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…
I used to work at a ~100 person company that provided satellite equipment, mostly to media companies - radio stations, movie distributors, that type of thing. A senior customer service rep realized he had VPN access to a customer's, like.. T1 line. He started torrenting movies on it. On the CUSTOMERS network. Our entire company was nearly taken offline and the customer threatened cancelling the entire contract and su…
I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
751–760 of 786 posts
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#752Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to work at a ~100 person company that provided satellite equipment, mostly to media companies - radio stations, movie distributors, that type of thing. A senior customer service rep realized he had VPN access to a customer's, like.. T1 line. He started torrenting movies on it. On the CUSTOMERS network. Our entire company was nearly taken offline and the customer threatened cancelling the entire contract and su…
Somewhat off topic, but a T1 line gave a full one-and-a-half megabit/second. "Back then", this was the second coming. Today I have 600 megabit/second in my apartment...
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#753Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing stopping you from recording your screen a la a 1980s VCR
Actually, HDMI has DRM built in, and many DRM-laden apps won't work unless the HDMI DRM is working. The Amazon app has been telling me recently that my connection to my TV doesn't have it, but it actually does. Then I'll hit "play" again and it'll work. (I think it was a bug in their app, because it stopped again.) So recording it requires something that implements that HDMI DRM scheme, but still allows you to record…
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#754I'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…
Curious why pay $15/mo for a seedbox just to securely pirate content. No judgement, just curiosity.
Countries like Iran/Cuba/NK do not have any trade with the US. Its impossible to get the content legally. Seedbox paid for with BTC would allow them to download what they like without the government knowing it. These are not "lost" sales.
Even Saudi Arabia, despite having ties with the US, doesn't allow the sale of so much US content (e.g. ideological books, NC17/adult movies), and bans VPNs. For citizens there, Seedboxes are the only way to get hold of that content. These are not lost sales either.
Someone with a family and many kids who like movies can't and will not spend hundreds of dollars a month on movies/music to satisfy their entertainment desires when they have other things to worry about like putting food on the table. If they don't pirate it, they won't buy it. At best its a single lost sale, out of the dozens they download each month and make their kids happy despite the other difficulties they have in life. These are not lost sales either.
Software pricing isn't adjusted for local income levels. Something that costs 100$ means 10 hours at most of work in the US. In other countries, 100$ can be 2-4 weeks worth of salary in the "3rd world" countries (is that term still allowed ?). No one is gonna pay for Windows/Office/Photoshop in those countries anyway. If they can't pirate it, they would use the open source ones. No one will accept to double-triple the price of their new desktop computer because of software when they've already spent many month-year to have enough money to ask the shop around the corner to assemble them a desktop with Walmart-level specs. These are not lost sales either.
Fragmentation. If you want all the content, you need to have Netflix, Disney+, HBO, YouTube Premium, iTunes AND physical media from Amazon (do you even have a DVD/Blu-ray player ?). The hope that Netflix becomes a one-stop-shop vanished a long time ago. Netflix is only good if you like them to dictate what you'll watch. If you want the same content as torrents offer, for a movie that you'll watch one time, you might end up having to pay hundreds of dollars per month in subscriptions only to have one movie/series from each channel per month and not use the rest of what the distribution channel offers.
The music industry got its s*t together and iTunes/Amazon Music/Google Music/Spotify all offer all the music in the world for a small monthly subscription and there is no need for piracy. The movie/TV industry on the other hand is just moving in the opposite direction making it harder and harder to have a single useful subscription. Each content owner wants to put their own hands in the consumer's pocket.
The list goes on and on.
Now, you're right. A good amount of those who pirate content can afford it, but without those being involved, the rest who can't obtain the content legally wouldn't be able to get into the party.
Its a very complex question, but keep in mind that piracy existed since the very first days of software and music and these companies survived just fine.
For the cinema industry its more complex, but at the end of the day most people who visit the cinema do so because of the experience rather than to just watch a movie. No one is gonna say no to going out with their friends to watch a movie because they can get the DVD rip for free from a torrent, or refuse to sit with their family and watch a new episode of a TV show on their cable because their pirated it the night before.
You have to broaden your vision my friend and look at piracy from more angles than just the 30 yo male adult making 100k/year who pirates movies instead of paying for Netflix.
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#755Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, HDMI has DRM built in, and many DRM-laden apps won't work unless the HDMI DRM is working. The Amazon app has been telling me recently that my connection to my TV doesn't have it, but it actually does. Then I'll hit "play" again and it'll work. (I think it was a bug in their app, because it stopped again.) So recording it requires something that implements that HDMI DRM scheme, but still allows you to record…
The "analog hole" is still there. Point a camera at your TV and record it that way. Yes, the quality may be bad...
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#756Earlier quoted context omitted.
Private IPs on local networks (192.168.0.0/16, etc), or globally routed IPs assigned from your ISPs netblock?
IP assigned from ISP
To be clear, there's your device's MAC, the Wi-Fi AP's MAC and the modem's WAN-facing MAC. (Integrated Wi-Fi router/modem combos obviously have both.)
If this tool is successfully getting you new public IP addresses, something VERY weird is going on with your (probably integrated) modem.
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#757Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "analog hole" is still there. Point a camera at your TV and record it that way. Yes, the quality may be bad...
But that is not the same as a 1980s VCR, which is what the parent said.
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#758Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe someone had a netflix or international TV account and they somehow shared a stream of it playing live or something. Now I'm kind of wondering how one would deploy such a thing for 80K clients though.
There are no Netflix streams licensed for further broadcast. Sharing a stream with 80k people is just as illegal as torrenting it to 80k people. Copyright law doesn't differentiate between protocols.
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#759Earlier 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…
I don't mean to pick on you, per se, but I think there's a long-standing confusion about creative works that's captured in your line: > Data yearns to be free -- sharing it and copying it costs nothing. The latter part of that is true (setting aside quibbles about bandwidth and storage not being absolutely 100% free), but here's the thing: back in the days of physical media, of books and DVDs and CDs and what have yo…
Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
#760Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not long after we started WFH I needed to share a pre-configured VM with a coworker. We tried all sorts of stuff and finally just decided to torrent it. Zipped it up tight with a password and private torrented it overnight. Next morning we were up and running.
Has anyone got WebRTC’s file sharing to work? You find a website that creates a link between 2 clients, and the file is shared via https (maybe the file is decrypted at the server and encrypted again using your public key). Sounds easy if both clients don’t have a public IP (to get SCP to work, at least one client needs a public IP) and every browser now has WebRTC.