Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

iknowwhatyoudownload.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 786 posts

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#761

Post by necovek »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #341
necovek wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, good point: I do not usually seed stuff that I believe is highly likely to result in C&D letters from my ISP. So yeah, fair use might apply.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#762

Post by tinus_hn »

zyx321 wrote: post #686
tinus_hn wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Can't you just look up the hash on DHT? Since hash is the only mandatory field in a Magnet URI.

Of course but connecting to a peer to peer network and looking it up doesn’t sound ‘trivial’ to me.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#764

Post by runamok »

wcoenen wrote: post #675
ooobit2 wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've fired people for having less wherewithal than to ask a question like this. His performance, output, or attitude are irrelevant. He knowingly used company property to violate federal law... IP law at that. Guy should be lucky he didn't get sued for gross negligence.

If you fire people just for asking questions (possibly after misunderstanding the intent of the question like in this case), then it seems likely you'll end up with a team of sycophants that only tell you what you want to hear.

I had the first impression as you but IIUC they are saying the rep's poor ethics/judgement are enough to make them unemployable and we should all realize and agree or our judgement is also questionable.

E.g. Bob's super smart and gets 10 times the work done as anyone else but he also sexually harasses the secretary and dips into the petty cash drawer at least once a week.

It should be clear we don't want to have Bob as our employee. See Susan Fowler's experience with her boss at Uber who sexually propositioned her repeatedly but HR said they would not remove because he was a high performer... https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#765

Post by crtasm »

sn_master wrote: post #712
crtasm wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP's point is that it's not safe, without redundancy when the drive on your seedbox eventually dies - everything on it is lost.

Sure, that's why I only use it for temporary situations (e.g. sharing a file with another device/person) and not for long-term data storage solution.

Then I'm misunderstanding something, as you were talking about data that's been on there for 5 years.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#766

Post by svnpenn »

exikyut wrote: post #756
svnpenn wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP assigned from ISP

I'm mildly curious how your ISP works then. Like the other commenter said, this tool will change your Windows device's MAC, not the modem's. 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 integrate…

I did this many times back when I just had a plain cable modem, not router or anything. I havent tested since I switched to a Modem Router combo, I would suspect it wont work under that setup.

But yes, my original point stands. I can run the tool, change my network cards MAC, restart the Modem, and I get a new public IP address. Ive been doing this for years to bypass IP blocks.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#767

Post by rekabis »

Eh, this site is bullshit. It just lists random content in a scareware fashion.

I’ve already tried it from a few different IPs, and not only did it list none of what I actually torrent, but it also listed shit I’ve never even heard of before. Mostly porn. And identical content across different IP’s (home static and cell LTE).

As in, I don’t torrent through my phone, and even on that (wifi turned off) I got a list of torrents with a completely different listed IP.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#768

Post by exikyut »

svnpenn wrote: post #766
exikyut wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mildly curious how your ISP works then. Like the other commenter said, this tool will change your Windows device's MAC, not the modem's. 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 integrate…

I did this many times back when I just had a plain cable modem, not router or anything. I havent tested since I switched to a Modem Router combo, I would suspect it wont work under that setup. But yes, my original point stands. I can run the tool, change my network cards MAC, restart the Modem, and I get a new public IP address. Ive been doing this for years to bypass IP blocks.

Ahh, that explains a bit: let me guess, your modem had a single Ethernet port on it, which you were running directly to your computer?

That means the modem was cloning your device's MAC address onto its own WAN interface. Which is... weird, but would have had some kind of logical motivation.

Maybe it meant the modem vendor didn't have to maintain their own MAC registration ("just copy the device's!"), or maybe it was an ISP "what kinds of devices are our customers using?" kind of thing (the majority of results would have been routers, not single devices). Or maybe this is normal for cable modems (never used cable myself, just ADSL2+).

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#769

Post by sn_master »

crtasm wrote: post #765
sn_master wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's why I only use it for temporary situations (e.g. sharing a file with another device/person) and not for long-term data storage solution.

Then I'm misunderstanding something, as you were talking about data that's been on there for 5 years.

I am just too lazy to delete it and used that as an example that the service has a good reliability record.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#770

Post by doctor_eval »

nybble41 wrote: post #742
doctor_eval wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree in spirit with some of what you say, the law is as it is and producers invest in content with the expectation that those laws will be enforced. You want copyright to go away? Then get enough people to agree, and get the law changed. > copyright is an entirely artificial construct meant to benefit society by encouraging creators to produce content The problem with this line of reasoning is that all prope…

> … the law is as it is and producers invest in content with the expectation that those laws will be enforced. The law can change tomorrow with the stroke of a pen and society won't owe them anything for these past "investments" no matter what their expectations were. Which, of course, is why they invest so much in politics and astroturf campaigns to head off any attempt to actually change the law to something more i…

> The law can change tomorrow with the stroke of a pen and society won't owe them anything

What you say is literally true, but because most investment ends up as wages, such an act would literally destroy tens of billions of dollars of working capital, and put a hundred thousand people out of work overnight.

I assume that's not an outcome you actually advocate.

> Property rights arise naturally as a result of scarcity

Rubbish. The whole concept of rights is almost entirely artificial [0]. For most of history, property and other rights were determined by whoever had the biggest army. Jesus, many people still don't have the right to their own bodies in some places in the world.

The idea that rights of any kind are somehow anything other than a set of cherished beliefs codified in law, is nonsense.

> Copyleft licenses were created as a reaction against copyright.

I think the situation is much, much more complicated than that, but it is a side issue of this conversation at best.

> this appears to be an argument against copyright... The public simply prefers to be entertained

You surely can't blame people for wanting to be entertained? Are you saying you never watch something fun?

In any case, weak and misapplied copyright laws have enabled Google and Facebook, in particular, to concentrate the important elements of journalism and present it to their users in a way which reduces the diversity of all journalism. They show just enough to get away with "fair use" while ensuring that the likelihood of people clicking outside the walled garden is minimised.

Imagine what these companies would do to us if basic copyright was even weaker. Do you think Facebook would link to an article it can just copy? 2 billion+ people on the earth would have just one web browser and it would never - not be allowed - to leave fb.com.

That is not a future I want.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

Post reply on HN