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I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

iknowwhatyoudownload.com

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Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#231

Post by alextheparrot »

dlhavema wrote: post #180
alextheparrot wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unsure when you grew up, but for many of us who grew up in the 90s and 00s, this is exactly the mindset we have. I used to be able to take a movie I had and lend it to a friend, the same with music. The movement away from physical copies took this away from many of us, so we tried to take it back in kind -- piracy is what they called that behavior. I understand it might not seem right to you, but in all the soci…

I see nothing wrong with "lending a movie" to someone.. But how often does the "lent" movie ever get "returned" ( read: deleted )? If not your analogy breaks down and it becomes the same as physically copying a VHD/DVD/CD.

I wrote more about this in another comment [1], but I believe that the limitation of not being able to lend something is a constructed limitation of digital goods. I already do "lend" access through streaming services -- I would call it "lending" because many of the services have limits on concurrent streams (This is the exclusivity principle that is important in lending, as you mention).

In terms of digital goods writ large, there is no good way for me to lend access in a provable manner -- so of course piracy is the natural evolution because that's the only way to lend things.

Also, we used to copy Blockbuster tapes too, which is illegal, but there was never enforcement because we never re-sold these copies. Maybe I'm just a miscreant through and through. Irrespective, this is another clear example of where the transition to digital caused a dissonance between the physical and digital worlds that led users to believe behavior called "illegal" was actually just a subtraction of their ownership rights.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23823166

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#232

Post by Symbiote »

debacle wrote: post #212
flak48 wrote: post #89

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…

The flip side: When I was an intern I once had four people arrive at my desk (including an HR lawyer) for torrenting ubuntu server. Thankfully I shared a cube wall with someone smart enough to realize the confusion, and explain me out of being walked out. They were monitoring for torrent traffic, but weren't paying attention to what was being torrented. Apparently a company-wide warning had gone out the week before I…

I was "caught" by some monitoring system sharing Knoppix on a machine in the CS lab at university. I'd forgotten about it, and it had been running for months.

One of the helpdesk staff told me that it had been noticed, since the bandwidth to that machine was very high, but he unofficially liked the idea of the university being top of the seeding table, so I should leave it running :-D

[1] http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/stats.html?info_hash=8dcb18... (but mine would have been in 2007 or so).

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#233

Post by ConsiderCrying »

Orochikaku wrote: post #154
jlengrand wrote: post #138

Interestingly, I used to download a lot of torrents years ago. When Spotify came along, it dropped at least 80%. Add Netflix and Steam and I haven't used torrents in a very long while actually. Simply because everything I need is available at an affordable price. However, seeing how many streaming services are popping up lately, each with their own specialty and each wanting my money, (and seeing how crappy free Yout…

As Gabe Newell once said, "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem”

That is 100% correct. Soon as Netflix and Steam became a thing, I pretty much stopped pirating. They are so convenient that pirating is actually a subpar experience. If you download a game, maybe there's a miner or malware in it. Download a movie and maybe it doesn't have subtitles or has visual artifacts aplenty. The only cases where I do that is if it's a media property that I particularly love. I download a copy and store it on an SSD to make sure I never lose it in case Steam loses the rights to the game or Netflix decides the movie isn't popular enough and takes it off streaming, etc. However, now that everyone and their grandma is going into streaming, it's turning into cable. So I'm really starting to eye the idea of pirating series and movies simply because I don't want to pay extra money to Disney just to watch Hamilton.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#235

Post by ki28iukgvdru »

larntz wrote: post #225
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference that is not a fool proof model. Even if you do everything right all your traffic goes through VPN... This create a case where the “bad thing” you do woth the PC, is also on the same address as all your “good things”. Let’s say with Google, your thermostat, your Wi-Fi enabled coffee maker, your game console, your phone, every website you connect to with any other device that runs through that router/VPN…

Probably better to run a container or VM behind a VPN to do "VPN" things there, and normal stuff on the host.

On Linux (not sure if other OSes have this) a more lightweight solution would be to put the VPN in a network namespace; e.g. https://github.com/slingamn/namespaced-openvpn

Also handy if you want to do work stuff on a company VPN without letting the employer see all network access.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#238

Post by ThePhysicist »

flak48 wrote: post #89

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 remember getting an abuse warning from Hetzner as one of our employees was seeding (legal) files via a p2p file sharing framework (IPFS I think?) and the client on his machine sent out broadcast and port scanning requests over the VPN into our Hetzner infrastructure. Hetzner is quite nice in that they dont' immediately block your servers, other providers are less lenient though and such stuff can quickly get your infrastructure to be taken down, especially if you're not an "important" customer of your hoster. I think after you reach a certain scale you can't stop this from happening easily, so it's good to either block such stuff via the firewall or have good audit logs.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#239

Post by kohtatsu »

jjice wrote: post #167
flak48 wrote: post #89

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…

Couldn't the intern have paid for his own bare bones VPS and done it from there? Or used a different paid VPN service, which cost roughly the same ~$5? Seems like the cost of a VPN compared to the value of his internship wouldn't even compare. All for some campus clout.

DigitalOcean bills per hour.

Re: I Know What You Download on BitTorrent

#240

Post by ver_ture »

lostgame wrote: post #173
Bjartr wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is copyright infringement. There's no reason to call it theft. They are both bad for society, they are both illegal, but they are distinct.

While literally true; I have always found this argument to be petty and pedantic. I’ve heard every argument in the book; but even the old ads said ‘you wouldn’t steal ____’. The fundamental principle is so similar to the point that discussing it quickly devolves into pedantry. I am one that has had this discussion probably a dozen times; half of those on this forum, and I’ve just decided to stand by my educated opini…

Then you fell for the ads of wealthy companies.
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