There was a time when someone searching for seedboxes online would only ever get results directing them towards a garden centre but nowadays the modern internet user searching for seedboxes is searching for the Bit Torrent inspired seedbox. If you are not familiar with Bit Torrent and P2P/torrent sites this post may as well be written in Martian for some of you, it is however the sort of thing the Daily Mail would frown upon, so content yourself in that knowledge!
As a fan of the Counting Crows I was very pleased to hear they were working on a new album, then I got a little delirious when I saw them announce US tour dates and had We Are Augustines as part of their supporting line-up. I’ve always liked Adam’s honest and approachable manner. In the days when I frequented MySpace I recall reading his posts discussing his mental health while I was attending weekly therapy sessions and listening to a shit load of Counting Crows. Anyway, I digress.
In amongst details of the new album and the tour was another email from Adam explaining why the band had decided to release 4 tracks from the new album on Bit Torrent. The band accepted that whether we like it or not, torrents are not going anywhere in a hurry but rather than thinking of it from a negative viewpoint, they realised that the Bit Torrent community consists of around 150m pairs of ears. That’s potentially 150 million new listeners, even if 1% of that 150 million become fans, that a helluva lot more than running around demanding that the internet be locked up in a box with a chip and PIN terminal attached. If you are old skool like me you can pick up the CD version of Underwater Sunshine for under £9
So, getting back to where we started What is a seedbox? Well, if you’re familiar with the concept of leeching and seeding vis a vis torrent sites, a seed box is basically just a hard drive hooked up to a fast internet connection, its sole purpose is to seed files into the torrent community.
If you happen to be a member of an invitation only tracker site then the chances are it runs a ratio system, these sites are great for sourcing things but all take and no give gets you ejected from the site quite quickly if you have a standard 1.2Mb upload on your PC being shared with 3 or 4 other devices.
Another reason for the popularity of seedboxes is, quite frankly, the security aspect. Let’s not kid ourselves, not everyone who uses torrent sites does so legally and with court orders closing access to sites like The Pirate Bay it may soon be the case that seedboxes will be the only way to access some sites in the UK. As most seedboxes are just rented servers in a European datacentre it’s very hard for identify the end users. You simply connect to your seedbox via SFTP and your ISP has no idea what you have downloaded.
Around a year ago I thought I’d try a seedbox to see if it helped me maintain a good ratio on some sites that I used, after much searching around I settled on Pulsed Media who offered 115Gb Storage, 100Mbps unmetered starting at just €9.95 per month. Which taken over the quarterly plan is about £10pm. The torrent client took a bit of getting used to but I quickly set it up so that it downloaded torrents as soon as they were released and was then available to seed constantly.
I would recommend a seedbox to anyone who makes use of torrent files and if you want an eco-friendly reason just think about returning to the days of switching your computer off at night, the seedbox is busy doing what it does best 24hrs a day…seeding!!
