I Know What You Download on BitTorrent • Hacker News Board

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#341

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

necovek wrote: post #321

sevenf0ur wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show in history. I remember when the first 4 episodes of season 5 were leaked at once. Christmas came early!

I have an HBO premium subscription (along with access to HBO Go), but I have downloaded a few of the episodes over torrent to ensure I can watch it where there was no internet or where it was unstable. While I have technically participated in copyright infringement (I haven't raided any ships, I promise, arrgh), I do not feel I have done anything morally wrong.

If you're in USA or somewhere else with liberal Fair Use then you might not have infringed?

I'm not sure there's any caselaw on downloading content you've paid for? Seems very close to format/time shifting to me.

Possibly depends if you leeched or not.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#342

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

minhazm wrote: post #291

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…

You'd think they would just pay for their own droplet in that scenario. Digital Ocean runs promo's all the time with free credits too.

I thought DO blocked torrenting, or perhaps officially disallows it?

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#343

Post by nybble41 » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

rootsudo wrote: post #221

Since everyone is taking about their experiences seeing workmates torrent, and no one is posting how this works - Torrents are peer to peer. Bit torrent is a type of application. Bittorrent are not inclusive to torrents anymore. Since everything is public, you can load several torrents, and watch for the handshake to occur and record the time/date and ip address. Do it on a large enough scale and there you go. There…

When you open a .torrent file or magnet link the client connects to a set of trackers (or DHT, a distributed tracker network) and receives a list of peers to connect to. This site just repeats that process for a bunch of different torrents and collates the resulting data. Of course, dynamic IP addresses are a thing—and the trackers can (and do) lie about which IP addresses are part of a swarm. If you see something that you didn't actually download it could be because your IP address was shared with another customer recently or it could simply be a tracker "poisoning the well" by mixing in random IPs.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#344

Post by lucb1e » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #320

I've got a fair number of torrents I've been seeding for who knows how long. And this site says I don't have anything. I don't use a VPN, but I use an invite-only tracker.

The site is indeed very inaccurate, and I'm not using private trackers. Seeing as there is a previous HN thread about it 6 months ago, it should have some historic data in which I occur... it just doesn't capture everything.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#345

Post by inetsee » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

Wistar wrote: post #253

RyJones wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a place where our internet was bad, but not that bad. We were coming up to a release and things were fubar. I asked the network guy to find what was up - a guy that reported to me was torrenting child porn.

I worked at a place where, one morning, the guy in the next office over got swarmed by company security and the police. He was trafficking in child porn on the company network. He was a super smart, super dumb guy who lost everything over it, his wife, custody of his kids, friends and a very high-paying career. His car sat in the company garage for weeks.

I worked on a secure project a very long time ago. A very smart guy (he was working on the operating system for a military avionics computer) printed out some child porn photos on a company color printer. (This was long enough ago that good quality color printers were very expensive, not like now when you can buy a color printer for less than $100.)

He got walked out. I don't know what other consequences he suffered. Being smart doesn't mean you can't do something really stupid.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#346

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:39 PM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #173

Bjartr wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is copyright infringement. There's no reason to call it theft. They are both bad for society, they are both illegal, but they are distinct.

While literally true; I have always found this argument to be petty and pedantic. I’ve heard every argument in the book; but even the old ads said ‘you wouldn’t steal ____’. The fundamental principle is so similar to the point that discussing it quickly devolves into pedantry. I am one that has had this discussion probably a dozen times; half of those on this forum, and I’ve just decided to stand by my educated opini…

The ads that infringed the copyright of a small music creator ... when the execs of the companies that paid for the ad go to jail for conspiracy to commit theft I'll change to using your wrong terminology.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#347

Post by iNeal » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

jjice wrote: post #303

kohtatsu wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DigitalOcean bills per hour.

But their lowest tier of VPS caps out at $5 a month https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

I believe they meant you only need it for a couple hours max so with the hourly rate it'd only be less than $0.02

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#348

Post by flak48 » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

sho wrote: post #261

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 only moral problem I have in your anecdote is the lying about it. With every fibre of my being, I could not care less about torrenting game of thrones .

And the fact that the intern didn't care/foresee we would suffer downtime or at the very least a major inconvenience if our accounts were suspended as long as they could finish their personal task.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#349

Post by dingaling » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

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.

> Laughs in Usenet

The rise in pirate binary groups is what killed Usenet feeds on most ISPs.

I used to be a great follower of text groups but it became more and more difficult to find a feed and the overall signal:noise ratio faded.

Eventually I gave up. Thanks for nothing, you folks who want to watch other people's content for free.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#350

Post by swdev281634 » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

NortySpock wrote: post #157

cosmojg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Why?

Because I make my money selling my labor and IP to my company (software engineer, it's in my contract.) If someone stole my IP from me or my company, it would be harder to pay the bills for either me, or my company.

When I was younger, out of curiosity I've downloaded leaked source code of Windows or video games.

Got an impression that code is not that useful to an outsider. It can help answering extremely specific questions how a particular small isolated function is implemented. Even ignoring legal issues, it won't significantly help building competing products, let alone building a successful business around such product.

When we hire people, they gain access to complete source code, documentation, continuous integration environment, bug tracker, and most importantly to the current developers. It usually takes them months to become productive. With just the source code, would probably take a year even for very smart person.