTorrent clients daily. A few weeks ago we asked Olivier Chalouhi, developer and CTO of Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) to share some of his BitTorrent speed tips with us.

Today we continue our mission to help people get the most out of BitTorrent, by asking uTorrent developer Greg Hazel to give us his recommendations on how to optimize BitTorrent download speeds. Here are his three suggestions.

Cap the upload speed

Limiting your upload speed is by far the most important suggestion, and was also mention by Olivier Chalouhi in our previous BitTorrent speed guides. The rationale behind it is simple. Your connection is a tube (sort of), if you max out the upload capacity, the tube gets clogged.

Choose the correct maximum number of connections

Too much connections can actually slow down your torrents, instead of increasing the download speed. The uTorrent speed guide (Options > Speed Guide in uTorrent) automatically recommends the ideal settings. For users with a maximum upload speed of 256 kbit/sec, uTorrent suggests a maximum of 35 connections per torrent, and 60 in total.

Run as few torrents as possible

Less is more, sometimes at least. Running fewer torrents will guarantee that your connection can handle all the connections and requests properly. Since BitTorrent rewards people for uploading, the less torrents you run, the faster they will download. Again, the uTorrent speed guide will suggest the optimal settings, which is a maximum of 2 torrents for users with a maximum upload speed of 256 kbit/sec.

These three settings are the most important according to Greg, and configuring them correctly in your BitTorrent client, is the key to faster downloads.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

uTorrent Developer Shares BitTorrent Speed Tips

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

uTorrent Developer Shares BitTorrent Speed Tips torrent downloads.

There are several ways to optimize your BitTorrent download speeds. One of the easiest ways is to join a private torrent tracker, but there are others.

Since there’s always a lot of debate about what works and what doesn’t, we decided to ask an expert to share his thoughts with us. Olivier Chalouhi, developer and CTO of Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) was kind enough to give us some of his own tips and tricks. Since Olivier was the person who initiated the Azureus Open Source project in 2003, which went on to create one of the most popular BitTorrent clients ever, if anyone knows how to get the best out of your torrent client, he does.

Here are some of Olivier’s tips for optimizing your torrent download speeds.

1. Seed.

Downloading speeds will be sub-optimal for everyone unless everyone plays their part and seeds. Private tracker sites are a great example of how the overall speed of the swarm increases when everyone is seeding and downloading in equal measure. So, play your part in seeding and tell others to as well.

2. Be connectible.

Make sure you’re not “firewalled” by opening up your incoming ports or by enabling UPnP in your router, otherwise you’ll be leaving bandwidth on the table.

3. Manage your upload speed.

It is all about striking a balance. You don’t want the upload speed to be too high, nor do you want it to be too low. Ideally you want to set your upload speed to be 80% of the maximum possible line speed.

TF note: Want an easy life? Try this handy settings calculator, works for all clients

4. Select the right torrents.

Your download will be faster if you choose to download a torrent where there is a good balance of seeds and peers. For instance, Vuze ranks its search results according to the number of seeds and peers to make this easier.

5. Be realistic.

Check the swarm average and if you’re already above average, then you just need to be patient. If you’re below average, go back and check some of these other things I’ve mentioned.

6. Get a Friend Boost.

I wouldn’t be a Vuze developer if I didn’t give a plug for the Friend Boost feature we recently developed :). When you create a network of Friends on Vuze, you agree to seed content to each other on a preferential basis. That is, if one of your friends has a torrent that you want, you will be able to directly use a portion of their bandwidth to get it. In most cases this will increase your download speed.

Obviously, ways in which to actually implement some of these tips will differ from client to client. If you want to find out how to do it on Vuze, you can check out our wiki.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Speed Up Your Torrents, Tips from a BitTorrent Developer

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Speed Up Your Torrents, Tips from a BitTorrent Developer torrent downloads.

Seedboxes are not something every BitTorrent user wants or needs. They are mostly for people who share a lot of files, and those who want to keep a good ratio on one of the elite private BitTorrent trackers.

The downside to having a seedbox is of course that they are not free. To some this isn’t a problem, “I pay for my Internet connection, so why not pay a few extra bucks to get the best out of it,” is an argument we often hear. Others, however, are satisfied with the speeds they get, and don’t want to pay extra for BitTorrent traffic.

So why should people use these seedboxes? What are the benefits? Here are some of the advantages.

1. Competition.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, users on private trackers are extremely competitive. No matter how many torrents you have seeding, or how you’ve managed to tweak the BitTorrent client settings, there’s just no competing with the uploading power of a seedbox. With many elite private trackers, a seedbox is not just recommended, they’re almost essential for account longevity.

2. Speed.

Most seedboxes are on 100Mbit lines, which makes them really fast. Unquestionably faster than your home Internet access - unless you live in Japan or Sweden, that is. You can sit back, relax and watch in amazement at how fast the torrents finish. Gigabyte files will be downloaded in minutes, practically without limitations. Of course, you’ll still be limited to the speed of your home connection when you want to transfer these files from the server to your computer.

3. Uploading.

Some users of private trackers are less concerned about the downloading, and more about seeding. Good ratios are crucial to a healthy membership - without them, the account will wither away and die. With a seedbox, your ratio will be 1:1 within minutes, not days. 10:1 ratios are not uncommon within the first hour for popular torrents. No more do you have to seed the torrent for weeks just to stay in the good graces with your private tracker. You’ll be free to delete seeding torrents, and replace them with other ones.

4. No more throttling and bandwidth limiting ISPs

ISPs like Comcast are known to throttle your BitTorrent traffic, and they will soon introduce a monthly bandwidth limit of 100GB. With a seedbox you can bypass these limitations. Your seedbox traffic is not counted towards your ISP account stats and won’t be throttled. The only time it becomes ‘your’ traffic is when you choose to download the files from a finished torrent to your home PC, and uploading torrent traffic will not eat into your cap.

5. They’re Secure & Safe

With a seedbox, you don’t even need to use a BitTorrent client on your home computer - your worries about the RIAA or MPAA spying on you are over. No more DMCA notices or warning letters from your ISP - and more importantly, no lawsuit letters will be coming either.

Where to get a Seedbox…

Seedboxes aren’t cheap, but they don’t have to break the bank. Many services now offer a ‘torrent-specific’ seedbox packages that are great for entry-level users, and include the ‘TorrentFlux’ interface for easy setup and torrent management. Here are some affordable TorrentFlux hosting solutions:

These are only a few of the many options of course. Another option would be to install a web-based BitTorrent client like TorrentFlux on a server yourself. Happy torrenting…

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Speed Up Your Torrent Downloads, Get a Seedbox

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Speed Up Your Torrent Downloads, Get a Seedbox torrent downloads.

Importing torrents via RSS can be very useful if you’re at work, school, or at a friends place. With this new feature from mininova you only have to bookmark the torrent, and it will start downloading automatically when your BitTorrent client is running at home.

Here is how it works. First of all, you’ll have to be a registered user at Mininova to use the bookmarking feature. Then, when you come across a torrent you would like to download, simply click on the “Add to bookmarks” button. The torrent will then be added to your personal bookmarks page, which has its own RSS feed.

Next, you will have to add your personal bookmarks feed to your favorite BitTorrent client and then you’re all set. In addition you can customize the process a bit more, depending on the client you use. Some clients, for example, let you choose whether to download the torrent immediately, or start it later manually.

Mininova is not the first BitTorrent site to add bookmarking capabilities. Torrentz.com has had this feature for quite some time now. However, Mininova is the first site to combine it with an RSS feed that has BitTorrent enclosures, which makes it compatible with BitTorrent clients that support RSS downloading.

Mininova has covered their new bookmark feature, with some additional details, in their latest blog post. For those who are interested, we have some more RSS tutorials over here.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Download Torrents Remotely with Mininova Bookmarks

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Download Torrents Remotely with Mininova Bookmarks torrent downloads.

Above all else, right at the start, I will reiterate one thing - I AM NOT A LAWYER. None of what is said is legal advice, nor should it be used as any basis for defense. If you feel the need for legal advice, then get competent legal advice. This is a point most strongly emphasized by the Jammie Thomas trial, where she had legal advice, but it was NOT competent in the subject. Finally, for the most part, this will be referring to US laws, as that’s where the majority of lawsuits occur.

The first thing to remember is, there is nothing on the net that you know of, that anti-piracy organizations don’t. No protocol, or secret piece of software, that you know of but which shouldn’t be talked about ‘in case they get to hear of it’. They employ people who do nothing all day but surf and chat. They act just like you or me - there’s no reason for them to behave in any other way. So, one of the first things to remember is, there’s no such thing as security by obscurity in P2P. If you can find it, what’s stopping someone in the pay of an anti-piracy organization from finding it too? That’s just common sense. Of course, as in the old saying - poachers make the best gamekeepers - quite often the people doing the investigations are not newcomers to p2p, but have been doing it for years themselves. In that respect, over most users, they have the advantage in experience.

The one thing most people seem to fail to understand, is that there are no magic solutions. At the end of the day, you have to get data back to your IP. In order to do that, at some point, your IP has to be known. While this can be obfuscated to the point at which it’s extremely impractical to trace, it is at the expense of bandwidth. This is why torrenting over Tor is a no-no. You could use a VPN service, but they also know your home IP, and also generally billing details for the account. In that way, they’ve not only associated it with a name, as they would with a home IP, but also your financial information, which would be a great way to prove you personally were behind it.

There are some common misunderstandings about anti-piracy activities that seem to be pervasive. So let’s address them.

1. There have been very few actual legal cases, as yet, that have involved torrents.
2. The majority of copyright cases are CIVIL, not criminal
3. What most people think of as being the law, often isn’t.
4. The RIAA and the MPAA never get involved in anti piracy evidence collection directly.
5. Most of the time, people are going from what someone they have met on a forum had read in an IRC channel.

1) - There have been very few actual legal cases, as yet, that have involved torrents.

Cases involving torrents are rare, as yet. This will probably change over the next few years. Despite the protocol having been around since 2002, it wasn’t until around 2004 that it started to gain widespread acceptance. Since then there have been a few cases, such as the DVDr-core, and the Elitetorrents enforcement activities, but they are in the main, the exception rather than the rule.

The Torrentspy judgment, handed down this past week, is also now heading for appeal, which could significantly change things, or could have it all stay the same. It’s too early to tell at present. Likewise, the ISOhunt case hasn’t even gone that far. Despite there being in excess of 100+ torrent sites active now, and a similar number at least having been opened and closed for various reasons over the past 5 years, that only one has got to an initial judgment says something.

Torrents are a difficult subject to litigate - the ISOhunt case is evidence of that. Unlike most other methods, which rely on a few centralized servers to index and sort, torrents rely on trackers, and on DHT. File names can be used to find torrent files, but owning a torrent file is not actionable. They are metadata (data about data) files and are not covered under the same copyright as the original source, any more than a film review belongs to the movie studio. The error checking aspect has a legitimate use as well, as it could be argued (how successfully I don’t know) that the torrent file is being used to error check existing data legitimately acquired.

Most recently, cases centering around BitTorrent sites have focused more on vicarious infringement, as in the Pirate Bay and oink cases. Basically, this means that the defendant had the right and ability to control the infringer’s acts, by being able to add or delete torrents, and that the defendant gets a direct financial benefit from these acts of infringement. Hence the claims of ‘paying for membership’ given to the police for the OiNK raids, and the focus on advertising in the Pirate bay trial. However, this can be a tricky subject for other companies too - including ISPs and technology companies like Sony, where they have to be certain to not fall foul of the ability+control aspect. This is why bandwidth-choked ISPs are firmly opposed to be involved in any sort of P2P-policing.

2) - The majority of copyright cases are CIVIL, not criminal

Now, civil cases are unlike criminal ones in that there is no ‘innocent until proven guilty’. There are just two groups of litigants. Whoever has the most proof (or preponderance of evidence) is the winner. So, where in a criminal trial, they must prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you did commit the acts, in a civil case, they only have to prove you did it better than you can prove you didn’t. Of course, I refer you to the caveat at the beginning, and note that many countries have differing requirements of proof for a civil case.

Another major factor that sets ‘criminal acts’ from those that are ‘civilly actionable’ is that whilst the former is always against the law, and doing that act means you’ve broken the law. If you punch someone, that’s always assault (with a few exceptions). Running a BitTorrent client, or participating in a BitTorrent swarm is not against any law. The contents of it might however be civilly actionable. If the copyright owners decide to sue, they can, but if they don’t, as the law goes, there’s no complaint to be answered.

3) - What most people think of as being the law, often isn’t.

This is especially common. When we broke the story on Mivii last year, a large number cried “entrapment”. There was a similar response the other day, to our story about the IFPI and limewire. Many people also believe that if a media enforcer is on a torrent, they can’t share data, else they’re complicit in the copyright infringement and are giving you some sort of permission to distribute yourselves. This could not be further from the truth.

First of all, entrapment relates only to criminal cases, in the main, and for that matter, only occurs in a specific set of circumstances. If a law enforcement officer (as in someone with the actual power to arrest you) asks or incites you to commit a crime that you wouldn’t otherwise have done, that’s entrapment. However, if you’re not a law enforcement agency, then it can’t be entrapment, pure and simple. The implicit permission argument is similarly flawed. Whilst the enforcement agent (’snooper’) might have permission to distribute, by distributing in part of a bit-torrent swarm, it’s hard to argue that he’s similarly giving you permission to distribute. Try telling the judge “he did, so I thought I could” and you’ll not get a very positive reaction - mainly because he can point to his ‘distribution agreement’ from the owner of the copyright, and you can’t. If you want an example, look at alcohol. In most countries, alcohol can only be sold by persons licensed to sell it. If you try and sell it, without a license, you can face penalties under the law. Saying ‘I’m selling it because he’s selling it’ won’t work there, and it’s the same case for copyright and distribution.

4) - The RIAA and the MPAA never get involved in anti-piracy evidence collection directly.

Finally, lets just clear something up we all know at the back of our minds, but forget in the heat of an impassioned board post, or IRC comment. The RIAA and MPAA do not directly get involved with the details of ‘evidence gathering’ in these cases. The MPA and IFPI are lobby mouthpieces, not enforcement agencies. Their existence is not to investigate, or to sue. They exist to bribelobby politicians, to issue press releases, and ’studies’, to hide conflicts between the major studios, and to discourage independent works. Member companies put money into these organizations, in exchange for getting their ideas across to those that make the law, to conduct studies to back up the wants and desires of the members, and to be a face to be interviewed by the media.

The enforcement activities are carried out by companies that exist for this purpose. In effect, they are digital private investigators (although most don’t seem to have bothered applying for the licenses) and like the old fashioned gumshoe, they work for whoever pays them. Some activities of the investigator might be illegal, but that’s nothing new from private investigators. Companies like Safenet, and BayTSP aren’t in it for an ideological reason, it’s just a business. As such they work like any other business, with long hours, and trying new things to get clients and please them. Think you’ve tried hard to get onto that private tracker? Imagine the guy that got onto it, AND got paid to do so, sitting in a nice air conditioned office. I’m certain there are people who’s only task is to gain memberships to private trackers. To collect evidence, build up contacts, and invites. How do I know this? Well, it’s what I would do, if I were running such a company, and it’s fairly obvious, especially given the evidence of the EliteTorrents bust back in 2005. Sites know this as well, which is why most private trackers heavily discourage trading invites, and why the rule is that you only invite those you “know”.

The lack of knowledge most people have about these subjects, especially in relation to the law, is mind boggling. Also, whilst the power to change laws seems to be solidly with the cartels, the position now is better than it was just three or four years ago. If you want to help improve it, join your local Pirate Party, the EFF, or similar organizations and help them out. It might not be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever was.

5) - Most of the time, people are going from what someone they have met on a forum had read in an IRC channel.

Unlike most, I actually used to work in copyright enforcement - those of you that have read my bio will know that. Of course, this was around 10 years ago, when Napster was just becoming popular, and I dealt with physical copyright infringement (people selling CDs). However, I do have a grasp of the law, and personal experience in making and pursuing a copyright case. So, as you can see, this isn’t someone repeating urban myths, or something read in an IRC channel. It’s based on fact, and experience, which isn’t that common in this area.

What to do about it?

To be frank, there is no way to stop the logging bots that harvest peer info from torrents. They don’t give themselves away, because they don’t have to act any differently than normal clients. With a WebUI, or even a VNC set up, it can easily be controlled from the office, and provides much greater anonymity. After all, the bandwidth and reliability of a co-located server isn’t required.

It is also probably wise to avoid anything considered high profile, initially, and if you’re in the US, avoid any films that hit the net before the cinema. It is also safer, in the long run, to avoid private sites which deal in what could be called ‘mainstream’ material, better known as ‘scene releases’. This is stuff that is most likely to be tracked, and private sites, whilst fast, have the great disadvantage of being part of a very small subgroup. Put another way, you could be one of up to 20 million that use the PirateBay, or you are one of 40,000 that use SceneTorrents. And unlike the PirateBay, a private site has your activities stored (in some form anyway, to generate the ratio) as well as an identifier - the email address you used. Remember, it was the similarity between an email address login, and a kazaa login that was the ‘pivotal’ evidence in the Thomas case, and removed doubt about the identity. If the site displays user names on the torrent though, you might as well never contest any case that you are hit with. Being able to track user names as well as IPs in a torrent means they’re likely to get repeat hits on you, even when you switch IPs. You might be able to convince a court that once was a mistake in their evidence gathering, but if they have you on multiple occasions, with different IPs each time, that argument is out the window.

Some suggest using blocklists, but since there is no way to identify an IP logging you, and no way to tell what IP it’s logging from, they really don’t work. Additionally, the most popular list provider, Bluetack, has added such a large number of IPs to their anti-piracy list (something like 700,000,000) that you are only eliminating legitimate peers slowing you down, and increasing the chance of being logged. Besides that, the people who do the logging are very aware of these blocklists, use proxies, and change IPs all the time. Additionally, the criteria for adding may not quite be at the “a guy that works there’s sister’s neighbor gets her hair done at the same place as the nephew of a guy whose company works for the company that delivers the water for the MPAA’s water coolers” - but it’s getting close (see here and here) as well as blaming hosting companies for the actions of their customers (example). The sad thing is, people run this, see all the blocks that come up, marked as being antip2p, and think “look at all those being blocked, now I’m safe” when the reality is, a group of people has claimed this, and how much do you trust the list makers. however, the final word on this comes from Phrosty, one of the coders of Peerguardian, who told one of our researchers “PG might help it might not. we think it does, but make no guarantees. make your own choice”.
Probably the most important thing you can do is know your rights, and know the truth. Use some common sense, and if in doubt, imagine yourself as an antip2p guy, and think of what you might do in their place. Unless it’s illegal, they’re probably doing it already (and maybe some of the illegal stuff too). The lack of knowledge, however, is to their advantage and not yours.

DISCLAIMER - We at TorrentFreak would like to remind you that we neither support or condone copyright infringement or theft, and that all infomation is for news reporting purposes only

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Understanding Anti-Piracy Enforcement

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Understanding Anti-Piracy Enforcement torrent downloads.

Unsurprisingly, other webmasters soon cloned the YouTorrent concept, and within a few weeks PizzaTorrent and NowTorrents saw the light, and even more clones followed. One of these clones is special though, as the code it offers is open source and available for free. The open source YouTorrent clone is named YouTorrent3 and has the same look and feel as the site it’s based on.

“In less than 1 minute you can have your own YouTorrent clone,” YouTorrent3 developer Aleksander told TorrentFreak. He explained that he decided to code it because he noticed that there was a growing interest for open source and easy to use YouTorrent clones.

It is extremely simple indeed, all you need to do is upload the files to your webserver and you’re good to go. It works fine, but the code can still be improved on, as Aleksander notes: “Don’t forget that work is coded in 1 hour, so don’t wonder why some code is strange or looks lame.”

At the moment only the frontend is available for download so people don’t need to install a database, and they can have their own YouTorrent clone online in a few seconds. Aleksander is still tweaking the backend to improve the caching system and make the database compatible with different SQL servers. The backend will be made public in a few weeks.

The source and instructions on how to get it working are available over here.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Create Your Own YouTorrent Clone in 1 Minute

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Create Your Own YouTorrent Clone in 1 Minute torrent downloads.

Some people are using TED, which is a Java app running continuously which may cause resource issues for the under-powered computer. Others might choose to use directly the RSS support built into torrent clients, explained in this previous article, or go for software such as Miro.

But for those of you out there who like to get a little more hands-on and aren’t afraid of a basic command line, read on.

TorrentFreak reader Lipflip has come up with a solution for OSX and probably Linux users too. He told us that everything TVShows did can be achieved by using some freely available tools like cron and a script pyTVShows that is based on the original TVShows application.

pyTVShows does the actual work by checking tvrss.net for torrents and downloading them if new ones are available. Lipflip has published a simple tutorial on how to setup the different components so that everything is working as expected. Although you don’t have to be an uber-geek to follow the tutorial, Lipflip notes that some basic command line skills are required which should help users to get their shows until the new TVShows is released.

The original TVShows application consists of two parts:

1. A front-end for fetching a list of shows and for subscribing/unsubscribing.
2. A python script in the back-end, that regularly asks tvrss.net if new episodes for the subscribed shows are available.

Luckily TVShows is an open source application, so after the development of TVShows stood still for several months, the back-end forked away as the separate pyTVShows project. We’ll use this to build a system that fetches your favorite television shows automatically.

The installation consists of a few easy steps. Python already ships with Leopard, so you don’t have to hassle around with fink or other ways to bring Python onto your computer.

1. Preparation

Open Terminal.App and create a bin/ directory under your home. You can use this directory to store small scripts or little unix-like applications.

$ mkdir /Users/YOU/bin

Download pyTVShows, unzip it, and put it as pytvshows-0.2 in your bin/ directory.

Download feedparser, unzip it, and install it.

$ cd /Users/YOU/Downloads/feedparser-4/
$ python setup.py install

2. Create a preliminary configuration file

pytvshows settings are stored in /.pytvshows.cfg. Create it and add one or two shows for testing.

$ nano ~/.pytvshows.cfg

The format of the configuration file is pretty simple. The name of the show is enclosed by squared brackets, followed by the last season/episode you have seen.
So the next episode downloaded for Favorite Show from the example below will be Season 1, Episode 2. Try episode = 0 for catching the first episode of a new season.

[Favorite Show]
episode = 1
season = 1

[Another Show]
episode =1
season = 4

See pytvshows’ documentation for further details.

3. Create a little wrapper script

Create a little wrapper script that calls the actual pytvshows, but hides any command line arguments you might want to use. Don’t forget to make it executable.

$ nano ~/bin/tvshows.sh
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/tvshows.sh

A typical tvshows.sh might look like this:

#!/bin/bash
echo -n “tvshows.sh - “; date # log current date & time (cron.log)
/Users/YOU/bin/pytvshows-0.2/pytvshows –output_dir=/Users/YOU/Downloads/

This will call pytvshows and tell it to download new .torrents into Leopard’s Downloads folder. This folder is usually represented as a stack in your dock. You might consider configuring your favorite BitTorrent client to watch this folder for new .torrent files.

Check it for typos by executing the script:

$ ./bin/tvshows.sh

It should download unseen episodes of the shows configured in ./pytvshows.cfg.
If it doesn’t try running pytvshows with the parameter --verbose. The configuration file will be rewritten each time a .torrent was downloaded. So maybe it doesn’t download new episodes because it thinks it already did.

4. Run tvshows.sh periodically

Unix-like systems usually come with a time-based scheduling service called cron. It is driven by rather cryptic looking configuration files called crontabs. In this case we’ll tell cron to run our newly created tvshows.sh twice an hour.

Edit your crontab:

$ crontab -e

If you’re thrown into vi you may try export EDITOR=nano beforehand.

Your crontab should look like this:

# run twice an hour
12,42 * * * * /Users/YOU/bin/tvshows.sh >> $HOME/bin/cron.log 2>&1

This tells cron to call tvshows.sh on 12 resp. 42 minutes past the hour. All output (STDERR and STDOUT) should be send to /Users/YOU/bin/cron.log.
Take a look at man crontab for further information.

It’s strongly suggested to randomize the numbers above. Otherwise too many pytvshows might be querying tvrss.net simultaneously.

5. You’re probably done

Check your configuration by looking at ~/bin/cron.log.

Have fun!

Lipflip’s blog can be found here

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Subscribe to TV Shows Using BitTorrent on OSX

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Subscribe to TV Shows Using BitTorrent on OSX torrent downloads.