If you like classic movies and obscure TV shows, you’ll love this news. Gormogon, one of the better specialized private torrent trackers around for retro movies and television shows, is currently open for signup. That’s not all, in celebration of their first year online, the site will have site wide free leech (aka gold torrents) throughout this month. Gormogon, which started off as a resurrection of Classic Cinema Zone (CCZ), recorded impressive growth during the past year to become of of the larger retro movie trackers around. It now tracks over 10000 torrents, a feat only a handful other sites in this niche have been able to achieve. Gormogon was initially invite only (and hence we did several invite giveaways for it earlier) but later opened its doors to the public, bringing in more activity into the site.

Gormogon started off it’s operations back in 2009 as a resurrected version of Classic Cinema Zone. It however was run by a different admin and staff panel than CCZ and was rebuilt from scratch (which seemed to be a good idea as there were so many complaints about CCZ’s staff – just have a look at the comments posted here). So far, things seem to have gone pretty well for Gormogon – it’s established a firm foothold in the BitTorrent community with nearly 4500 active members and it’s torrent index now lists over 10k movies and TV shows including some very hard to find torrents (during our previous review back in December 2009, there were only around 1700 active members and 6300+ torrents).

Speaking of the content indexed on Gormogon, you won’t find any of the new movie releases, TV shows or games you see on most General trackers here – this site is all about classic, retro, hard to find, obscure content that belong to a bygone era. There’s an impressive collection of classic movies on this tracker, ranging from films produced in the 1930s to those made in the late 1980s. Television shows from the same era can also be downloaded – there are some awesome full season packs of rare TV series indexed here. In addition, quite a few OST (official soundtracks) from retro hits, classic music and even old radio shows are also available for download.

Some of the torrents indexed on Gormogon are tracked by public trackers such as OpenBitTorrent. These torrents are obviously excluded from ratio rules. However, the vast majority of  indexed content are tracked by Gormogon’s own private tracker – such torrents are subject to ratio rules but usually have better download speeds.

Signups for this tracker are currently open. As stated earlier, the entire site will be on free leech throughout this month in celebration of Gormogon’s first birthday. If you are interested in downloading retro movies and TV shows, you might want to check this site out.

Site Name: Gormogon (http://www.gormogon.com)

Signup URL: http://www.gormogon.com/index.php?page=signup

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There was a time when PC game rips were hugely popular. They were hits among the gaming community especially during the late 1990s, when scene groups such as CLASS, BACKLASH, MYTH, etc were active (they guys obviously released a lot of ripped games). A rip is basically a stripped down version of a PC game with reduced file size. This reduced size is usually achieved by re encoding/removing in game movies (or FMV), removing music, removing extra languages or by simply using a better compression algorithm. The smaller size facilitated easier online storage and saved bandwidth, both of which were valuable resources back then. However, as internet speeds improved and transferring large files over the web became relatively easier, the demand for game rips gradually decreased. But does that mean the art of ripping games is a thing of the past? Well, not really. Although not as popular, game rips are still around. If you still seek to download them, this post is about a private torrent tracker that focuses solely on this type of releases.

Although not as hugely popular as groups such as RELOADED, Razor1911, SKIDROW or ViTALiTY, scene groups who still release rips still do exist (i.e. UNLEASHED). However when it comes to these releases, non scene groups are nowadays more active than the scene. Their releases are usually made available over file sharing networks such as private trackers or DDL forums instead of topsites.

However, you won’t find a lot of game rips on General/0Day scene trackers or surprisingly, even on dedicated games trackers. But here’s a private tracker that’s dedicated to tracking game rips. TPTB (short for ‘The Powers That Be’) tracks a lot of unique and exclusive releases that you won’t easily find anywhere else. TPTB runs on TS Special Edition 7.0 codebase and has been around for several years. The site currently tracks close to 500 torrents, vast majority of which are games.

As you can see from the screenshot above, TBTB’s game rips collection even includes titles released just a few days ago. Most of these are uploaded by the site’s internal groups (hence the ‘TPTB’ tag in torrent title) and are exclusive to the tracker. If you want to know what’s ripped from a game, you can usually find that information in a torrent’s description page. Most of the rips I have come across so far were done in a way that did not cause any serious harm to a game’s playability – in most cases only unnecessary info (such as extra languages from MULTI5 and MULTI8 releases) was removed. In short, these guys are pros and they know how to reduce the size of a game without screwing it up. While the content is great, one downside of this tracker are the download speeds – they are average at best and there are some torrents without enough seeder activity to keep them going.

Although a little shy on the publicity front, signups for TBTP are currently open. If you are interested in downloading PC game rips, you might find this tracker to be useful.

Site Name: TPTB (http://teamtptb.com)

Signup URL: http://teamtptb.com/signup.php

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What’s the best place on the internet to download high quality music videos? This is a question that lands ever so often in our E-mail inbox. We have so far featured on this blog at least two specialized torrent trackers that cater to music videos; MVidBitz and SilverSeed. Unfortunately, both these sites are currently offline (and they have been down for some time too). If you are one of those souls stranded without a good source for MVids, here’s some good news. MVHive is a direct download link (DDL) forum that indexes a lot of scene and non scene music videos. The concept behind this site seems to be based on the now defunct Keitex forum – in fact, their tagline is “taking over where Keitex.NET left”. MVHive is currently accepting new registrations and if you are a fan of music videos, you might want to check this site out.

MVHive is a new forum and not many in the file sharing community  know of its existence - not yet anyways. The site currently has around 300 members who have created over 1600 threads. I’m not really sure if this is a full resurrection of the popular Keitex MV forum (which had more than 60k members at the time of its demise) or if MVHive is a separate, new forum modeled after Keitex. An interesting tweet on MVHive’s Twitter page claims “Keitex.NET is back as MVHive.com!!” so it might be a revival after all.

If you visit MVHive’s homepage, you’d notice that it looks and behaves a lot like a release blog (and an abandoned one at that too). However, homepage is not where the goodies are at – if you want the music videos you should look in the forum. Once you register and log into the the forums, you’ll see MVHive for what it really is – a DDL forum with hundreds of releases, both scene and non scene.

As you can see from the above screenshot, vast majority of releases on this forum are music videos. This includes scene releases as well as user uploaded ‘P2P’ releases. XViD encodes (ripped from DVD or a TV source) as well as untouched videos in VOB format may be found here. In addition to MViDs, you can find lossless music, MP3 music albums as well as some movies as well. Like on most DDL forums, files are hosted on one click hosting services such as rapidshare (hence, using a tool such as JDownloader is recommended).

MVHive is currently open for registration and interested members can easily get in. It’s still a new site but music video fans might want to keep an eye on this one – the growth so far has been promising.

Site Name: MVHive (http://www.mvhive.com)

Registration URL: http://www.mvhive.com/forum/register.php

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In case you still haven’t downloaded it, a new issue of The Game Scene Charts (TGSC) is out. This issue (#43) covers the ISO/DOX game release scene for the month of May 2010. The magazine retains all of it’s usual features and editorials such as release groups overview for the month of May, monthly, yearly and all time group rankings as well as various statistics of leading PC game release groups. In addition, this month’s issue includes an interview with SKIDROW, a leading PC game cracking group who have recently been making waves with their cracks and workarounds for UBISoft’s DRM protection. And for those of you who are interested in scene rules, TGSC #43 also includes a yet to be finalized version of Standard ISO Rules (S.I.R.) 2010 which will probably define how PC game ISO releases are pre’d in the future.

Speaking of group rankings for the month of May, SKIDROW managed to retain the first place for the fourth consecutive time. FASiSO and Bamboocha gained 2nd and 3rd positions respectively with well known release group RELOADED dropping a few places to #11. RELOADED’s German division 0x0007 however managed to hold the 6th place for the second time in two months. For detailed description of group rankings please refer to the ‘Charts’ section in TGSC.

As mentioned earlier, one of the highlight of this month’s issue is the interview with SKIDROW. This somewhat lengthy interview discusses several interesting topics including group history, current status as well as about the heated flame wars surrounding UBISoft’s DRM. To read the full interview, please download the magazine.

Download

You can download TGSC issue #43 from Defacto, a scene resources site we featured in a previous article.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 43 (March 2010) from Defacto.

If you are looking for older editions, Defacto has the complete collection of TGSC magazines since Issue #1 (September 2006) in this page.

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If you have been reading FILEnetworks for some time you probably already know about ‘The.BZ’ tracker family (if you don’t then read this article). TBZ studios are the driving force behind four very unique trackers in the BitTorrent scene; The Box, The Vault, The Place and The Occult. This post however is not about any one of these sites; it’s about TBZ’s latest project, ‘The Empire’ (also known as TE). The Empire is a private torrent tracker for TV and radio shows. It however is not just another TV tracker indexing content you can already find on BMTV, TVT.COM and a dozen other sites. TE specializes in shows from commonwealth countries – television shows from Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and other regions may be found here. If you download TV shows over BitTorrent, you might want to keep an eye on this site – not only because it tracks rare content but because when it comes to creating specialized trackers, TBZ usually kick ass.

An announcement of TE’s launch was made on its sister site ‘The Box’. Quoted below is a post by TBZ staff which explains the story behind ‘The Empire’.

Behind the scenes at TBZ Studios, we've been working on a new project that we're finally ready to unveil to the world...
TheBox has become one of the go-to places on the internet for your favorite British show cravings. We got to thinkin': "Wouldn't that be great to provide this awesomeness to users in other countries?"
Well, look no futher as we're proud to present: http://www.TheEmpire.bz.
TheEmpire, or TE for us lazy typers, will be dedicated to the finest television and radio broadcasts from the commonwealth countries; countries such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand just to name a few. Here's a complete list of countries.
We've opened up 5,000 slots for immediate signup and we're offering it to users of TheBox first. So if you like your Commonwealth TV and Radio, go ahead and reserve your slot today at http://www.theempire.bz/signup.php and help us make it a great site!
So please look around, upload some shows you've got sittin' on the computer, and play in the forums.
This should be a whole bunch of fun!
~ t.bz staff

Although just a few hours into the final launch, TE already indexes around 125 torrents. Expect this number of rapidly increase in the coming days as news of the launch spreads in the BitTorrent community and TE’s uploader team expands. TV & radio shows including soaps, reality, travel, wildlife, documentaries, kids shows, drama, comedy, news, game shows, sports, talk shows, mystery, crime, etc from a number of different countries (full list of allowed countries here) will be indexed here. The screenshot below captures some of the torrents already indexed on TE:

As stated in the forum post by TBZ SysOp (quoted above), public signups for The Empire will be open until the site reaches 5000 users. It’s good to see them trying to start off with a decent user base instead of restricting new registrations – being ‘too private’ can also lead to the downfall of a new tracker. Expect the free signup slots to be filled up pretty soon. TE will have the backing of thousands of users who are already members of the TBZ family plus this is likely to be a hot topic in BitTorrent news forums and blogs, which will drive more members to this tracker.

Site Name: The Empire (http://www.theempire.bz)

Signup URL: http://www.theempire.bz/signup.php

Special thanks to Peter Vig for sending us this news.

Note: If you would like to be part of others sites in TBZ network, all trackers including The Box, The Vault and The Occult (except The Place) are currently open for signup. You can find the signup URLs in this article.

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If you like to be part of large private torrent trackers with lots of torrents, you’d like Linkomanija. This tracker is in the same league as Zamunda, ArenaBG, Mojblink, Partis.Si, etc – a foreign tracker with tons of international content and a huge user base. Based in Lithuania, Linkomanija is a General/0Day torrent site which tracks scene and P2P releases including movies (tons of them), games, music, sports, documentaries, TV shows and pretty much every other torrent category you can imagine. Apart from the usual releases you see on every tracker, this site has it’s own collection of exclusive releases including some enormous packs. LM is usually a closed community but right now, public registrations are open. However, as far as we know, signups will not remain open for long - only a very limited number of free slots are remaining so get in while you can.

Linkomanija has been around for ages and it is one of those seasoned BitTorrent sites with experienced staffers. In fact, this was one of the first BitTorrent sites we featured here on FILEnetworks Blog (previous mention was back in January 2008). Back then this site had 75000 users and ~30000 torrents. Now, in 2010, these statistics have almost doubled. Linkomanija currently tracks 60000+ torrents and has an active user base close to 150000 members.

In terms of content, Linkomanija tracks pretty much everything. From scene releases to P2P uploads you can find a good mix of both new and old content on this tracker. Thanks to the huge user base, most of the torrents have enough seeders to keep them alive for an extended time period. One of Linkomanija’s main attractions is the amazing number of torrent packs in its index. The screenshot below captures some of them and there are many more others you can download, including a ton of movie packs both SD and HD.

As we mentioned earlier this tracker is based in Lithuania – some content native to Lithuania are indexed but majority of the releases cater to an English speaking audience. If you want to avoid downloading Lithuanian releases by mistake, make sure your download is not placed in a category which has ‘LT’ in its name. One other thing that may be a concern for English speaking users is the lack of an ‘English’ language option for site interface. This hurdle is easily overcome with automatic translation provided by Google Chrome. A step by step guide on how to convert Linkomanija’s Lithuanian interface to English can be found below:

1. Download the latest version of Google Chrome browser from here.
2. Visit LM homepage through this link: http://www.linkomanija.net/signup.php 
3. Once the page is done loading, Google Chrome will automatically display several translation options (the message will be displayed just beneath the address bar – you can’t miss it).
4. Choose the auto detected settings (should be Lithuanian to English) and hit translate. If you get the message  ‘Translation failed due to server error’ keep re-trying.
5. Once translation of the first page is done, you can configure Google Chrome so that it automatically translates all LM pages without prompting you. Select the ‘Options’ button (in the translation help popup) and select ‘Always translate Lithuanian to English’ from the drop down menu.

Signups for Linkomanija are currently open. At time of writing, the site had ~149700 users and something tells me open signups would close when this hits 150000. If this assumption is correct, this leaves only around 300 more free slots remaining  - get in while you can.

Site Name: Linkomanija (http://www.linkomanija.net)

Signup URL: http://www.linkomanija.net/signup.php

Special thanks to Jon who mentioned the open signups in this thread.

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There are hundreds of BitTorrent sites around today and new ones are appearing even as we speak. However, the vast majority of these trackers don’t make it past the initial phase – some head straight to the deadpool and are never heard of again. But here’s a torrent site that has not failed the test of time – LeechersLair (LL), a veteran General/0day torrent tracker is celebrating its 4th birthday. During the past 4 years LL has overcome various obstacles including forced server shut downs to become one of the best general trackers currently around. Unsurprisingly, LL staff are celebrating the site’s 4th birthday in grand style. First of all the good news for non-members  – LL has opened public signups for one whole week. Previously banned members (for whatever reason) too have been granted amnesty to re-register on site. In addition to open signups there are flash ratio giveaways as well as free downloads planned as part of celebrations.

The message below is quoted from LeechersLair homepage. It discusses in detail what the staff has planned for LL’s 4th anniversary and contains useful information for potential new members such as activity requirements. 

Hi
As you may have seen on site Wednesday is Leecherslair's 4th Birthday, nope we can't believe it's been that long either.
As we do every Birthday we will be giving away ratio and free downloads like there's no tomorrow. A lot of which will be flash givaways which means they will only be around for a few hours, so make sure you check back on site regularly so as not to miss out on anything.
Also as a lot of you know during our Birthday's we also open our doors for 1 week and also have an amnesty where any member who has been banned for whatever reason can rejoin the site, also while the doors are open the invite system will be disabled.
To get your friends or family to register simply get them to come along on the link below and follow the registration process.
http://leecherslairywot.com
For those that haven't been to the site for a while remember we get rid of all unused accounts after 90 days, this includes parked accounts. This is to make sure that the site remains active as well as clearing up the database, very few trackers actually do this as they want it to appear that they have more members than they actually have, we like to show true figures
Anyhow make sure that you stay active on site for the Birthday week which starts Monday.
The doors to the Lair are now open!!!
Miss it, miss out
Staff@Leecherslair

Although the open signups will bring in a lot of new members, LL is already a well established private tracker with a strong user base. The site currently has 15000+ active users and tracks ~6500 active torrents. Popular torrents on this site usually have 100-200 seeds each. Content on LL includes both scene releases, P2P releases as well as LL exclusive torrents. Screenshot below shows some of the packs indexed on LeechersLair.

Although LL’s birthday falls on the 7th of July, open registrations have already started. You can now sign up for a free account without having the need to have an invite. Ratio building should not be a problem as there are already lots of torrents on free leech (denoted by spinning golden con next to torrent name) with more free leech set to come as part of birthday celebrations.

Site Name: LeechersLair (http://www.leecherslairywot.com)

Signup URL: http://www.leecherslairywot.com/signup.php

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When you first hear the name ‘Midnight Arab Torrents’, most of you would imagine a torrent tracker from the Middle East, tracking content native to Middle Eastern countries (and some of you with dirtier minds would imagine porn, especially with to ‘Midnight’ being present in the name). While MAT is indeed from the ME, you may be surprised to hear that it’s actually a scene torrent tracker, indexing latest international General/0Day releases pre’d by scene groups. Although a new tracker launched just a couple of months ago, MAT seems to have made a good first impression among many BitTorrent users – the site is already armed with valuable features seen on most leading 0Day trackers such as autouploader bots, seedbox hosted torrents as well as excellent pre times. Thankfully, getting into MAT is not difficult at all – you do not have to jump hurdles with interviews, invite applications, etc as direct signups are now open.

Within just two months since public launch, MAT’s uploaded torrent count has exceeded 10000. Needless to say this is a great achievement even for a general tracker. A healthy flow of new daily torrents can be seen on the site with 100+ new torrents getting uploaded every day. Over 450 torrents were added yesterday (2 July) alone – if they can keep up with these statistics in the long run, MAT will definitely become one of the leading 0Day torrent sites. Bulk of these torrents are spewed by MAT’s autouploader bots - all such automatically uploaded torrents are hosted on seedboxes, ensuring good download speeds. Pre times are excellent with most releases getting uploaded within 5 mins (usually under 1-2 mins) after they are pre’d on scene topsites.

Image: Torrent categories available on MAT

MAT runs on a customized version of TBDEV codebase. Some of the notable site features are highlighted below (this is a list sent in by MAT staff with edits by FnB):

• Based on Tbdev 09 Final Source - Source has been coded by the best coders in the community Mindless, PDQ, Putyn
• Has unique design by Kidvision which is xhtml valid
  FN Edit: KIdvision project is now known as BTSkins.net
• Unique bonus system installed
• Auto bot to upload releases to the tracker from Scene axx
• Great pre-times to releases with scene access
• MAT categories: encompasses almost all categories of releases
• Indexes more than 10000 torrents
• Built on IRCD, MAT has privileged channels for the community. See /irc.php for detailed information.
• IRC idle bonus
• Offers lots of games and fun to the community

MAT’s registered user count has also surpassed 1000 but tracker admins are looking to bring in more members to boost leecher activity. Signups are currently open and will continue to remain open until the site hits 5000 users. If you are looking forward to get in, now would be a good time especially with sitewide free leech and double upload currently active.

Site Name: Midnight Arab Torrents (http://www.midnightarab-torrents.org)

Signup URL: http://www.midnightarab-torrents.org/signup.php

Special thanks to MS and reset of MAT staff for the heads up.

Read the rest of this article...

If you have been reading us for some time, the name TemplateP2P should sound familiar - We’ve in the past posted numerous updated about this one of a kind Direct Download Link forum. Unlike most similar sites you can find on the web, TemplateP2P does not index movies or games – instead, it lists templates, graphics, code snippets and scripts, invaluable resources if you are a web developer, graphics designer or a software engineer. This forum is usually closed to the public and you normally need an invite from an existing member to get in. However, TemplateP2P would be open to the public throughout the first week of July – if you still haven’t managed to get in via our numerous previous updates, here’s yet another chance for you to become a member.

With over 14000 registered members and nearly 115000 threads, TP2P is a very active discussion forum. However, it’s not only ‘discussions’ that this forum is famous for. It indexes thousands of direct download links to premium content such as templates, scripts, CMS and forum systems, Flash content, 3D graphics and animation, fonts, stock photography, 2D graphics, images, icons, vectors, wallpapers, plugins / addons / extensions for various programs and a lot of other stuff useful to both students and professionals.

Speaking of students, TP2P is home to an excellent collection of tutorials for various software – this includes content from renowned publishers such as Cartoon Smart, Design Pro Video, Digital Tutors, Eat3D, EC-Council, Gnomon, Kelby, Lynda, Noesis, Photoshop Cafe, Photoshop Top Secret, SimplyMax, Talented Pixie, Total Training, TurboSquid, VTC and others. Fact that this content is not readily available on other torrent trackers or general/0Day DDL forums further increases TemplateP2P’s value.

Image: A screenshot of TemplateP2P’s ‘The Good Stuff’ forum section. This is where you can find download links to premium content.

As mentioned before TemplateP2P is a closed community and entry is usually only possible if an existing member invites you (or if you gain an invite via online invite applications). However, the forum will remain open to public registrations throughout the first week of July – you will not need an invite to sign up during this time.

Site Name: TemplateP2P (http://templatep2p.com/forum/index.php)

Signup URL: http://templatep2p.com/forum/index.php?action=register

Special thanks to T.J and DMK for sending us this news.

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Here on FILEnetworks, we talk about torrent trackers and file sharing forums pretty much every single day. Almost all of the sites and forums we have featured up until now cater towards end users of BitTorrent & DDL, in other words the regular pirates who download stuff from the net. However, the forum we are featuring today, BitTorrent Skins (aka BTSkins), is somewhat different. It’s a gathering place and a central location of information sharing for BitTorrent tracker developers – you can discuss and download templates, hacks & mods for all major tracker codebases including Gazelle, TBDEV, TorrentStrike, TorrentTrader & more. That’s not all, BTSkins is currently developing their own tracker source named TfK (TBDEV featuring Kidvision). If you are a tracker developer or if you are interested in the underlying works of a BitTorrent site, you might want to check this forum out.

BTSkins is not really a new forum. According ApocalypseMan, one of the site’s moderators, this site was formerly known as Kidvision.me. This is essentially a resurrection of Kidvision which shut down due to server issues. The site currently has 125 members (at the time of writing) and more are expected to join as word spreads in the BitTorrent community.

As mentioned in the first paragraph, BTSkins indexes templates, mods and hacks for all major tracker codebases out there. This allows developers to share there work and re-use components developed by others without having to reinvent the wheel. A screenshot of the ‘Development’ section in the main forum is shown below – this is where you can share/download/request add-ons for trackers scripts.

There are already quite a few mods & templates indexed in BTSkins, most of which seem to be TBDEV related. In addition to these, BTSkins has separate forum threads for Graphics and Artwork sharing as well as a Guidelines & Tutorials section for BitTorrent trackers. The source code for BTSkin’s own tracker script, TfK, can also be downloaded from this site.

BTSkins is currently open for registrations and is accepting new members. Again, keep in mind that this is a development related forum – you won’t find any tracker invite giveaways here.

Site Name: BitTorrent Skins (http://btskins.net)

Registration URL: http://btskins.net/index.php?app=core&module=global&section=register

Special thanks to ApocalypseMan for sending us this news.

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