Thread: The whole BOXtorrents controversy!!! and MONEY donated in private trackers...

Any anime fans out here will definitely be a fan of Boxtorrents, now BakaBT. For those of you that don't know what happened here's the gist - Boxtorrents has stayed alive this long due to donations, but they do not have a donation meter, and none of the staff knew how much donations were coming in except the owner Box himself. So Jarudin and Malus (two of the really cool staff, now admins of bakaBT) did some detective work and were stunned by the amount of donations that come in, apparently the site didn't need donations for a loooong time! Basically Box was buying happy meals by the truckloads with money donated from site members FOR the site, and seeing as to he didn't contribute much to the site except 'collection', Malus and Jarudin reincarnated boxtorrents in a new avatar now known as BakaBT.

Boxtorrents has been one of my favourite sites, you can read about it here -
A nutshell Review of my favourite trackers!



Needless to say I was shocked. When a public tracker like boxtorrents (actually the term public tracker is unfair - it's kinda in between public & private) gets so much via donations, it makes you wonder how much do popular private trackers 'earn'? Is torrenting also headed towards a profiteering market? When private torrent sites announce monthly lottery winners with prizes worth a lot more than is required to maintain the site, does it make you wonder? Do only staff of such sites have a right to get angry or also the members - they supposedly are providing a 'service' to the public right? In this area you'll have to admire sites like cartoonchaos that display their earnings and announce a site wide freeleech the moment the month's goal is made. I don't mind sites making a few extra bucks, especially if they've done a good job with the site, but the least they can do is let us know about it and not continue to ask for money once a certain limit has been reached.

Here's Malus's forum post regarding this -

To be honest this is pretty normal on a lot of private trackers.

The site owners and senior staff put in a lot of hours, to some of them it's how they make a living. They have multiple ID's on the tracker so the owner may also be an admin and 2 of the uploaders.

I know it's a bit deceptive, but do you really think it takes hundreds/thousands of donations every month just to run a tracker and IRC server?
It's also paying for the "uploaders" servers who are actually the site owners and paying them a salary.
I'm not by far saying this is every private tracker out there, but there are many.

I had two reactions to this.

First Reaction:
This is one of the reasons why I'm against donations for GB. I frequently see members struggling with ratio and asking on forums what they should do because nobody is leeching. One of the main answers is always donate! It's helping out the site. As you can see from BxT's example, not all of it was helping out the site and judging from Jarudin and Malus' reaction, a whole lot of it wasn't helping out the site.

Second Reaction:
I think it was way overblown. So what if he was getting extra money on the side? A lot of people make websites to monetize it and that's a simple fact. Nobody was forced to donate especially on that site. You could find almost every single one of those torrents on an IRC channel to buffer your ratio. Will you stop using google because they make millions off of what they do? Even this forum is monetized by donations and seedbox ads. Donations aren't required. If you decide to donate to a website, make sure you're not doing it for yourself. Donating only enough to keep the site running is indeed donating for yourself.

I'm tired. I don't want to pick which side I'm leaning towards.

Originally Posted by lollerbaby

. You could find almost every single one of those torrents on an IRC channel to buffer your ratio.

How is this true at all?

Originally Posted by gendo

How is this true at all?

On BoxTorrents/BakaBT, many of the files are taken from fansub groups. Fansub groups release all of their files on an IRC channel through bots or they use torrents or both. These are not private IRC channels / torrent sites and you can easily find the files from their website. Ex: a4e, Eclipse, Exiled Destiny

Thats unbelievable.
Im glad they did something about it!
Good news.

Originally Posted by lollerbaby

On BoxTorrents/BakaBT, many of the files are taken from fansub groups. Fansub groups release all of their files on an IRC channel through bots or they use torrents or both. These are not private IRC channels / torrent sites and you can easily find the files from their website. Ex: a4e, Eclipse, Exiled Destiny

Aye that's true, almost all fansubbers have archives where you can pick the episodes you want and download, but again they don't have the best of speeds, and many fansub groups just die out - many die out when the respective anime die out, and there is an enormous database of anime so that makes boxtorrents/bakaBT extremely useful - the speeds you get there are excellent and it is easy to maintain a good ratio. Also bakabt usually tries to update to best quality torrents whenever possible, so that's helpful.

Originally Posted by Eschaton

Aye that's true, almost all fansubbers have archives where you can pick the episodes you want and download, but again they don't have the best of speeds, and many fansub groups just die out - many die out when the respective anime die out, and there is an enormous database of anime so that makes boxtorrents/bakaBT extremely useful - the speeds you get there are excellent and it is easy to maintain a good ratio.

:001_smile:

Yes this is why I use BakaBT. It was just a reply to gendo as proof that it's not all that hard to seed without donating on this tracker. If your ratio is getting low and you're desperate and nobody is leeching, just hop on IRC, grab a couple popular releases, and seed. Easy peasy.

Originally Posted by Eschaton

Also bakabt usually tries to update to best quality torrents whenever possible, so that's helpful.

This is what I really love and hate about them. Soft subs, no archives, and no mixed releases makes me a happy camper. However, they're real nutcases about quality. It's almost funny.

I think it was sad and pathetic that Box was not upfront about what he was making -- and in saying that, not sharing with the people who were working hard to make the site what it is -- but at the same time it doesn't seem they had any standards worked out about donations. Perhaps this will be a lesson learned?