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Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

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Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#51

Post by naviehuynh »

dineshp2 wrote: post #28

The reason piracy is so popular is because it is free and because it's incredibly convenient, in that order. The convenience factor is basically, if you want some content (movie, game) it's a simple search and download away (streaming torrents seem to be gaining traction). No legal alternative offers this level of convenience. I suspect piracy will become harder for the average user due to three letter agencies makin…

It can be free but not that convenient. Pirated content needs to be checked to make sure it's not fake nor malicious, not to mention the technical downsides of the torrent protocol (large bandwidth consumption, insecure, easy to block, slow speed on non port-forwarding routers etc)

It's much easier to buy and download games on Steam or watch movies on Netflix nowadays.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#52

Post by celticninja »

provoc wrote: post #29
celticninja wrote: post #24

oh look a troll, using a brand new account too, what a great way to add to the conversation.

Baselessly accusing others of trolling isn't exactly a stellar addition to the conversation. Sometimes an echo chamber, as HN often is on the subject of piracy and copyright, needs the occasional dissenting comment to add diversity to the conversation.

You are correct it is not. However it is not baseless in this case. You create a brand new account, called "provoc“ then make a deliberately provocative statement. You are a troll perhaps you just haven't realised it yet.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#53

Post by provoc »

funkyy wrote: post #32
provoc wrote: post #22

Good. Maybe this will deter people from stealing music, films and software. It's a disgrace that so many work so hard on their craft, only to have the fruits of their efforts ripped off by the immoral. I hope the authorities shut all these torrent search engines down, and prosecute the owners to the full extent of the law.

Sharing, not stealing. It must be comfortable to judge people from comfort of a couch in 1st world country, right? What about point in constitution of many countries about free access to culture? Music stars make most of their money out of concerts anyways, and selling music is actual way to make money by huge labels. But you surely knew that only 10% of each CD goes to actual performers. And tbf - the only reason I…

It's theft of service, so it is stealing.

And uploading many small pieces of files with up to millions of anonymous entities rather stretches the usual connotations of the word "sharing".

Regarding constitutional directives, it's unreasonable to think that "free access to culture" is supposed to imply "steal movies, music and software via the internet".

The idea that musicians make most of their money from gigging is still no excuse to steal their music. That they are getting a minor cut from each sale surely makes this behaviour worse.

And as you live in Europe, there's nothing to stop you ordering CDs and DVDs from Amazon, and paying for what you want to listen and watch rather than just stealing it and making excuses.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#55

Post by shade23 »

thinkloop wrote: post #43
dyml wrote: post #19

What would it take to build a secure & resilient torrent site? I'm guessing fully decentralised and I've seen mentions of * ipfs ( https://ipfs.io/ ) * zeronet ( https://zeronet.io/ * Riffle (anonymous communication) Couldn't we leverage bits of the blockchain technology? Since it's a fully distributed shared database where writers don't trust each other and no middleman is trusted either? (edit:formatting)

There are 3 other issues: hosting the UI, DNS, and monetization. You can get away with hosting a client-heavy JavaScript interface on ipfs as well, but the URL will be ugly making you reliant on Google not dropping you (central point of failure). And then there is incentive - even if you manage to anonymously take Bitcoin for ads or what have you, someone will eventually take all the work and strip them. The whole th…

> but the URL will be ugly making you reliant on Google not dropping you (central point of failure)

How many people use google to start a search for torrents?

I stopped doing so because the higher results would normally be clickbait links

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#56

Post by stubish »

comboy wrote: post #35
dyml wrote: post #19

What would it take to build a secure & resilient torrent site? I'm guessing fully decentralised and I've seen mentions of * ipfs ( https://ipfs.io/ ) * zeronet ( https://zeronet.io/ * Riffle (anonymous communication) Couldn't we leverage bits of the blockchain technology? Since it's a fully distributed shared database where writers don't trust each other and no middleman is trusted either? (edit:formatting)

What do you need a blockchain for? Storing millions of no more seeded torrents? There are already magnet links and DHT which is distributed shared database. The only issue is a search function, which is much easier to implement and works much faster when it's done in a centralized form.

For distributing all those magnet links of course. Yes, it will be a huge morgue of dead magnet links but not being able to remove them is a required feature. And more importantly it needs to store ratings and not be gameable, or it will be taken over for malware and spam and die a quick death. Which is going to take some thought.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#57

Post by moretrees »

kinleyd wrote: post #4
amariyappa wrote: post #2

any alternative aggregator ??

http://www.idope.se/ looks pretty decent.

I haven't found anything on the internet regarding idope.se but it seems to be pretty nice.

I suppose you're the admin? How sure are you that "servers never go down"?

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#58

Post by provoc »

celticninja wrote: post #52
provoc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baselessly accusing others of trolling isn't exactly a stellar addition to the conversation. Sometimes an echo chamber, as HN often is on the subject of piracy and copyright, needs the occasional dissenting comment to add diversity to the conversation.

You are correct it is not. However it is not baseless in this case. You create a brand new account, called "provoc“ then make a deliberately provocative statement. You are a troll perhaps you just haven't realised it yet.

May I direct you to the HN comment guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

"What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling."

Please engage with the substance of comments rather than accusing others of trolling.

It was indeed a provocative comment given the unfortunate HN zeitgeist on torrenting and piracy, but accusations of being a 'troll' are overly negative and insulting.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#59

Post by L-four »

naviehuynh wrote: post #51
dineshp2 wrote: post #28

The reason piracy is so popular is because it is free and because it's incredibly convenient, in that order. The convenience factor is basically, if you want some content (movie, game) it's a simple search and download away (streaming torrents seem to be gaining traction). No legal alternative offers this level of convenience. I suspect piracy will become harder for the average user due to three letter agencies makin…

It can be free but not that convenient. Pirated content needs to be checked to make sure it's not fake nor malicious, not to mention the technical downsides of the torrent protocol (large bandwidth consumption, insecure, easy to block, slow speed on non port-forwarding routers etc) It's much easier to buy and download games on Steam or watch movies on Netflix nowadays.

In many places this is still not the case.

Re: Torrentz Shuts Down, Largest Torrent Meta-Search Engine Says Farewell

#60

Post by Roritharr »

Svenskunganka wrote: post #11
derefr wrote: post #8

Oh wow, what's going on with torrent sites lately? I feel like we're "running out" of them somehow.

It's a tricky business running a torrent site. Unless it is fully decentralized, it can be shut down fairly easily. Starting a torrent site using the HTTP & DNS protocols is a lost cause. HTTP can be worked around, but DNS is very problematic. I think we'll see more and more torrent sites show up that leverages IPFS[1] or ZeroNet[2], but the second the main browser vendors adds support for something like IPNS (decent…

Since Mozilla didn't shy away to include Adobe Binaries in Firefox to decrypt Movie-Streams, i'm pretty sure for IPNS we're going to get a unmodifiable Blacklist so "Bad"-Sheep can be blocked.
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