Review of Imageshack's http torrent download service

A review, tutorial and pondering of Imageshack's beta Torrent Service, allowing http downloads of torrents from ImageShack's servers.

I have previously had little use of torrents. Having only ever used Bitlet to download torrents through a web-applet. Imageshack have come up with what I see as a very simple and well thought out tool for torrents.

- http://tor.imageshack.us/tor/
Imageshack's torrent service allows you to download a torrent onto the Imageshack servers and then download the file from Imageshack's servers as a normal HTTP file. This service has many advantages and merits to making torrents easier to download and use. At the moment you must first sign up for a free account in order to use this feature.

One of the great advantages of this service is that the user can have Imageshack start downloading a torrent, then the user can leave the page, disconnect from the internet or turn off their computer. Once the torrent has downloaded to Imageshack's servers the user can download at nice fast speeds, not reliant on torrent peers.

This ability to have the servers do work for you and then you come back later to pick up the results is very useful and hopefully more free services will take previously computer-based tasks and do them on their servers for the user, allowing the user to collect the results from any computer with an internet connection.

Features

• Free
• Ability to select individual files from a torrent to download
• 5GB online storage, and 10GB bandwidth
• Bandwidth resets monthly

The free account gives you 5GB of storage space and 10GB of bandwidth, with the option to purchase up to 100GB of disk space and 200GB of bandwidth. Though, only bandwidth is cumulative, with the ability to free up disk space by removing files which you have finished with. Usefully bandwidth is also reset every month.

The top of the page gives you a quick recap of your current usage of your monthly usage limits



Whilst giving deserved praise TorrentFreak were also curious as to Imageshack's motives in offering such a controversial service. Jack Levin, the founder of Imageshack, replied;

“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 to too. We have the capacity to do it, and the world needs it.”
"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.”
Jack Levin in TorrentFreak's article on Imageshacks torrent service

Using Imageshack's torrent service to download a torrent

1. Use a torrent search engine to find the torrent which you wish to download, and locate the '.torrent' link

2. Go to http://tor.imageshack.us/tor/ (free account required.) Paste the URL of the torrent file (or upload) and press 'GO'



If all is correct, a new torrent will appear at the bottom of the page



Open the 'START' link and the page should eventually refresh and the torrent's status changes.



The status link, also gives you a quick round up of all the details for the torrents progress



Once Imageshack have successfully downloaded the torrent to their server you will be able to download the file as per any normal directly hosted file.

3.



Opening the 'DOWNLOAD' link will allow you to either download a handy '.zip' file of all the files inside the torrent,



Or there is the useful option of selecting individual files from the torrent to download.

Advantages

• Free
• No need to have your computer on
• Simple clean interface
• Allows you to seed
• Ability to download individual files from inside the torrent.

Disadvantages

• Other than the wishlist features I can think of no disadvatages.

Wishlist

• Email notification of download completion
• RSS feed for account, notifying when downloads are complete and seed reaches certain values
• Seed value shown on front-page, saves clicking through 'STATUS'
• Auto delete option once torrent seed has reached a set value,/li>

Verdict

The ability to download torrents from any computer with an internet connection and only as a normal http file makes using torrrents very flexible and simple. This service has been created very well, with lots of useful features working well together. The clean interface, simple and reliable features with a useful front page will prove a big bonus for users.

Though only as long as these advantages remain so and the service does not become confusing and cluttered with irrelevant features.
Hopefully this is the start of internet servers allowing users to perform previously lengthy computer-based tasks.
Imageshack have suceeded in creating a very worthy tool, which is likely to be reflected for Imageshack in a large user base.