ImageShack Starts Free BitTorrent Download Service
Written by Ernesto on April 05, 2008The popular media hosting website ImageShack just launched a new service that lets you download torrent files onto their servers. When the download is complete, you can download the files from ImageShack via an http link.
ImageShack’s torrent download service is still in Beta, but it works just fine. The only thing you need to do is point ImageShack to the torrent file and press start. The download will start immediately, and once it’s finished you can download the files via http onto your computer.
Services like this are not new, but up until now I haven’t seen one that doesn’t charge money. There are some limitations though. Per month you can download a maximum of 15GB to your computer, and the storage on ImageShack’s servers is also limited to 15GB.
Jack Levin, the founder of ImageShack told TorrentFreak: “We think its going to be a great service for users, especially in the light of ISPs ratelimiting torrent traffic.There is a lot of free and legal torrents out there, that people should have easy access too
to. We have the capacity to do it, and the world needs it.”
For those people who are concerned about the anonymity of the service (or think it’s a honeypot), Levin said: “We will not look at what you download and simply provide you, an account, with bandwidth and space. What you do with it is up to you. The DMCA applies, so, if we get reports from copyright owners to take down content, we will comply.”
The service comes with some great features. It supports selective downloading, which means that you can deselect files from the torrent if you don’t want to download them all. This can be quite useful if you only need one album from a complete discography for example.
ImageShack also provides some basic details about the progress of the downloads. Under the “status” link they list information about the download progress, connected seeds and leechers, share ratio and more.
The status reports are not yet working perfectly, as it keeps reporting that a torrent has stopped, while it was downloading just fine. However, the torrents I have tested were downloaded very fast, and I had no problem downloading the files from ImageShack onto my computer.
A more serious point of critique is that the torrent seems to disconnect as soon as the download has finished. This basically means that you will be sharing less than you should. I hope that ImageShack will add a sharing friendly feature in the future, and will at least continue seeding until the share ratio is 100%.
Levin told us, however, that there are no plans to include such a feature. They will offer (paid) premium accounts, but this will be only for bandwidth and storage upgrades.
Overall I must say that Imageshack’s new torrent download service looks very promising, especially for a free service. Decide for yourself, we think it’s worth a try.
This article was updated to include Jack Levin’s answers
Previously: Lawyer Who Threatened File-Sharers is Banned For 6 months
Next: BitTorrent Tracker Sends Takedown Request to Torrent Indexers
197 Responses
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Erste
Great idea! I want ImageShack to know what I’m downloading.
[quote comment="332487"]Great idea! I want ImageShack to know what I’m downloading.[/quote]
You’re a moron.
Nice is a great idea as a seedboxing method for legal torrents or content you wanna post publicly.
Sounds kind of cool for those legal torrents which go at a snails pace. It could be uploading really quick, hence why they disconnect as soon as they are done.
So it makes torrents into HTTP links? KICK ASS!!! I think it would be good for public trackers, and such, but dosnt it kind of diminish the point of bittorrent?
i think he was being sarcastic :P
I would think twice before using this to download torrents that aren’t legal.
Download speed is pretty slow and all imageshack is pretty awkward to use.
Sounds risky. Not doing it.
How do they expect to make money out of this?
*tested*
Even though it has some BETA-bugs, works well but why on earth would I wanna use it? I mean, what is the actual purpose of this service?
P.S.: why on earth NOT make it web 2.0?
it didnt work for me
it alwayes says “unable to identify you”
You have to login.
Presumably you have to log in first.
http://reg.imageshack.us/content.php?page=rules
Read and be aware of the risks if use this service to download files that break U.S.A’s laws.
http://img663.imageshack.us/tor/browse/?id=924&rel=Steal+This+Film+II.720p.mov
All you have do is login.
I downloaded this with GitRight, after adding the account to the settings.
Meant to have written GetRight…
Lookout its a trap!
No offence but I could have told you this at least two weeks ago…
And I dunno the great feature about not downloading what you don’t want, you can do that in clients just as well and I don’t see the profit in downloading a file and then having to download it again because first time it was downloaded on a server…
All services have a clause that says that they will release information in the event that you commit an illegal act. What do you think? That they’re going to say “Even if you break the law, we’ll cover for you”?
Here’s a fun fact; I’m not aware of a single person being arrested or sued for *DOWNLOADING*. Every case has been about uploading, because when you download with P2P software, you upload as well. Downloading through this service would be just that, downloading.
I’m not saying that it would be completely safe and that people should use it for illegal downloads, just that I don’t see it carrying the same risk as using a BT client yourself. If anything, ImageShack would be the one seen as illegally distributing files.
I’m not sure what the penalties would be for someone caught downloading, but with no evidence of any kind of distribution, either real or intended, but I imagine they’d be much less than people found guilty of distributing copyrighted files.
It didn’t work for me even after logging in.
For those curious, it reports itself as Transmission/1.10, and it is listed as Connectable.
And it does indeed drop the torrent the moment it finishes downloading.
To those wondering, probably the best usage for this is as a seed ‘buffer’.
Basically, start a torrent you’ve created yurself, on your home system, and then run it on this. It acts like a high speed buffer, by transmitting pieces to other people using a faster than normal connection (and in tests, 100+Kbyte/sec upload)once the torrent’s seeded, it drops out. Think of it as a bonus to super-seed mode.
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