Indie and amateur movie database

[Dmitry Kichenko]

Hi everyone!

I have an idea of creating a website which can be an Indie and amateur movie database + there is no need to worry about hosting and bandwidth costs (THAT much).

Here's how it works - the website contains names, descriptions, and magnet links to the films on the DC (Direct Connect) network, which consequently link to files on the hub you're currently connected. So, if you want to share your movie and get feedback, you post and entry in the (moderated) database and then connect to the hub and share the movie. Also you leave your computer for as long as you can so many people can download your movie.

Pros are obviously no bandwidth and hosting worries. Also it builds up a community since there's a message board + DC clients (like DC++ or others) have chat windows where you can chat live.

Cons are that, unless you have at least an ISDN connection, you're out. Well, almost out. But I don't think many people have dial-up these days, even in not so developed countries like Ukraine or Russia, which I'm from. Other than that, I don't see any more pros. Leaving computer on for long shouldn't be new for those rendering complicated scenes from software like After Effects ;).

So, what do you think? The hub itself is already online. I'm willing to host it and the website on my 5 mbit DL/ 1 mbit UL connection which should be enough for hosting about 300-500 users on the hub. I don't think we'll have that many visitors at first though.
Just use a DC client to connect manually to "at24p.ath.cx" (I think of calling the website @24p, sort of original, eh).
The website itself is in development right now as I'm hooking message board up with the website so, say, posting news topics will create news on the main page etc. You can look at it in development over here (I'll sure need to buy a domain some day).

Stay tuned!

--------
Many people complain about newer DC++ versions (0.403x+) but only starting with v. 403 the magnet links were implemented. For those who don't have the latest client, the website will just contain filenames of files. We'll just specify in rules that you shouldn't rename movies after you downloaded them, and that should work.

[Dmitry Kichenko]

Just finished writing a filesharing guide and am going to write the compression guide right now.
The logo at the top is temporary and the site and message board templates are to be changed soon.

Temporary URL is http://at24p.co.nr

[Christopher C. Murphy]

I believe this past week the "DC (Direct Connect) network", BitTorrent and similiar P2P's were shut down by the feds. If you read the news...it was a big story.

Murph

[Dmitry Kichenko]

That's silly. You can't just SHUT it down. It's not like it's all on one machine. Especially BitTorrent. You'll have to turn off a heck of a lot machines.
What you can do is what my ISP did - it installed new firmware which identifies the P2P traffic and slows it down. For instance, BitTorrent and eMule uploads are limited to 4 kb/s (because BitTorrent traffic was 70% of all the traffic going through the ISP). For DC though I only noticed slow filelist uploads, while regular file uploads are fine. Which is why I chose to host a hub and not an eMule server or BitTorrent tracker.

+ Not all content on P2P is illegal. In our case it's completely legal since you own the rights to distribute your films.

[Robert Crawford]

Nothing in Google news about the feds, just some talk about the RIAA filing suits (or at least thinking of it). Have any links?

[Dmitry Kichenko]

Ah come on.. There's no way you can shut down BitTorrent, DC and eMule. It's not KaZaa or Napster where there's only one main server. Feds would have to close servers/hubs one by one, but again - not all of the content is illegal.
It makes more sense to monitor particular users, to have some proof they share/download illegal stuff, and ban or charge them. That's what happened to some leechers on Kazaa, by the way.
Closing the whole network like BitTorrent (which is impossible to do just like that) is comparable to closing the whole Internet - it doesn't make sense to close the whole network because some (okay.. most) of the content is illegal.

[Yi Fong Yu]

i think imdb.com already does most of that except for the p2p stuff.

[Dmitry Kichenko]

Does it? Does it have all the films you made? That's the whole point of the project.

[Chris Hurd]

We already have the potential for such a project right here at DV Info, in the form of the current DV for the Masses forum. I'd rather pour some support into developing this part of our community with whoever is interested in doing it, than sending people away to some other site.

These ideas are great and all, but please consider working with us right here instead of starting something up from scratch. I can't send our members away to new sites, but I can certainly assist with expanding our own coverage into new areas.

[Dmitry Kichenko]

Sure. Let's do it your way.

You guys have the vBulletin message board and I can try hooking it up with what I've done so far (so there's an actual database and not just topics on the board).
What do you think?

If it's possible, that actually would be even better because right now I have to host the server AND the hub. In your case the database is based on your hosting and I can host the hub. How is that?

I've been trying to make Invision Power Board work all this morning, tried a dozen of versions of server, mysql, and php, and I'm really wasted right now. It'd be really nice to work with your linux-based server :D.

[Dmitry Kichenko]

Okay.. How this can be done..
A few options - creating a subsection on the website. Like, there's XL2 Watchdog. In the similar fashion, there can be the film database. Keeping the same design/style for the website will not seperate it graphically from the rest of the websites on the dvinfo, but personally I think the general look and especially the forum theme would appreciate some redesigning. I know, you probably didn't have time to do it, I can do if you want.

As to the website, I think the request system makes sense as you don't want to give users total control over the database. Or at least, you can turn the moderation option for the topics being created in the database forum, so before a topic is posted, it has to be approved by a moderator.

If you don't quite get what I based my website on, I'll explain: topics from a particular forum represent movie entries on the website. I figured having sub-forums representing different Genres works best to organize all the films.
The movies are being listed NOT in the form of topics on the forum but more like a list of articles. Basically, the concept is just making use of existing message board database, which is good for a few reasons:
* It's easy to add new entries - you just add a topic on the forum and it appears on the website as a movie.
* related to the 1st one - there's no need to code additional website admin control panels, just the code to display the db entries the way you want.

That's the idea.

[Dmitry Kichenko]

But first, what would make sense is a poll: how many people like the idea of sharing their films on the P2P network rather than paying for domain and hosting. Because I like the idea but maybe others like paying for the high-speed and for the hosting.
If they do, then I guess I won't even bother hosting a P2P hub and will just use my server to host the movies. In this case the movie database will consist of links to files on the servers, meaning people will have to leave their files or the links to movies will not work. It'll be up to moderators to check the links.

How is this? A huge plan,eh :).

[Yi Fong Yu]

the prob with p2p you dunno where the file is going, but with hosting you can at least get a sense of where people are coming from and where they are grabbing your files from.

[Dmitry Kichenko]

Well, heh, where else can people find out about your movie other than this website (f you're not famous and all)?
+ If there are going to be direct links to the movie files, you're not going to be able to find out much about a downloader either, besides maybe an IP address. If we post links to the download page though (which is what makes more sense now) - that's when you can shoot cookies and see where people came from etc. If it's that important, of course.
Again - the p2p as a way to spread your movies is an option when you have a relatively fast connection. Dial-up won't do.

[Steve Franco]

I think the p2p idea sounds good. Any and all venues for getting our stuff out there is a good thing in my opinion.