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Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#71

Post by toyg »

rada wrote: post #59
supercanuck wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations on VPN Providers? EDIT: I saw this further down: https://www.getcloak.com

http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anon... My personal choice is privateinternetaccess.com: $40/year, unlimited bandwidth (cloak and many others limit bandwidth), multiple platforms (Windows/MAC/*nix/iOS/Android), multiple protocols (PPTP, OpenVPN and IPSEC/L2TP), multiple gateways (US/UK/Switzerland), and most importantly, NO user activity logs.

It's beyond me how providers who operate in the EU space, hence under the 2006 Data-Retention Directive, can claim "no user activity logs" are kept. Either they do retain logon-logoff times, or they're technically breaking the law -- unless the directive has not been adopted yet in the specific country, in which case they're just exploiting a temporary loophole. I'm pretty sure any VPN operating on UK nodes would need to retain logon/logoff times linked to individual subscriber data; they won't have to log website access, but that's about it.

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#72

Post by glanch »

jaredsohn wrote: post #63
moron wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it's kind of amazing to me that Usenet doesn't get more attention Perhaps because the saying "the first rule of Usenet is that you don't talk about Usenet" has helped prevent it from going viral.

To be fair, his name is moron.

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#73

Post by ComputerGuru »

The only VPN I know that explicitly guarantees no logging is the Swedish vpntunnel.se

They operate many nodes, and they tell you that due to data retention laws in the EU and USA, your traffic with them or any other provider will be logged for a period of time no matter what anyone says otherwise.... except if you use their Swedish endpoints because, apparently, Sweden has no and is subject to no data retention laws (yet).

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#74

Post by rada »

toyg wrote: post #71
rada wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anon... My personal choice is privateinternetaccess.com: $40/year, unlimited bandwidth (cloak and many others limit bandwidth), multiple platforms (Windows/MAC/*nix/iOS/Android), multiple protocols (PPTP, OpenVPN and IPSEC/L2TP), multiple gateways (US/UK/Switzerland), and most importantly, NO user activity logs.

It's beyond me how providers who operate in the EU space, hence under the 2006 Data-Retention Directive, can claim "no user activity logs" are kept. Either they do retain logon-logoff times, or they're technically breaking the law -- unless the directive has not been adopted yet in the specific country, in which case they're just exploiting a temporary loophole. I'm pretty sure any VPN operating on UK nodes would nee…

Company's response:

We utilize shared IP addresses rather than dynamic or static IPs, so it is not possible to match a user to an external IP.

Also:

We maintain logs describing the time at which a client connects, length of connection time, source IP, as well as payment information. We use custom hashing to maintain separation between our payments database and user database.

My interpretation is, under a court order, authorities can, with considerable difficulty, force a match between a criminal request and several users, but not one user.

Reasonable enough for me - I believe in good-enough security through obscurity given enough obscurity - YMMV of course.

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#75

Post by bmelton »

w1ntermute wrote: post #48
bmelton wrote: post #16

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…

> Each month, you send me $100, and I will send you back copies of hot movies of varying quality, but all perfectly legal 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 an…

I didn't imply that VPN services did cost $100 a month, nor did I think they did. I would honestly be surprised if I had to pay more than $5 a month for one.

The $100 a month figure I threw out was what I thought it might cost me to buy assorted 'hot media' on the market and resell it at a small margin.

I also didn't imply that your pirated media was of poor quality, but since you so proudly brought it up, looking over a single torrent site shows a broad range of quality options for a given download, which fits with my earlier snide comment.

As for your remarks about Netflix/iTunes and Linux, I consider that a feeble response. I can't buy a Ford transmission that fits my Jeep Wrangler, but that doesn't entitle me to steal cars, even if Ford makes a better transmission that fits more vehicles. And before we get into the whole "can't pirate a transmission" rhetoric, let's get out of the way that there are iTunes-like services and Netflix-like services for Linux. They exist. Sure, they aren't the exact same thing, but I honestly suspect that their non-existence is just another strawman excuse to justify pirating whatever you want without having to consider that it might actually be a harmful thing -- or you're too caught up feeling entitled to care that your cop outs are just that.

Also, these things never go anywhere. I'll just go ahead and apologize now for hitting the reply button, because I know I'm going to, but I will not respond to this. If you want to pirate things, go ahead. But I frankly am not interested in hearing how you've justified how great and open and free it is. Either you're willing to pay for the things you consume or you aren't. By my opinion, if you aren't, you aren't entitled to consume them. That's my opinion. You're welcome to yours.

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#76

Post by simonbrown »

burgerbrain wrote: post #65
tocomment wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would websites block access from ec2?

No idea. Last time I bothered trying Stack Overflow did though. (That was a while ago, when it was still called that.)

It's still called stackoverflow (?).

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#78

Post by dkersten »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #35
excuse-me wrote: post #2

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

> VPN is 3 letters and so is IRA, ETA and RAF so thats a link You forgot ATF, FBI, and CIA. So, it's okay the good guys only have three letters as well. o.O

"ATF, FBI, and CIA" and "the good guys" in the same sentence? o_O

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#79

Post by burgerbrain »

simonbrown wrote: post #76
burgerbrain wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea. Last time I bothered trying Stack Overflow did though. (That was a while ago, when it was still called that.)

It's still called stackoverflow (?).

Oh. I thought they switched to stackexchange or something stupid like that. Whichever, I don't use the site much.

Re: Young File-Sharers Respond To Tough Laws By Buying A VPN

#80

Post by paulhauggis »

w1ntermute wrote: post #48
bmelton wrote: post #16

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…

> Each month, you send me $100, and I will send you back copies of hot movies of varying quality, but all perfectly legal 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 an…

"I can unequivocally tell you that pirated media is lightyears ahead of anything available legally"

I find this unlikely. Piracy is just a copy. It's not like anything new is actually created in the process. You are getting a very nice duplicate of the original.

You are part of the entitlement generation. Since you are so used to just getting things for free, you will just keep making excuses to pirate when the company doesn't give you exactly what you want.

This will have many consequences in the future, including:

1) Commercial software will only be serviced-based. So, instead of paying one-fee for software, you will be required to pay for it every month/year. IE: the "cloud".

2) Software developer salaries will be much lower. Although not directly related to piracy, open source being so freely available means that businesses only need people to do updates (software mechanics not engineers).

3) DRM and more protections schemes. DRM was a direct result of piracy, not the other way around.

Continue to pirate all you want, but don't be shocked at the future you helped create.

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