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US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

torrentfreak.com

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Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#51

Post by curryst »

hogFeast wrote: post #34
kristofferR wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you are basically forced to pirate movies if you want it in good streaming quality. Most of the 4K HDR movies on Netflix are just available as 1080p SDR even with a 4K subscription, to get 4K HDR Atmos quality streaming you gotta pirate them. It's so damn dumb.

It is also way easier to access and (often) faster...or so I am told. We are in 2020, and some guy in his mother's basement with a PHP site is able to provide better service than multi-billion dollar media companies... ...maybe if they didn't spend all their time suing people.

In fairness, the average user and use case is very different. Pirating is less instant gratification since you have to wait on the download. Pirates are also generally okay with having the only peer be someone uploading at 5KB/s. Trackers go down with relative frequency.

None of that would fly on a paid streaming site.

I have wondered why no streaming service uses or offers some sort of P2P. I would think it would be great for popular releases, and you could shift some of your bandwidth costs. It also helps get you around ISPs who want you to pay for interconnects.

Maybe they're just concerned about delivering it in a raw format? I would've expected they could put some DRM on it

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#52

Post by curryst »

jdhbbbhb wrote: post #48
holidayacct wrote: post #44

The justice system is complete crap, the US government doesn't have the ability to deal with piracy because it is international. This doesn't work the way people think it does, there is literally no justice involved. The CIA is used to using movies and television as a pathway for manipulating the American population. There is a very long history of this happening and the people they use (yes use) to do this aren't ma…

Are you suggesting the CIA uses movies as a revenue source to fund other operations?

I wouldn't say it's out of the realm of possibility. Iran-Contra seems like a much bigger issue in terms of the CIA and finding.

I haven't seen any evidence, though, and OP doesn't seem to be forthcoming with any.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#53

Post by antihero »

throwaway77384 wrote: post #35

"Bridi, 50, was arrested on Sunday in Cyprus on an INTERPOL Red Notice. Correa, 36, was arrested yesterday in Olathe, Kansas, where he will appear in federal court. Ahmad, 39, was not arrested and is still at large." An INTERPOL Red Notice! You'd think these are terrorists, human traffickers or drug lords. Nope, they share films before the films are supposed to come out. I understand that one should not try to profit…

It makes perfect sense when you realise that law enforcement's historical and primary goal, over and above protection of us, is the protection of capital.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#54

Post by onedognight »

toyg wrote: post #42
tzs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dotcom's company's whole purpose was to make money facilitating movie piracy, under the guise of being an innocent file storage and sharing company. Their internal processes and procedures were designed to make it appear that they took down pirated material when informed of its existence while actually making sure it was still there and accessible via other links that the copyright owner had not yet discovered. They…

mrandish's point is that the amount of effort spent on Dotcom by authorities was disproportionate to the size and importance of the crime, and abusive of the legal system. This might well be true at the same time as the fact that Dotcom was a criminal. I would tend to agree with mrandish, for the simple fact that they don't do that sort of raid even for people who owe the taxman several multiples of the profits Dotco…

Do you remember when Dotcom was pushing Russian propaganda? He (along with Assange) said he had evidence that it was Seth Rich and not the GRU that gave the emails to Wikileaks. Of course, he never released that evidence.

This is part of a counterintelligence investigation.

Why were Dotcom, Assange, Bannon, Manafort, etc carrying water for the GRU? I don’t know, but having an unrelated tax/copyright/fraud charge might get them to talk, or it might not.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#55

Post by rhino369 »

mrandish wrote: post #23

I'm concerned our justice systems is expending enormous resources investigating and prosecuting these cases as felony crimes on behalf of the MPAA and RIAA lobbies (which have a revolving door of former fed prosecutors as employees/lobbyists). The cases are more properly pursued in civil court where the pirates should be sued for the damages they cause (not agreeing with MPAA's damage assessment, that's for the judge…

I think you should be cautious about extending today’s pattern about piracy (ie they are already high consumers) to a scenario where piracy was easy and safe for distributors.

The piracy wac-a-mole game makes piracy somewhat difficult for an average person.

If it were as easy and safe as Netflix then everyone would pirate, and it would have a major impact on the entertainment industry.

I imagine piracy enforcement is done to keep it in check, not prevent it from happening at all.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#56

Post by holidayacct »

curryst wrote: post #52
jdhbbbhb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting the CIA uses movies as a revenue source to fund other operations?

I wouldn't say it's out of the realm of possibility. Iran-Contra seems like a much bigger issue in terms of the CIA and finding. I haven't seen any evidence, though, and OP doesn't seem to be forthcoming with any.

There is plenty of evidence, look at the lives of nearly anyone who has been suspected of online piracy. You're going to see a very strange pattern where something catastrophic happens to them and their lives fall apart in a nearly impossible series of events. I personally know dozens of people this has happened to, there was an entire floor of RIT engineering students who were running piracy servers out of their dorm in the late 90s and had their lives torn apart with psychological operations. I tracked all of them over the past 20 years and it becomes deadly obvious this happens all the time if you start paying attention to anyone who was involved in online piracy or was friends with anyone in online piracy.

In particular, take a look at anyone connected to Efnet and Freenode IRC networks.

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#57

Post by nimbius »

tzs wrote: post #36
mrandish wrote: post #23

I'm concerned our justice systems is expending enormous resources investigating and prosecuting these cases as felony crimes on behalf of the MPAA and RIAA lobbies (which have a revolving door of former fed prosecutors as employees/lobbyists). The cases are more properly pursued in civil court where the pirates should be sued for the damages they cause (not agreeing with MPAA's damage assessment, that's for the judge…

Dotcom's company's whole purpose was to make money facilitating movie piracy, under the guise of being an innocent file storage and sharing company. Their internal processes and procedures were designed to make it appear that they took down pirated material when informed of its existence while actually making sure it was still there and accessible via other links that the copyright owner had not yet discovered. They…

>Go find the court papers for the indictment.

No i dont think i will. onus probandi, you'll need to cite your sources if you want anyone to take this seriously im afraid.

Dotcom was raided in new zealand with a guns out swat style team of tactical commandos and helicopters for what amounted to a civil court issue in his own county. his servers were illegally seized, his assets frozen, and then he was railroaded to the US and told to defend himself penniless despite overwhelming domestic controversy which inevitably led to political fallout for leaders in new zealand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#58

Post by chottocharaii »

nimbius wrote: post #57
tzs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dotcom's company's whole purpose was to make money facilitating movie piracy, under the guise of being an innocent file storage and sharing company. Their internal processes and procedures were designed to make it appear that they took down pirated material when informed of its existence while actually making sure it was still there and accessible via other links that the copyright owner had not yet discovered. They…

>Go find the court papers for the indictment. No i dont think i will. onus probandi, you'll need to cite your sources if you want anyone to take this seriously im afraid. Dotcom was raided in new zealand with a guns out swat style team of tactical commandos and helicopters for what amounted to a civil court issue in his own county. his servers were illegally seized, his assets frozen, and then he was railroaded to th…

He cited a source, he cited the court documents...

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#59

Post by panzagl »

holidayacct wrote: post #44

The justice system is complete crap, the US government doesn't have the ability to deal with piracy because it is international. This doesn't work the way people think it does, there is literally no justice involved. The CIA is used to using movies and television as a pathway for manipulating the American population. There is a very long history of this happening and the people they use (yes use) to do this aren't ma…

(citation needed)

Re: US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos

#60

Post by bleepblorp »

19 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the then-Attorney General appeared before the media to proudly announce the conclusion of the largest operation in DoJ history.

It was the destruction of a warez group.

In the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks, the most important thing on the DoJ agenda was not to follow up on any of the numerous intelligence leads warning that Islamist terrorists were planning to ram multiple airliners into multiple buildings, but rather to shut down an organization whose chosen line of activity has never been demonstrated to harm anyone.

Putting the factually contraindicated feeling of the software publishing cartels that they're somehow losing money above the actual lives of actual people is a very f'ed up choice of priorities.

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