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U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

torrentfreak.com

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Re: U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

#51

Post by seanw444 »

shkkmo wrote: post #38
ryandrake wrote: post #29

Isn't torrenting way down from its heyday? Streaming companies are not perfect, but I always thought they were at least moderately successful such that in 2025, average, casual, non-techies no longer bother to jump through the VPN and private tracker hoops just to download a movie.

For a while, streaming was better than any alternative. However over the last several year prices have a spike while the collections available for streaming have shrunk and splintered. Then a bunch of the streaming sites started adding ads for their paying customers. At this point streaming servcies have been enshitified enough to make piracy again the better experience.

Can confirm. The only streaming service I use anymore is Disney+, and I only have it because I like to watch the new Star Wars stuff when it releases at good quality. Everything else I care to watch, which isn't much besides older stuff, I'll just torrent now.

Greedy companies really need to heed Gabe Newell's words.

Re: U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

#53

Post by elijaht »

blackjack_ wrote: post #30

I've been trying to watch old 80s-90s movies recently. I'm happy to pay $5 or whatever, and they just aren't available anywhere. Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever, and streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore. Trying to even find availability of what films exist on which streaming sites has been a…

I watch a decent amount of movies, I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t rent it for I think there are plenty of problems with the streaming model, but I think it’s borderline bad faith to try and make the claim that piracy is needed because it’s hard to navigate streaming sites. It’s certainly easier than finding obscure movies was pre-streaming

Re: U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

#54

Post by cvoss »

rcpt wrote: post #9

Our own great firewall

The Great Firewall of China is a censorship program.

This proposed US legislation puts the power of blocking under the authority of its court system and only in the domain of copyright law. The courts are historically very concerned with upholding 1st Amendment rights to a degree that often (but not always) surpasses analogous rights in many sister liberal democracies. Anything that remotely smells of censorship would come under intense scrutiny.

And in this case, since we are talking about copyright law, the only parties with standing to sue for a block are the IP owners in the first place. So, by definition, this legislation cannot be used for censorship.

Re: U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

#55

Post by pwthornton »

blackjack_ wrote: post #30

I've been trying to watch old 80s-90s movies recently. I'm happy to pay $5 or whatever, and they just aren't available anywhere. Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever, and streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore. Trying to even find availability of what films exist on which streaming sites has been a…

You can’t find them to rent on iTunes and similar platforms?

Re: U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

#56

Post by dsissitka »

ryandrake wrote: post #29

Isn't torrenting way down from its heyday? Streaming companies are not perfect, but I always thought they were at least moderately successful such that in 2025, average, casual, non-techies no longer bother to jump through the VPN and private tracker hoops just to download a movie.

In my circles the modern alternative seems to be using Yandex to search for "$show stream".

I don't know about BitTorrent but Usenet is way up:

https://www.newsdemon.com/usenet-newsgroup-feed-size

Re: U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

#58

Post by MichaelBosworth »

elijaht wrote: post #53
blackjack_ wrote: post #30

I've been trying to watch old 80s-90s movies recently. I'm happy to pay $5 or whatever, and they just aren't available anywhere. Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever, and streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore. Trying to even find availability of what films exist on which streaming sites has been a…

I watch a decent amount of movies, I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t rent it for I think there are plenty of problems with the streaming model, but I think it’s borderline bad faith to try and make the claim that piracy is needed because it’s hard to navigate streaming sites. It’s certainly easier than finding obscure movies was pre-streaming

It happens to me often enough. Might be a matter of taste in movies?

Re: U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

#60

Post by lokar »

mindslight wrote: post #37
lokar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they care about the policy. They just see a one sided debate: companies will to pay and an indifferent public.

Sure, you're up against "the purpose of a system is what it does". I'm sure many mainstream politicians actually earnestly care about individual liberty and reigning in corpos - it helps them sell themselves to the public. But the net effect is that when the dollars come calling, enough set aside those ideals to make the corpo agenda happen.

Without making some compromises and taking the money they would be replaced by someone who would.

They (well, all of us whatever we do, but some more then others) operate in an imperfect system.

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