Several weeks ago we featured on this blog a brand new private torrent tracker called ‘The X’. It was the latest project by the crew behind SceneLife (now defunct) and needless to say, caught the attention of many in the BitTorrent community. The X was the first tracker to be based on the much hyped SCTBDEV codebase and even more importantly did something many other start up General/0Day trackers failed to do – it started off operations with more than 15000 active torrents – movies, music, games, TV shows and pretty much everything else. As we highlighted in our last article, getting into ‘The X’ was initially only possible after going through an IRC interview. Now, a few weeks into the launch, this has changed – the site has opened direct signups probably for the first and the last time and potential new members are now able to get in almost instantaneously.

Before we go into open signups, it would be interesting to see how ‘The X’ has done in the past couple of weeks since its launch. After starting off operations with 15600+ torrents, they’ve managed to keep the momentum going by adding several hundred new torrents a day. As of 14/5/2010, the active torrent count on X stands at 20600+, averaging at around 250 new daily torrents added during the last three weeks – impressive stuff indeed. The user count too has slowly but surely increased and stood at ~1900 just before open signups began. This is bound to increase further now with the flood gates open and this news being posted everywhere. Opening signups IMHO was the correct move by The X administration – no tracker can survive without leechers and direct signups are way more faster and usually generate more enthusiastic response from the BT community than IRC recruitment.

Speaking of the recent changes on X, a new section has now been introduced for ‘spam’ scene releases. This is a separate browse page which can be accessed from the main toolbar and makes it easier to discover and filter hundreds of new uploads that get added daily. Some of you will be glad to know that all releases in the Spam section (which include Applications, AudioBooks, E-Books, Mobile, Music & Music Videos) are FreeLeech. For a more detailed account of the type of content available on this tracker and other site features, please refer to our previous article located here.

In other news, The X has finally launched the ‘snatch policy’ we talked about in the previous article. The snatch policy is a system that promotes user activity and weeds out inactive users, for example tracker collectors. Here’s how it works:

Every month (every 30 days) you MUST download and fully seed at least 2 torrents above 100 MB. There is absolutely no excuse to not follow this policy. We are providing our members with the latest and absolute best releases, and we also have many FreeLeech torrents. If you cannot download at least two small torrents (100 MB and above) every month – you have absolutely nothing to do here.

However, the snatch policy requirements cease to exist when you progress further upwards the user classes scheme – that is, higher user classes are exempt from this rule. For more information on this, please refer to /rules.php and /faq.php pages.

Anyways as stated at the start of this post, The X is currently open for signup. According to a news post on site homepage, this could the the first and only time they will open registrations:

Open Signups:

Sign-ups are going to be open for the next 5 days. This is the first and probably the last time we are going to open our doors. Tell all your friends and those whom you trust the most!

If you are looking forward to becoming a member of this site, the signup link is posted below (in this case with permission from tracker staff).

Site Name: The X

Signup URL: http://scenexpress.net/opensignup.php

Note: IP ranges from Romania and Israel are banned from signing up. Only existing users from these countries are allowed to use the tracker.

Official Trailer: Embedded on this page

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