Letitbit

» see letitbit.net as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

Letitbit was a one-click file host. The first capture of letitbit.net, from 26 June 2007, mixes a Russian headline with English instructions for uploading in three clicks. Under the form it says "letitbit.net is a FREE hosting service" and then "The maximum file size Unlimited ;)". By 2010 the smiley was gone and the browser limit was 2000 megabytes, with FTP for anything larger. The menu had gained a link labeled "$Earn" and support was an ICQ number. The footer carried one legal sentence: "Owner of the service operates under the laws of the Seychelles Republic".

The "$Earn" link was the business. Free visitors got a slow download and a wait, which a premium account removed. People who uploaded popular files were paid for the traffic they brought. The same program ran across two sister hosts, Shareflare.net and Vip-file.com. By 2012 the interface came in five languages, Russian first.

The fullest description of the company was written by its opponents. In October 2015 both the MPAA and the RIAA named Letitbit.net in their notorious markets submissions to the US government. The MPAA's filing calls it a direct download cyberlocker owned by a company registered in the Seychelles and Cyprus and hosted at Webzilla in the Netherlands. It counts 3,320,274 unique visitors in August 2015, a comScore figure, and describes rewards of up to 15 dollars per 1,000 downloads.

~ the chronicle ~

~ rank 126 in turkey ~

Alexa's page for the site was archived in April 2011 and again in May 2012, and the two captures bracket the winter when the file host business broke. In the first one Letitbit is ranked 365th in the world and 30th in Russia, with 41 percent of its visitors coming from Russia. Turkey is far down the country list, at 681.

On 19 January 2012 the FBI seized Megaupload, and three days later FileSonic switched off sharing on its own platform. The audience went looking for hosts that were still open and still paying. In the May 2012 capture Letitbit is 274th in the world and Russia supplies only 18 percent of the visitors. The country list has filled with new names, with Egypt at 53 and Turkey at 126.

I had been on TTNet broadband for about six years by then. Turkish forums posted every release as a column of mirror links, one line per file host, and you picked the host whose waiting timer annoyed you least. The Alexa numbers say Letitbit went from a rare line in that column to a regular one within a single year.

~ fifteen dollars per thousand downloads ~

The payments were the first thing to go. On 1 September 2015 the operators announced, in Russian, that the affiliate program shared by Letitbit and its two sister hosts was ceasing operations. Registration closed and earnings stopped accruing that day. Payouts were processed until 14 September, and after that the partner accounts were locked. The notice ended by thanking the partners for staying with the service all those years. The MPAA's filing, written about five weeks later, still described the rewards scheme in the present tense.

~ the project does not exist ~

The download site itself lasted seven more months. The last capture of the full front page is from 9 April 2016. Two days later letitbit.net shows a page from its registrar, EuroDNS, under the heading "This domain name has been suspended". The text explains that the domain is pending ICANN verification, a yearly check of contact details that registrars have had to run since 2014. The owner could lift it by logging in, and there is a button marked REACTIVATE DOMAIN.

The old site never came back. From 10 June 2016 the address returned a single sentence, printed twice, "The project does not exist", and it was still saying so that December. Today letitbit.net is a parking page with the line "This domain may be for sale".

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