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

Rarbg Is No More

web.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 679 posts

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#451

Post by ebiester »

lamontcg wrote: post #354
ebiester wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. If you build a system for resilience, it should not take significant effort to maintain. You should be able to keep the lights on with 10-20% of the engineering team. The rest is growth. Growth may be making the product better, creating new product lines, or improving the scalability - for example, allowing larger numbers of users or entries. However, you can make the choice to make a well co…

> If you build a system for resilience, it should not take significant effort to maintain. You should be able to keep the lights on with 10-20% of the engineering team. The rest is growth. After 10+ years you always see the operational demand increase because of all the necessary edge conditions you build up (backcompat and whatever else).

Does the cost of change increase, or the cost of maintenance, or the cost of keeping it on?

Yes, the cost of change by definition increases with the complexity. I don't think that is in contention. Why is it changing for any other reason that you're growing (or trying to stave off decline?) For internal tools, change may be a function of external business pressures (like a supplier going out of business, requiring changes in an internal tool), but that is asking for new software.

As you add libraries, the cost of maintenance increases because the surface area of security increases. However, short of major changes (React, Rails, Etc), this feels like it's not moving outside the 10-20% range.

Then, there's the cost of keeping it on.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#452

Post by justinclift »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #418
justinclift wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has enough lawyers to give the EU and US the run around when they want to. For smaller players, they'd have to think really carefully about whether they want to engage in multi-year litigation with them.

> Google has enough lawyers to give the EU and US the run around when they want to. Google has paid something like 10 billions dollars of fines in the EU during the last decade. I don’t think they are giving the run around to anyone.

Yeah, lets wait a couple of decades and see how those court cases actually end up.

Meanwhile, Google will just keep on Googling...

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#453

Post by hattmall »

theturtletalks wrote: post #446
joshspankit wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: ad companies and payment processors are a weak link. They can provide de-anonymizing information to officials and cut off payments when their corporate values shift.

I always wondered this. Many piracy sites have Adsense or some sort of ads. Can't Google just fingerprint which Adsense account is being used and find the person getting paid?

There's an entire industry of buying established accounts set up with an unsuspecting person's identity. Idk about Adsense specifically, but you can get Amazon selling and the linked bank account with docs for like $1000.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#454

Post by luciusdomitius »

moffkalast wrote: post #287
cyberge99 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Most accept crypto.

Well unless it's Monero, it's still just as traceable and you pay twice as much in various transfer fees.

nope, bitcoin, doge and many others are pseudonymous and as long as you are not retarded enough to buy it someplace which requires KYC, it is stupidly difficult to trace it to your identity. Especially in court.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#456

Post by themagician »

mrtksn wrote: post #18

RARBG was originally Bulgarian, like many other trackers and warez stuff. Eastern Europe - inside EU or outside of the EU - has always been major player in this scene. RIP. I'm still curious how it's possible to run such global illegal operations without being exposed or caught. How is it still possible to remain anonymous on the Internet, considering in this age the thing is very mature and well commercialised?

The answer to this is easier (and harder) than you might think: just don't say anything.

You can get away with quite a bit just by being silent, and for longer than you'd think. A big way that people get away with things for so long is just by not answering questions. Someone says, "Is this [illegal thing] yours" and you say nothing. Now you've got to burn hours and dollars trying to prove someone owns something so that you can go after them.

You'll find domains, web hosts, countries, and employees who are all onboard with the same philosophy. When everything requires a subpoena at the highest level to move something forward, it can easily take years for anything to happen at all. Some countries are known for having slow legal systems. Stack jurisdictions with slow court systems and you can start with an 18 month window before anything can happen.

You've got a domain in Tonga registered to a company in another country, owned by a large company in another country owned by a trust in a third country. Often small countries with limited resources and archaic or corrupt bureaucracies. And where is it hosted? That's probably another connect the dots. And the site can change hands and then you have to start all over again. Are you going to refocus on the new owner or are you going to spend even more resources trying to track down the former owner?

And any of these entities may lead to nothing more than a mule, fake person, or dead person. Sure, it's someone's fault for having inaccurate records—but who? How long has this been going on? Did they know? Was it intentional? It shouldn't be like this, but it is… what do you do now? Are you going to go after the recordkeeper too?

You can do illegal shit for years or even decades if you just say nothing and respond to no one.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#457

Post by FractalParadigm »

Rant423 wrote: post #401
ferCats99 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't, many encodes were from other P2P or release groups and they just stripped the names and attributed to themselves

Got any proof for this wild claim?

I can't offer any hard proof (especially now the site is down) but I've cross-seeded many files to private trackers after removing [rarbg] from the filename and deleting the additional files they add. Looking at my client now, I have two episodes of a TV show ripped by NTb, the TL version of that is just the video file, the rarbg version appends [rarbg] to the filename (to prevent cross-seeding/re-uploading) and includes RARBG.txt and the infamous "do not mirror" file. Both episodes were uploaded to TL ~4 hours before Sonarr grabbed the rarbg release (which usually happens within 20 minutes or so of uploading). If you visit any of the piracy- or torrent-related subreddits you'll see a lot of complaints/comments/concerns regarding "why bother with private trackers when it all ends up on rarbg anyways?" or "why did rarbg steal *upload* from *site* while claiming it as their own?"

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#458

Post by 6510 »

Solvency wrote: post #179
maeln wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is many search engine that use the DHT to retrieve the metadata and share torrent via the magnet. The main issue here is not the tech, it's the trust and discoverability/curating and also not spreading the seeding capabilities. When downloading from "reputable torrent tracker XYZ" you can trust the quality of the torrent, that it is virus free, etc ... It is also usually make searching for particular torrent ea…

This makes sense but...I'm being fully serious and earnest here and revealing my own naïveté: Couldn't some form of blockchain work here? Like couldn't some form of distributed/democratized community curation and moderation happen by using the blockchain to manage the arbitration of new torrents (and their successors, like when the community decides New Random Anime X encoding to be a superior copy)? Plus you have pr…

It's therapeutic, people use whatever is available to them. Having a struggle at the edge allows people to do the busy work they bill for while not accomplishing anything meaningful. Technical folk will find new ways to keep their thing going. If to many websites are gone people will move to a new formula (new to them)

The network of sharing software and movies is much older than the internet. Eventually you just purchase a preloaded data carrier from your local pot dealer. The drives are so large, the formula would go dramatically faster than BitTorrent. Shipping [say] 10 kg worth of data carriers is amazingly cheap.

Looking at some random portable drive 10 kg box / 0.265 kg = 37 drives and 37 * 5 TB = 185 TB ? Something like 100 000 to 400 000 hours of film. Good for a maximum fine in "lost revenue" of $ 1 000 000 000 000 for the single box.

There is a lengthy therapeutic treatment program between that stage and the torrent websites.

Eventually some bean counter will discover crowd sourcing Police Academy 8 and people will just give them money provided they desire to see it. Star citizen raised over $569 million. On the most profitable movies list nr 191 is Fifty Shades of Grey with $569 million from a budget of 40 million. I can see the problem, with crowd sourcing it would be like normal work. That extra 500 million would be unlikely. They would have to make 10 movies.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#459

Post by einpoklum »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #418
justinclift wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has enough lawyers to give the EU and US the run around when they want to. For smaller players, they'd have to think really carefully about whether they want to engage in multi-year litigation with them.

> Google has enough lawyers to give the EU and US the run around when they want to. Google has paid something like 10 billions dollars of fines in the EU during the last decade. I don’t think they are giving the run around to anyone.

Alphabet is valued at over 1.5 Trillion dollars. If they pay 1 Billion USD in fines per year, maybe their lawyers are actually doing an ok job for their client.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#460

Post by traverseda »

sktrdie wrote: post #339
traverseda wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they make money off of ads and people who have the skills and resources to do that without profit motive also probably are afraid of getting entangled in legal battles.

From the announcement doesn't seem like they were making money?

Pretty sure I remember there being ads.
Post reply on HN