Topic: BitCoinTorrentz.com - Torrent Download Service - page 31. (Read 57203 times)

Thank you for your feedback. It is greatly appreciated.

Out of interest, what is your normal maximum download speed? The maximum my server can upload is on the order of 10mb/s. So unless you have 100mbit home broadband, it should max out the average user's connection, given the right circumstances.

And with regards to the single address issue, I am working to transition to a unique address payment system. But for the present, I think the small possibility of government or rights agencies querying the bitcoin blockchain is quite remote, meaning that this system is still miles ahead (in terms of privacy and liability) than downloading the torrent yourself.

It also helps that you're limiting it to only a single layer of referral bonuses.  There would be more room for abuse if, say, someone got 5% of what his referral's referral spent. 

I have already reflected on this. I considered just allowing this exception to occur, because to be honest, as long as people are using the service, I don't really mind if they do it by getting a 20% rebate each time. It's still revenue at the end of the day, and it still leaves 80% for me. It makes sense to have a smaller share of a big pie, than a big share of a smaller pie.

But in saying that, I have actually implemented methods to prevent it.
It is stated in the referral control panel that using your own referral link will not gain you any credits.

The service is 100% anonymous for end-users, but to ensure that the scenario you have alluded to does not occur, the IP address of those who sign up for referral accounts is recorded and checked against if they try to use their own referral link. I do not see the problem with this considering they also have to provide their email address.

Referrers are not breaking the law by pointing people to a website for legitimate use.
They are not responsible for how the service is used by third parties.
So they need not worry about their IP or email address being stored.

It remains that no IP information, or any other means of identification, is recorded for those who download torrents.
Even if a referrer downloads a torrent, they cannot be linked to the download, and can therefore be assured of privacy.

I may transition to a cookie-based method of identifying this type of behavior in the future however to ameliorate the need to record the IP address of those who sign up for referral accounts.

Since use of the service is anonymous, it seems like there's nothing that prevents a user from simply using his/her own referral link to get a permanent 20% rebate on the service, instead of crediting the 20% to someone else.

I have fully implemented cookie tracking for referral idkeys. I have tested it on an isolated local server, and it is working. I have not tested it live however, but if you want to try yourself, make a note of your total hits in the referral control panel, then go to the website using your referral link and check again. Then close your browser, navigate back to the site without your idkey in the link, and check if it increases your hits. If everything has gone to plan, it should work perfectly.

Your key will bring you commission for up to 10 years after the user clicked your referral link. it is not possible to set a cookie that persists indefinitely, but 10 years is probably longer than the average computer lasts these days. And in 10 years, I suspect cookies will no longer be relevant anyway! Haha.

One thing however, if a user you have referred to the site clicks a subsequent link with a new idkey, your existing key will be replaced for the new one. I'm not quite sure if this is a good policy or not, but I suppose it is probably the fairest way of doing it. What do you think?

Also, if users have certain browser options that block cookies, or delete them each time their browser closes, there is nothing much I can do to work around this fact. The majority of us though accept all cookies except those from 3rd parties, so I think we're good.

I tested this with a rather large file, using a download manager that allowed me to dynamically change the number of concurrent connections (up to 10, though I think this time it stopped at 9 for some reason).  Each additional concurrent connection got me another 100-120 KB/s, so in the end I maxed out at 1.3 MB/s.  Not bad for being in the US, and my hard drive was probably getting to be the bottleneck by that point anyway.

I am a bit concerned about the "common Bitcoin address" problem, not because I think someone will steal my download, but for privacy reasons.  If someone knew the filesize of what I was downloading, and monitored the address and saw a payment that corresponded to it, the two could be linked together.

That said, I think this is a fantastic idea.  Thanks for the effort in putting it together so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

Regarding the multiple-files thing, if you're using Firefox there are a number of extensions that will allow you to download all the links on a page at once (or queue them up one at a time, if you prefer).  Personally I'm using the FlashGot extension, and even if you don't install the FlashGet download manager it's made to complement, you can still use it with Firefox's built-in download manager as far as I know.

Flattery isn't going to earn you a higher commission! :p

But in all seriousness, thank you for your kind words. I do believe that I provide a useful service to the bitcoin community. p2p filesharing and bitcoin are very much alike, in that their shared purpose is to break down existing perceptions of the status quo, and take power away from those who would wish to control us. They go hand in hand, and I am glad to have brought them together in this way.

The banners would just be an optional extra. What I meant was I would provide various different formats that people could use to post the link. Such as a pre-prepared bbcode link for forum signatures, a bbcode banner link and maybe some html formatted options too. My goal is to make it as quick and painless for people to post their referral link, wherever they like.

Well, on the other hand, a boring link may be good. Some people, myself included, tend to ignore banners or hate them so badly that they don't click them on priciple. Also, I think, there is an option to suppress images in signatures in this forum.

In the end it's up to each person how he wants to place the ad, so go ahead and make banners if you like. If I would use a banner, it would have to be veriy low height, like one line of text.

As you said, the best advertising is word of mouth, and a good product, I might add, which you have. I suspect you might soon run one of the more successfull bitcoin services in existance.

I fully agree. I am implementing this now.
I might also throw together some referral banners that people can use, rather than a boring link.

If you want the referral program to work well, I think it's a good idea. Otherwise people are pretty unlikely to get many downloads credited. It's unlikely people will use the referral link except for first contact with the site. It's also not very likely they will download right away. They'll look at the site, see what it does and come back later when they actually have need for downloading a torrent and remember the site.

As terrytibs stated, a single wallet address is monitored and downloads are identified by the payment size. I realize this is not the most efficient way of doing it, but it works due to the extreme unlikeliness of two people simultaneously downloading a file of the exact same size (to the byte). However, my to-do list certainly does include the implementation of unique payment addresses for the sake of user privacy.

With regards to your question on session identification molecular, I assume you want to know if recurring users will also generate you referral income? As it is, the referral idkey is obtained though a GET method, and then stored as a session variable. The session is destroyed when the user leaves the site. So if the user comes back of their own accord, you won't get credit.

However, I just implemented the referral system today, and plan to store the referral idkey in a cookie on the users computer so recurring users will generate referral credit. I don't know if this would have privacy implications for end-users though, but I don't think it should.

Do you think this would be a good idea?

Hmm, it worked just fine for me with btjunkie. I'm using a "right click", "copy link address" on the little grey box with the arrow pointing down. That gives me a direkt link to the torrent file, example: http://dl.btjunkie.org/torrent/The-Holding-2011-DVDSCR-XViD-NoGrp/43585890c419183fe611210d1e90ee9dcf4a01e24430/download.torrent . Pasting that into the form worked.


This might not be an immediate problem for you, but if there is "the one bitcointorrentz payment address", that might become a privacy issue for users. I would pop this item to the top of your todolist. It's not hard to get a new address for each download and I can't image you having a problem to associate that with the torrent. If you need any help with that, I can help.


Yes please, don't change this. Make zip-file optional if you must. I like it that way for streaming access.


I got around 700 KByte/s which is my downstream cap. (germany)
Had a friend try, he has 50mbit downstream, he got 1590 KByte/s (germany)

Thanks again for this awesome service, please fix the one-payment-address-issue, though.

Thanks for the glowing review, and I'm absolutely delighted that you find this service useful.
I will excuse the shouting this one time!


The reason that I don't immediately redirect to the status page is because I like the idea of a payment received page that thanks the user for their payment and use of the service, and gives advice not to lose the address of the status link, as it would be otherwise irretrievable.

I do realize the status page is pretty much useless as it is right now, requiring multiple refreshes etc. And the swirly-thing probably is a bit deceptive, I'll admit, LOL. However, I am AS WE SPEAK, working on a much more detailed status page that will show download speed, ETA, and % completed. It will also update every few seconds. I don't know when exactly it will be ready, but no more than a couple of days... if not sooner.

Thank you for your very useful feedback. I will take it all on board.

Keep in mind that this service only went online a few days ago... I have MANY ideas for future implementation. There just isn't enough time in the day to write the damned code! I have other major work commitments IRL, so until this service starts paying my salary, my development time is restricted to my spare time!

This is from a private conversation I had with mjcmurfy.

I'm assuming it's a "session based address". This begs the question how you determine which download a payment is for. Could you elaborate on that a little?

May I ask how you do session identification?

This is interesting both for privacy reasons and for evaluating possible gains from referral program

Tell me more about these investment opportunities!

ABSOLUTELY KICK-ASS SERVICE!

Sorry for shouting, I don't usually do this, but I'm just so excited :-)

I use this for protecting against beging dragged to court or made to pay money in order not to be dragged to court, which recently happened to a friend (it's gonna cost us around €900 for uploading 10% of a movie). I hope you really honor your statement of keeping absolutely no records of information that could identify me.

What I like most about this service:

• the protection it offers

• ease of use

• I can start watching the file pretty much once I start download to my machine, since that download is "in order", not randomly chunked, so it's actually a faster time-to-view than had I used traditional client

• reasonably priced

• supports bitcoin

Some notes on the process and how you could improve it (it's pretty good already and absolutely acceptable):

• Torrent upload is good, couldn't be easier (used the torrent link input field), but why not redirect to that downloads status page after that?
• On the downloads status page: there's a gif animation or something that suggests the page would auto-update, which it doesn't, right? Well, it either should auto-update or that swirly-thingy should be gone
• also on download status page: I know your server is fast and all, but a progress information would still be nice. Repeatedly hitting reload is so oldschool and just plain sucks. Also: maybe it's even possible to automatically redirect to a page that will automatically start the download in browser once the download is complete on your side?

Keep it up, it's so cool!

EDIT: as you can see, I devoted my signature space to your service, that's how much I love bitcointorrentz ^^
EDIT2: removed the BS about the link to the directory should be link to file

No, but he is...

Are you doing some kind of ninja-bumping? This thread keeps reappearing in my Updated Topics.

Announcing the BitCoinTorrentz.com Referral Program

The best method of advertising is by word of mouth, so to I have introduced a new feature, a referral program that rewards you with a percentage of the revenue generated by users you bring to the site.

The amount you earn depends on the number of people you successfully refer to this service. You will receive 20% of all earnings generated from your referees. You can request a payout at any time, there are no arbitrary limits that you must exceed in order for us to release your funds. All payments will be processed within 24-48 hours of your request.

To get started, simply sign up to get your customized referral link. It is 100% free to register. From the control panel, you can view detailed statistics on your referral activity, including the number of hits you have brought to the site, the number of downloads your referees have successfully completed, as well as your total earnings.

Here is a direct link to the referral page on the site:
http://www.bitcointorrentz.com/index.php?page=member