41–50 of 88 posts
Queue banning of VPNs in 3....2....1..... There is evidence of links to terrorism. Well, VPN is 3 letters and so is IRA, ETA and RAF so thats a link. Better throw child pornography and drug smuggling in there as well
My fear is that use of an anonymising VPN will in itself become cause for the state to hassle you, and that this won't require any new laws to be passed.
And I can't disagree with your comment, "won't require any new laws to be passed", either.
Again in the U.S., Federal authorities have already and are increasingly demonstrating willingness to act in extra-judicial fashion. It's not too much of a leap from ISP reporting to demands that ISP's detect and shut down such pipes (think of the "terrists", the children, the poor starving record labels and producers, etc., etc.).
What the ISP's really want, is release from any and all liability. That is one aspect of the recent CISPA negotiations. As long as they can't be sued nor otherwise hauled into court, they may view "shutting down the pipes" as one more avenue for shoving users onto their own, in-house services.
I suppose what's interesting about this to me is that the pirates are presumably paying for VPN service? Which means that I guess we've figured out the threshold where they are and aren't willing to pay for things -- to keep out of jail. I should launch a Piracy as a Service app. Each month, you send me $100, and I will send you back copies of hot movies of varying quality, but all perfectly legal. You stay out of ja…
If you want to pay to improve your piracy experience, Usenet is the way to go. For about $20 a month you can get unlimited downloads of whatever, as fast as your home connection can handle, non-peer-to-peer. It's not as general a solution as VPN, but it's kind of amazing to me that Usenet doesn't get more attention, at least if VPNs are now starting to.
My fear is that use of an anonymising VPN will in itself become cause for the state to hassle you, and that this won't require any new laws to be passed.
And when you are out looking for bad actors of a modestly sophisticated nature you might start with the VPN traffic.
A much nicer solution would be create all VPNs everywhere to protect us from Google Street view type drive by snooping (you know common good and all) which keeps you from being lumped into the 'usual suspects' pot. This is a Good Thing (universal VPNs) because even though Google has stopped their practice, there are still cars/vans out collecting this information for resale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Pirates" usually aren't unwilling to pay, but unwilling to pay for an inferior product.
Well they still watch/use/listen to the "inferior" product, so if it's worth watching/using/listening to, why is it not worth paying for? Or should people be able to set their own prices on what they get?
My fear is that use of an anonymising VPN will in itself become cause for the state to hassle you, and that this won't require any new laws to be passed.
I'm more afraid that the use of a VPN will actually become less secure than without using it. ISPs are governed by different laws ensuring your privacy (to some extent). VPNs aren't subjected to those laws and can thus, legally, sell you out long before your ISP ever could. Sure, the potential outrage for such behavior is probably enough to convince most VPN services to never do it (although a secret agreement with M…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well they still watch/use/listen to the "inferior" product, so if it's worth watching/using/listening to, why is it not worth paying for? Or should people be able to set their own prices on what they get?
To add to the points made by previous responses, you can see for yourself the benefit of unencumbered files by ripping your own legally obtained Blu-ray movies. Once you have a DRM-free file on your hard drive, everything is better: there are no forced trailers, the movie loads nearly instantly (the standalone Blu-ray player I've used took about 5 minutes to load a disc), and seeking is practically instantaneous. You…
Furthermore, you know things like Bitrate before you download. On Netflix, you don't know how a movie has been compressed. Even 1080p movies can have noticeable quality differences depending on the method of compression. Using a private tracker, you can see the exact program and settings used before downloading.
I suppose what's interesting about this to me is that the pirates are presumably paying for VPN service? Which means that I guess we've figured out the threshold where they are and aren't willing to pay for things -- to keep out of jail. I should launch a Piracy as a Service app. Each month, you send me $100, and I will send you back copies of hot movies of varying quality, but all perfectly legal. You stay out of ja…
Your snide comment is way off the mark. By your tone I'm assuming you're staunchly anti-piracy and don't pirate stuff, so you don't have experience with the actual quality of pirated media.
As a long-time pirate (10+ years), I can unequivocally tell you that pirated media is lightyears ahead of anything available legally. By using just 1 (one) torrent site, I can gain access to pretty much every single movie, music album, video game (console or PC), piece of software (all platforms), and book. The downloads almost always max out my connection.
As for quality - it's better than if you buy the media. Netflix and iTunes are just now bringing out 1080p content, and it's almost definitely going to be compressed in a lossy way. I can torrent the original Bluray disc image (~50 GB) if I want to, or get a high quality X264 compressed version to save space/bandwidth. You're not forced to go with the one thing that's offered to you. Both options have been available ever since Bluray (and HDDVD) first came out. I've been watching 1080p content for years without ever buying a Blu-ray drive or any other special hardware.
And the best part of all - both the downloading process and the files I get are in standard & open formats that I can run & view on my Linux PC. What's available for download is browsed via a normal web browser, the BitTorrent protocol is open and has been implemented on Linux many times over, and I've never had any issues playing back content once it's been downloaded - the formats are open and are supported by a variety of open source media players.
Let me know when I can run iTunes or Netflix on Linux. I doubt it'll ever happen.
Oh, and VPN services don't cost $100 a month. You can get them for less than $20/month. When I was sharing a seedbox with a friend, it was $10/month for unlimited data transfer and 250 GB of storage space.
I suppose what's interesting about this to me is that the pirates are presumably paying for VPN service? Which means that I guess we've figured out the threshold where they are and aren't willing to pay for things -- to keep out of jail. I should launch a Piracy as a Service app. Each month, you send me $100, and I will send you back copies of hot movies of varying quality, but all perfectly legal. You stay out of ja…
Actually I was thinking that should be the content industry's next business model. People subscribe to torrent/content services. The services buy licenses for content. People download content. It's almost the same thing as radio, the difference being that you have a copy.
I think that the fact people are willing to pay for a VPN just to get a better, "pirated", product no thanks to MAFIAA aptly underlines the severity of the challenges that content industry is facing.
Money is not the issue why those who have money do pirate content.