INFO: How To Protect Your Uploads
Recently there was an uproar over a "time delay on the password" idea in an attempt to "protect" the longevity of an upload link to a sharing host -- this idea is ROYALLY FSCKED and counter-productive.
When the publishers / owners of the original goods want to go hunting to see who's distributing their product illegitimately, they search by their product's name or minor variations, and/or add the name of well known cracking / distro groups, and thanks to the huge number of unprotected wares-boards, blogs, rapidlibrary clones and other file-sharing aggregators, they will get a ton of hits. They will follow each link, find the openly-published RS/FF/MU/HL link, and go crying to the sharing host who will happily kill the upload. If you call your archive by some meaningless name, they're not going to find it unless they join every wares-board and go looking manually -- not going to happen (except the biggies, *i'm not spamming the site* and bubba's), because its too much like hard work, and searching for the name will get 95% of the "illegals" anyway.
There is a MUCH better way to protect an upload, both Mr Audioz and Captain Ozmosis (what a hero!) know the right way to do it, and it's a simple process:
1) MOST IMPORTANT!! The original installer(s) are re-archived using 'store' (no compression) into a new archive and given a name that is a semi-meaningless jumble of letters and digits that bears ABSOLUTELY NO RELATION to the name of the product, the name of the cracking group, or any other hint as to what is inside. Also, you must NOT add the website or blog's name to the archive!
2) Password-protect the new archive, and post your article so that both the full download link(s) AND the password are only viewable by registered members. This stops the Google search-spiders from picking it up and storing it in their cache, which in turn would be read by the file-sharing aggregators.
3a) When posting an article for your new upload DO NOT USE THE ORIGINAL DISTRO TITLE IN YOUR ARTICLE TITLE, NOR IN THE ARTICLE ITSELF! This is what the owners will be searching for, and the titles of posted articles are visible to the Google engines. Example: If you found a new synth you want to share and its original archive name is "ASSFX.MegaSynthy.1.0.5.VST.Working.ASSINE" then you should use the topic "ASS FX Mega Synth 1.0.5 VST". If you use a name that looks exactly the same as how the publisher uses it, their little anti-wares beavers are not going to know if it is a wares entry, a product review, or an online shop.
3b) Optional: When creating the title for your posting, prefix the name with a code for which sharing host(s) is used, in square-brackets. [RS] for Rapidshare, [MU] for MegaUpload, and so on; the code for MultiUpload is [Multi]. If you use both Hotfile and FileFactory, you would use the code [HF/FF].
3c) UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you use the full content of an NFO file as the text for your article. Use some of the description (its been lifted from the publisher's product page anyway!) but be careful about mentioning keygen makers or crack makers.
SPECIAL NOTE TO BOARD ADMINS:
If you don't know what a "robots.txt" file is, or why your site needs one, read NOW. A few lines of text into a robots.txt file will stop those pesky search engine spiders from reading everything on the site.
When the publishers / owners of the original goods want to go hunting to see who's distributing their product illegitimately, they search by their product's name or minor variations, and/or add the name of well known cracking / distro groups, and thanks to the huge number of unprotected wares-boards, blogs, rapidlibrary clones and other file-sharing aggregators, they will get a ton of hits. They will follow each link, find the openly-published RS/FF/MU/HL link, and go crying to the sharing host who will happily kill the upload. If you call your archive by some meaningless name, they're not going to find it unless they join every wares-board and go looking manually -- not going to happen (except the biggies, *i'm not spamming the site* and bubba's), because its too much like hard work, and searching for the name will get 95% of the "illegals" anyway.
There is a MUCH better way to protect an upload, both Mr Audioz and Captain Ozmosis (what a hero!) know the right way to do it, and it's a simple process:
1) MOST IMPORTANT!! The original installer(s) are re-archived using 'store' (no compression) into a new archive and given a name that is a semi-meaningless jumble of letters and digits that bears ABSOLUTELY NO RELATION to the name of the product, the name of the cracking group, or any other hint as to what is inside. Also, you must NOT add the website or blog's name to the archive!
2) Password-protect the new archive, and post your article so that both the full download link(s) AND the password are only viewable by registered members. This stops the Google search-spiders from picking it up and storing it in their cache, which in turn would be read by the file-sharing aggregators.
3a) When posting an article for your new upload DO NOT USE THE ORIGINAL DISTRO TITLE IN YOUR ARTICLE TITLE, NOR IN THE ARTICLE ITSELF! This is what the owners will be searching for, and the titles of posted articles are visible to the Google engines. Example: If you found a new synth you want to share and its original archive name is "ASSFX.MegaSynthy.1.0.5.VST.Working.ASSINE" then you should use the topic "ASS FX Mega Synth 1.0.5 VST". If you use a name that looks exactly the same as how the publisher uses it, their little anti-wares beavers are not going to know if it is a wares entry, a product review, or an online shop.
3b) Optional: When creating the title for your posting, prefix the name with a code for which sharing host(s) is used, in square-brackets. [RS] for Rapidshare, [MU] for MegaUpload, and so on; the code for MultiUpload is [Multi]. If you use both Hotfile and FileFactory, you would use the code [HF/FF].
3c) UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you use the full content of an NFO file as the text for your article. Use some of the description (its been lifted from the publisher's product page anyway!) but be careful about mentioning keygen makers or crack makers.
SPECIAL NOTE TO BOARD ADMINS:
If you don't know what a "robots.txt" file is, or why your site needs one, read NOW. A few lines of text into a robots.txt file will stop those pesky search engine spiders from reading everything on the site.