I Know What You Download on BitTorrent • Hacker News Board

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#161

Post by AnonC » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

sn_master wrote: post #112

I've been using a Seedbox since December 2014. Best 15$/month I pay. You can even pay with Bitcoin, tho I just use PayPal. 2 TB of storage, very fast speed with caching (i.e. some torrents finish immediately if someone else has it downloaded). An uncached Blu-ray ~4 GB movie gets finished in 15-30 mins. They also have auto-delete feature. If they get a legal complaint they just delete the offending torrent and keep m…

> Only problem I have with torrents are unpopular movies/series usually have no seeds, but there is nothing that can be done about that.

> Pro-tip: Do not download the actual .torrent file. Many websites are setup to redirect you into an endless loop of shady .exe downloads. Always, always just copy the magnet link to your clipboard.

A better pro-tip for these issues: if you're anyway using a seed box, figure out and switch to private trackers and follow their rules. With the good ones around, you won't have to worry about shady downloads. Some of the unpopular or older content may also be available on those.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#162

Post by d33 » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

This part is outright creepy:

> We cooperate with Right Holders, Law Offices, Internet Service Providers, Advertising Agencies and National Police. We provide information about sharing/downloading content via Bittorrent Network all over the world.

It's one thing to collect this as some sort of research, but another to feed MAFIAA [1] with this data to make their job easier. The fact that they process the data without disclosing who they actually are doesn't make it any less fishy. Doesn't it violate GDPR or something?

1: http://mafiaa.org/

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#163

Post by ktm5j » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #44

Santosh83 wrote: post #12

Well my ISP gives out a dynamic IP address each time my DSL modem connects to them, so this tactic only reveals who downloaded what when they were assigned my current IP. Nothing much can be inferred from this data unless you are the ISP or govt and can tie the IP to the subscriber. And yes, it shows my IP downloaded the movie Zombieland, which I never did, so it is some other subscriber of the same ISP.

Nowadays internet users on cable often keep the same IP address for weeks if not months. Who knows, your ISP could change its configuration tomorrow and always re-assign the same IP address to you as long as its available. I think the point of this website is to show people that using torrents is far from anonymous and invisible.

My modem has had the same IP for nearly 10 years now! It's the same even after several moves, one to a new county. Super convenient, but that's the nicest thing I have to say about Comcast. Boy I wish there were other options.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#164

Post by tstrimple » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #59

tstrimple wrote: post #22

Laughs in Usenet. The proliferation of streaming services and restricted content has me investing in alternative options more these days. It's not about paying for content, it's about content becoming less accessible again.

Usenet has its own issues though. The past couple years there’s been a massive jump in DMCA takedowns. On certain things you now have download as it becomes available, in a week it’ll be gone. For things that no one cares to pay for monitoring of, you can go back years. So, pros and cons to torrents that don’t get taken down specially but torrents “die” of old age when no one seeds them. It’s odd to me that file shar…

I've not run into anything that I wanted to watch which isn't available on Usenet. DMCA takedowns haven't been an issue at all because I use two Usenet servers with multiple aggregated indexers. If something gets taken down, it gets replaced very quickly and the tools I use automatically retry in the event of failure. The other benefit is I can saturate my bandwidth instantly instead of the dreaded kb/s trickle that torrents start out as / become. After making a request for a TV show in Ombi, I will usually have the episode show up in my Plex list within a few minutes. Most movies are there in less than ten minutes. I haven't tried torrenting in a good while, but my Usenet experience has been dramatically better than what I experienced with P2P.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#165

Post by _jal » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

_tbyy wrote: post #125

flak48 wrote: post #89

An intern once thought it was a good idea to torrent a couple of Game of Thrones episodes using my startup's Digital Ocean box. We found out after Digital Ocean forwarded us an email from HBO (who presumably tracked Digital Ocean down via the IP) that we were engaging in piracy. We sent an email to everyone with access, saying whoever was doing it to stop. Then we got a second email (a final warning). Everyone denied…

The problem here is not recognizing that the piracy was actually the problem. In what way was it forgivable? Because everybody does it, that makes it okie dokie? Because you don't have a Netflix account? If everyone treated piracy as theft (it is) then no one would have to waste their time investigating it because the collective will would exist to prevent it.

> If everyone treated piracy as theft (it is)

Then everybody would be as wrong as you. You can repeat this as much as you like, but it is simply false.

Legally speaking: copyright infringement is an offense distinct from theft.

Speaking from reality: copyright infringement does not deprive the holder of the right of their property.

Speaking ethically: Copyright infringement is a violation of a particular commercial mode of exchange. "Unauthorized Looking" would be a better term for what retail bittorrent users are up to.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#166

Post by Godel_unicode » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

alextheparrot wrote: post #141

_tbyy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is not recognizing that the piracy was actually the problem. In what way was it forgivable? Because everybody does it, that makes it okie dokie? Because you don't have a Netflix account? If everyone treated piracy as theft (it is) then no one would have to waste their time investigating it because the collective will would exist to prevent it.

I am unsure when you grew up, but for many of us who grew up in the 90s and 00s, this is exactly the mindset we have. I used to be able to take a movie I had and lend it to a friend, the same with music. The movement away from physical copies took this away from many of us, so we tried to take it back in kind -- piracy is what they called that behavior. I understand it might not seem right to you, but in all the soci…

> The movement away from physical copies

I just don't understand this argument, physical copies of virtually any type of media absolutely still exist. If you want to own even Netflix shows on disc, you can do that pretty cheaply. I'd you want to get Blu Ray discs delivered to you by mail for a subscription fee, you can probably do that (although this is slightly more geographically restricted).

This argument is simply invalid.

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete-Seasons-Collect...

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#167

Post by jjice » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

flak48 wrote: post #89

An intern once thought it was a good idea to torrent a couple of Game of Thrones episodes using my startup's Digital Ocean box. We found out after Digital Ocean forwarded us an email from HBO (who presumably tracked Digital Ocean down via the IP) that we were engaging in piracy. We sent an email to everyone with access, saying whoever was doing it to stop. Then we got a second email (a final warning). Everyone denied…

Couldn't the intern have paid for his own bare bones VPS and done it from there? Or used a different paid VPN service, which cost roughly the same ~$5? Seems like the cost of a VPN compared to the value of his internship wouldn't even compare. All for some campus clout.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#168

Post by sn_master » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #156

sn_master wrote: post #112

I've been using a Seedbox since December 2014. Best 15$/month I pay. You can even pay with Bitcoin, tho I just use PayPal. 2 TB of storage, very fast speed with caching (i.e. some torrents finish immediately if someone else has it downloaded). An uncached Blu-ray ~4 GB movie gets finished in 15-30 mins. They also have auto-delete feature. If they get a legal complaint they just delete the offending torrent and keep m…

> I then download the actual content either from FTP or HTTPS. If its a movie, I just download the single .mp4 file from the portal itself (and skip the subtitle/cover files) with HTTPS straight from Chrome, or even stream it directly through VLC! Since you mentioned you're using Whatbox in another comment, why not simply use Plex to catalog and stream the files?

Because I haven't heard about it before this comment? I am taking a look now, it looks interesting.

I usually like to download the whole files anyway and keep them on my external big drive to make sure I have them when a movie stops being popular and becomes harder to find on torrents.

Also, I have an external projector that can play movies from a USB and having the full file available for me to copy onto the USB in few minutes is very useful for my use case.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#169

Post by 1980phipsi » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

sn_master wrote: post #123

demadog wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which seed box?

Whatbox. The 15/month plan I have is the legacy one, but the new plans are only very slightly more expensive (22$) and have more storage and speed.

Thanks for posting about this. I hear about seed boxes, but never thought it was affordable to rent one. One question: after downloading the files, how easy is it to get them back on a home computer?

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#170

Post by samcrawford » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

jermier wrote: post #56

Luckily my router only supports IPV4 and I'm assigned a vague IPv4 CGNAT IP every time I switch it on. I used this site to do some OSINT on my IP and you guessed it: It looks like I'm sharing my IP with 1000s of other subscribers so doing attribution to 'me' would be hard and also wouldn't hold up in court. Also see: https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2011/08/why-ip-addresses-al... https://www.securityweek.com/eff-warn…

It's harder, perhaps, but not impossible, and would certainly still hold up in court. When tracking a user behind CGNAT you need to capture not just their source IP, but also their source port. If you have timestamp, source IP and source port, that's enough for the ISP to resolve it back to the subscriber.