Canadian writer Jane uploads 'Memory and Imagination', The Verge reports

Private BitTorrent trackers draw people searching for lost media, including a Canadian writer who found and uploaded a rare 1990s Library of Congress documentary, The Verge reported Monday.

The writer, a woman in her 30s using the pseudonym Jane, could not locate "Memory and Imagination" on streaming services, YouTube or pirate sites. The documentary features interviews with Steve Jobs and Julia Child.

Fearing the film could be lost, Jane checked auction sites and library catalogs and enlisted online acquaintances in the search. She told The Verge she wanted to "share it with other people to help ensure it would be preserved into the future."

Jane found no copy on sale through eBay or at any public library in North America. Her search turned up only one publicly available DVD, at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

"This obscure movie I'm looking for is only available in the Library of Alexandria!" Jane told The Verge.

A small online marketplace specializing in historical media eventually had the film, so Jane bought and uploaded a copy. "It looked like a digital rip of a severely degraded VHS tape," she said. Despite that, she said, "I was still over the moon [that] I rescued this historically significant documentary."

It was not immediately known which tracker received the upload.

The Verge compared private trackers to piracy's online speakeasies, saying they spread chiefly through word of mouth and operate with secrecy, exclusivity and strict rules. Their catalogs can be broad or devoted to subjects such as Chinese movies and motorsports, while one focuses on Frank Zappa music. Every pirate interviewed by the outlet used a pseudonym because of the copyrighted data they have been sharing.

Getting through the door

Membership rules vary. Some trackers admit newcomers only at intervals of weeks or months, while others screen applicants or make them pass interviews.

Jane started with an audiobook tracker that had more lenient entry rules because the leading movie trackers accepted only vetted users. She planned to progress from there. Before she could join, admins questioned her about server rules in an Internet Relay Chat room.

"It was so stressful! It felt like a job interview," Jane said.

Jane now maintains active accounts on 14 private trackers and said, "There is definitely a constant quest to level up."

Maysay, a user from Pakistan, told The Verge, "You want to get into those more exclusive 'elite' trackers at some point just for the sake of it."

The cost of staying active

Members generally have to maintain an upload-to-download ratio, with many trackers requiring them to supply as much bandwidth as they use. Falling below the required metrics often leads to restricted downloads, while egregious offenses bring immediate bans. Users call the redistribution of downloaded files "seeding."

Odel, a college student based on the West Coast, told The Verge he joined to obtain video games and "quickly found out that [private trackers] could replace everything else."

Some sites require users to seed a fixed number of terabytes to attain a rank, Odel told The Verge, which "can result in a lot of downloading of stuff I wouldn't ever consume otherwise, just to pump up that number."

Odel estimated he has downloaded around 500 terabytes across the 30 or so trackers on which he is active, and said he has watched "probably less than one percent" of it.

Maysay said he seeds around 3,000 torrents at any given time and has often downloaded material he does not plan to watch.

Jane told The Verge that many private tracker users "are fully consumed with archive fever." She described her own activity in similar terms. "I am seeding over 2,000 torrents, and I have no personal interest in almost any of them," she said.

"You have to seed things you aren't interested in consuming to succeed in the tracker economy," Jane said.