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I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

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Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that this argument would hold up in court as you're not just downloading for yourself (which you could argue you have a license to the content), but you're also providing (at least parts) of the content to others. I think this is where you'd definitely get into trouble.

Yup, at least in Germany that's the legal situation: They send out cease&desist letters because torrent upload counts as "sharing the copyrighted work without a license", and because of bit-torrent high connectivity they just assume by default that you are doing it on the "scale of a business", stipulating absurd damage sums. I once torrented an episode of the show The Americans, my last option as my usual sources we…

I'm not living in Germany, but am downloading torrents (to watch stuff unavailable via HBO/Netflix) via VPN which terminates in Germany. I wonder if the VPN company is getting shitloads of those C&D letters and if they can ever blow back on me.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but all they see is parts identified by hashes. How are they supposed to know whether is a Linux distro or a movie?

Because, quite frankly, parts identified by hashes is not all they see. If you're monitoring and logging the traffic then it's trivial to not only determine the filename of a bittorrent download, but also everything you need to connect to the torrent yourself and download it to verify that it's what the filename says, if that's what you wish to do. And, personally, I'd expect someone to at least check the filename be…

The torrent file is downloaded over a secure connection that you can’t monitor. Can you please tell me which messages in the BitTorrent protocol contain the filenames?

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, quite frankly, parts identified by hashes is not all they see. If you're monitoring and logging the traffic then it's trivial to not only determine the filename of a bittorrent download, but also everything you need to connect to the torrent yourself and download it to verify that it's what the filename says, if that's what you wish to do. And, personally, I'd expect someone to at least check the filename be…

Clients can obfuscate traffic though?

The obfuscation is just to disguise the traffic so providers can’t easily implement blanket bans on all BitTorrent traffic

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#655
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels so weird to grow up in an age of rampant, unabashed piracy, where literally everyone around you is burning CDs or cracking games or handing out copied mixtapes, and see questions like these. It just goes to show how thoroughly streaming squashed piracy (at least before everything fractured into the current landscape), and how short our collective memories are. Data yearns to be free -- sharing it and copying…

If someone puts great effort and cost into producing media, why would others be entitled to get the fruits of that labor for free? Game of Thrones is a luxury, not a necessity; people aren't entitled to it just because they want it and refuse to pay for it.

I don't mind paying for the latest album/ebook/videogame. What I mind is not being able to watch GoT in HD on Linux. I mind paying for the latest album then not being able to play it on my openhome DLNA devices. I mind not being able to play a random selection of more than 1000 or so songs from my library (a big enough playlist to not hear the same song multiple times daily). I mind not being able to crossfade my music, or use a media player that can adjust for the shitty speakers in my phone. I can finally share my video game library with my friend, but if I want to play even a free game while they use my library, that's not possible (the only limitation here should be playing the same game). I mind paying for an ebook, then not being able to read it in purple 34pt copperplate against a green background with line breaks where they belong (get thee hence PDF). I mind not being able to search the contents of multiple ebooks I own for the name of a character because I forgot the book title or because it's a cameo in another series. I mind not being able to create a playlist of music that contains files from my Google play music library, my Dropbox folder, and my desktop. I mind buying media from a DRM provider, then they decide to shut their service down and I can never access those files again; I may have some chance if I install their software before they shut down their servers, but I'll lose access if I ever upgrade my computer/OS (Nintendo DSi store, various other defunct ebook/music/video game providers). I mind that the e-book I downloaded through my library's OverDrive subscription cannot be read offline at all because it's not available as an epub or on Amazon, and thus it can't be downloaded to read offline, and for the same reason I also can't take notes or have multiple bookmarks. I mind that I can't give away my purchased ebooks after I'm done with them. I mind the fact that to watch movies away from home, I need to get a more expensive tablet (cellular version) and pay monthly for an extra data line that likely limits me to only watching 3-4 movies anyways.

Free is nice, yes. But money isn't the only reason for piracy. Downloading is easier and frequently faster than ripping the DRM off myself.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#656
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just get a DVD/Blueray player. The content is there for you to legally get and pay for. Heck, you can buy pretty much any movie from Amazon digitally. There is really no excuse not to pay.

> Heck, you can buy pretty much any movie from Amazon digitally. Not really, I pay for Amazon prime, tho in Germany, as such the content is very limited and often only exists dubbed, granted: They've been getting better with this. But delivery of certain shows sometimes is days and weeks late compared to US release, streaming quality has also been spotty for me with no real way to fix anything. I also have shared acc…

> With Netflix I could use a VPN to get access to the US version, but finding a free VPN with enough bandwidth to stream Full HD content is easier said than done and finding a good paid one seems like quite a bothersome task.

My understanding is that you'd still be breaking copyright laws, so you might as well download from torrents...

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#657
post #347
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IIRC they have a minimum payment. You need to put $5 in your account. Not sure what they do if you pay by subscription and only use a few hours, but when I was using DO, you needed to fund your account with $5 even if you were using the $100 free credit from GitHub education.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea "exclusive monopolies" and transferable intellectual property rights for perpetuity is bullshit. The blunt fact of the matter is - A majority of the movies would gain more by giving it away to the public domain because most movies fail. Radio did not kill Art. Internet is the new radio. The same is true even for software. 80% of business fail. It would not matter if they gave their code away. GPL based busin…

Plenty of 100 million dollar movies have been entirely funded by the people [0]. They pay using a thing called “tickets”, or sometimes by paying a small fee to download it to their homes. To your point, the vast majority of media and software is proprietary, though much of it is supporting in nature and not directly for sale. Nevertheless, shouldn’t publishers be free to choose how they fund their creations? If we ta…

> Nevertheless, shouldn’t publishers be free to choose how they fund their creations?

Of course. The problem is when they demand that goverments take away their ciziten's natural rights to copy and share information in order to support their chosen business model. If publishers want society to make their business model possible by being given special "rights" and having public institudions enforce those "rights" then it is very much up to all of society to choose if that is acceptable.

Remember copyright is an entirely artificial construct meant to benefit society by encouraging creators to produce content. It is my and many others opinion that the current state of copyright is a very one sided affair that benefits mainly big corporations while having numerous negative effects on society.

> If we take away the option of artificial scarcity then an entire highly trained professional class will be out of work.

Unlikely. There will always be a demand for entertainment and people interested in filling that demand will find a way to make it worthwile.

But even if the entire entertainment industry would instantly disappear then that would still not be an argument to uphold unjust laws. Professions becoming obsolete with progress is entirely natural. People can adapt.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#659
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My previous employer had a strongly worded email and CEO statement sent out after they were sent a notice of over 100 company IPs (out of 15000 employees) torrenting the game of thrones finale to basically tell people "Hey, don't do that, we do business with many of those companies".

And our company (80,000+) showed us the finale live from the US. Paid for of course.

How do you even pay for that? 80k potential viewers?

Aren't streaming licenses normally region exclusive?

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#660

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.

Does it help much that Android's source is available?
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