do you remember torrenting if you're not
a boomer like me then listen up kids
because back in the day we didn't have
to subscribe to 10 different
mid-streaming Services just to get the
latest Hollywood slop back then if there
was a movie or an album or a game that
you wanted but you were dead broke you
sailed the high seas that's right you
pirated it now as a disclaimer of course
I would never condone something as
Despicable as Internet piracy it's
illegal and it's against YouTube's terms
of service and worst of all it directly
harms the poor artists who are just
trying to survive but come on just about
everybody who's ever touched a computer
before has uh sailed the high seas so to
speak and the best way to do that was
always with torrenting
now in case you don't know torrenting is
a magical technology that allows you to
connect other people's computers and
download a file and once you finish
downloading it you can then share it
back so others can also download it now
this is the perfect technology for
downloading some big files like maybe a
Linux ISO
but come on everybody knows what most
people use this for
but these days you don't really hear Too
Many people talking about piracy like
you did before because as we all know
services like Spotify and Netflix and
steam came along and they improved our
lives so much that torrenting and piracy
was never heard of again right well with
big companies getting greedier and
greedier and the fact that if you even
want a chance of finding a decent movie
to watch tonight you have to subscribe
to five different Services each of them
with a 15 a month price tag
like I know some of you out there are
spending more time scrolling on Netflix
trying to find a good movie to watch
than you actually spend watching a movie
we've all been there before and so as a
result a lot of people are getting
interested in torrenting again
now maybe you think you're an elite
hacker because you know about baby's
first torrent site or The Pirate Bay or
maybe some other similar sites maybe
you're even smart enough to get a VPN so
Comcast will stop sending your mom
letters in the mail and she'll finally
stop yelling at you to get a job and
move out
but what you might not know is this is
just the surface of torrenting on the
internet what if I told you you could go
much deeper and find a world that you
never even knew existed because let's
face it there's not exactly a lot of
quality control on these big torn
websites I know at least one of you
bricked your parents computer when you
were trying to find a correct version of
Bloom's Tower Defense
and if you're taste in movies or music
is a little bit obscure you're not
finding it on the Pirate Bay but there
are torn websites out there where you
can find any piece of media ever created
all for free and you don't have to
settle for this stupid YIFY or Netflix
quality doesn't Netflix have this scam
where you have to pay five extra dollars
a month just to get 4k content on these
websites you've never heard of before
and you can literally find just about
anything
if you want to watch the bonus features
on the limited edition Blu-ray of your
favorite anime only ever released in
Japan you can find it on there
if you want to listen to the vinyl copy
of your favorite album with the reorder
tracklist you can also find that on
there
today I'm going to tell you about the
secret world of private tour and
trackers
now I can't even tell you too much in
this video or I'm probably going to get
sent to Davey Jones Locker but there are
websites out there with an absolute
Treasure Trove of content impeccably
maintained by the internet's greatest
autists
and if you think that the Pirate Bay has
a lot of content trust me you ain't seen
nothing it is literally just a tiny
fraction of what is out there
now there are hundreds and even
thousands of these private touring
trackers out there there are ones for
films Games books software
and each of them have their own rules
and requirements but in this video I'm
going to tell you the story of what CD
and this is just one private torrent
Tracker out of many but this was
arguably the most infamous private
touring Tracker out there
and just about everybody agrees this was
the greatest private tracker for music
of all time
now not everybody can come here and
download to your heart's content like
something like the Pirate Bay this is an
exclusive club and the people here may
be sharing copyrighted music but these
aren't just your average cyber criminals
people on these sites are pros and
professionals have standards if you try
to compare the Pirate Bay to a site like
this it's like comparing a wannabe
gangbanger to Don Corleone there's just
no comparison
because they don't just let in any
riffraff off the street if you want in
you need a connection you need an invite
now if you tried to enter this site
before all you would see is a cryptic
message and a login form
there's nowhere to register an account
there's no button to sign up the only
way you can get in is to get an invite
from a current member and the number one
rule is you never ask for an invite you
have to earn it
you might be wondering how to earn an
invite well one way to do it is to pass
the interview
now you might be thinking an interview
an invite why would anybody care about
this pretentious music Club why wouldn't
you just listen to the latest Taylor
Swift album on Spotify or YouTube and of
course that's a very dumb question a
normie like you would never understand
this is a sanctuary for those with
obscure music taste if you want to
listen to The Deep guttural screams of
alt Idol Seiko omodi's early work when
she was at her absolute raw sound you
can't find that on Spotify and if you
have actually decent headphones instead
of using these trash Apple airpods that
the kids are using these days you
wouldn't be able to hear the subtle
differences between the compressed
horrible YouTube version and the warm
lossless quality of the vinyl rip of
Carly Rae Jepsen's emotion
sorry I got a little bit worked up there
but if you care about quality or finding
obscure items that you can't find
anywhere else you can only find them in
private trackers like what CD Now in
recent years spotify's collection of
rare music has gotten much better but 10
years ago you couldn't find 90 of what I
listened to on Spotify or even YouTube A
lot of times and certainly not in good
quality and this isn't just a mishmash
of random torrents everything was
impeccably organized you can open up one
album and find five different versions
of it so you could download the CD rip
or the web version or the vinyl or the
limited edition Japanese release with
the bonus tracks or the remastered
version or the original demo tape that
only ever had 50 copies made
and when you upload a torrent it has to
meet the quality standards or it's going
to be deleted this wasn't Amateur hour
this was a perfectly curated Museum of
music
so if you want into the club you have to
pass the interview now this is an
interview conducted over IRC
for you Zoomers this is like prehistoric
Discord
and you need to pass the interview
because you can't just be letting anyone
in there you have to show how much you
know about music what's the difference
between a variable bit rate and a
constant bitrate MP3 how do you
transcode a Flac file and you need to
know these things because once you're in
you can't just download you have to
share if you've ever torrented before
let's be real nobody sees it the torrent
but not in a private tracker at what CD
everybody contributes you always leave
the torrent seating and if you own any
music you rip that CD or vinyl and share
it with everyone maybe you found an
obscure album out of Goodwill that isn't
already on the website everybody
contributes and only if you upload can
you download
if you upload one gigabyte of data then
you can also download one gigabyte of
data you also get a ratio showing how
much you share and if you don't share
enough then you're walking the plank if
you take much more than you give you're
getting banned and so these rules seem
pretty strict but this means that you
can always find a seed on a lot of these
websites because on a lot of public
trackers like The Pirate Bay you'll
often find torrents that are just
completely dead people just stop caring
about them and now there's nobody left
to share them
but on these exclusive private trackers
you'll almost always find somebody who
is still sharing these files because of
course you have a lot of incentive to
share with other people
and some power users on these websites
would even rent servers called c boxes
which were exclusively used to see
Torrance 24 7 with massive upload speeds
the most elite users might have
terabytes of data uploaded
and it was Utopia if you were a real
music fan if you're serious about having
any kind of music collection then this
was basically heaven on Earth
and if you share back to the community
enough eventually you work your way up
the ranks so you start off as just a
deckhand just as an ordinary user but
over time you can level up your rank to
be a power user an elite or even higher
and of course the higher your rank the
more privileges you get you get invites
to other trackers of course it's not
just about music like I said there are
movie trackers anime Trekkers game
trackers book trackers software trackers
and of course tracker is completely
dedicated to well just about everything
of course there's also the community I
discovered so many of my favorite fans
of all time from this website
you could just be introduced to so much
good music that you would never even
hear of outside of private trackers
people there were passionate about music
and it showed the forums were always
active talking about the latest music
you could create your own collages of
different albums you enjoyed you could
find the most popular new releases in
the top 10 section there were so many
new artists to discover and if you
couldn't find something there you could
even request rare hard to find music
from other members by staking some of
your upload maybe you want a rare copy
of a fish man's record only ever
released in Japan and you don't want to
pay exorbitant import tax
you can just request it and somebody
living there might pick it up
look the community back in the day was
so great that I've even heard of people
getting married to people that they met
on what CD
but if you're against piracy and you
think people should just pay the artists
what they deserve then you might just
think of what CD as a place for stingy
internet users that don't want to
support the artist and they just want to
get something for free
but what CD was more than that it was a
giant archive a lot of music on this
website had never even been digitized
before
I'm talking about old cassette tapes and
vinyls from artists that were never
popular enough to get their music on
Spotify there was a lot of rare music on
here that you just couldn't find
anywhere else and what CD was the only
place that really incentivized this sort
of sharing
maybe if you're a super fan of some
artist that you really like you really
want to hear their early work that has
been lost a Time
but if record labels don't think it's
going to make enough money then it's
just going to be lost to time
these weren't just entitled teenagers
trying to get something for nothing
people on what loved music like nobody
else and they paid for music just to
share it with others
you've probably heard that a lot of
pirates buy more music than an average
person and since you could learn about
obscure artists that you would never
hear of otherwise I remember supporting
these artists
some super obscure artist that nobody
ever heard of I would buy their albums
on bandcamp because I wanted to support
them
and a lot of torrents uploaded on here
there was just no legal way to obtain
them
there were so many out of print limited
edition records on there
so sure we were treading into a legal
gray area for sure but was it really as
bad as it seems
and at its peak what had over 2 million
torrents available something completely
unheard of on any other torrent site at
the time
but all good things cannot last forever
because as I'm sure you know online
piracy is super illegal now what CD
wasn't actually hosting any illegal
files all they were hosting was
basically links but do you really think
I was going to hold up in court
and running a private touring site is
dangerous business
of course they're not as well known as
something like the Pirate Bay which is
open to everyone but of course the feds
also had their eyes on what CD
but it's not like the people who ran
what CD were getting rich off of it most
private torrent trackers run on
donations
in this community making money from
torrenting is very much looked down on
the most professional sites don't give
you any rewards for donating
you don't need to keep the site alive
maybe you'll get a cool little donor
icon next to your name on the forums but
that's about it
but of course if you run one of these
private torrent trackers you're always
going to be a little bit paranoid this
sounds like a Secret website that not
many people know about but the feds
always know
and if you own what CD it can be pretty
scary running a torrent website what if
xdochi fan x a trusted super moderator
is actually a Fed in Disguise and he's
looking to finally gather enough
evidence to get the owners locked up
and what happened to what CD is it
disappeared in a moment one day you
could log in and the next day there was
a notice saying it was gone
on November 17 2016 French authorities
sees 12 servers from the internet
service provider that what CD was using
and what CD later said that the feds
didn't seize any of the databases and
that's a good thing because if the feds
got access to all of the messages on the
server they could presumably track down
some of the admins with bad opsec
but of course the owners were spooked
the next day all that remained was a
message from the owners
so long and thanks for all the fish
because nobody wants to get rounded up
by the alphabet boys they were spooked
and they fled and not much has been
heard from them since
they posted one final goodbye under
Twitter and disappeared
in a way it's sad because what CD was
essentially the Library of Alexandria
for music you could find things on there
that you could never find anywhere else
in a million years unreleased demo tapes
from legendary bands obscure music that
takes a real music fan to even enjoy but
it's just part of the life cycle of
these sorts of websites even what CD was
the spiritual successor to oinks Pink
Palace one of the OG music private
trackers that were shut down by the feds
and what CD's closing wasn't the end
since then several Replacements have
popped up and are still alive and well
and from what I've heard they have even
more than what CD ever had
but that's a whole other story
these private Trekkers have always had a
niche but loyal fan base and music
lovers even Trent rezner the founder of
the band 9-inch Nails was a member of
what CD's predecessor oinks Pink Palace
and rezner said about these private
trackers they're not stealing it because
they're going to make money off of it
they're stealing it because they love
the band this was whenever iTunes was
big
but iTunes music was always locked down
with DRM and you could only listen to
low quality low bit rate versions of the
music on iTunes
now it's been a few years since I last
used private trackers just because I
really don't care about having a
perfectly curated multimedia collection
anymore
and it's bad for him to mention the
names of any current private trackers
out there
and a few Whispers that you'll hear
people only mention obscure acronyms
that make no sense unless you're in the
know
and for good reason they want to keep
the normies out and the FEDS
now it might not seem like a site like
what CD would still be relevant today
but even today whenever you buy a movie
or a book from something like Amazon you
don't really own it with things like DRM
and locks placed on your content you
never truly own your collection
if Amazon wants to they can remove your
entire Kindle collection and there's
nothing you can do about it
even if you think something like Spotify
is amazing one day your favorite track
off of your playlist might be removed
for whatever reason
because on these big Services you never
truly own your collection
and as long as there are still
corporations out there that still want
to screw over the consumer there will
always be a space in the world for
private trackers out there