Rarbg Is No More • Hacker News Board

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#511

Post by Mountain_Skies » Wed, May 31, 2023, 8:35 PM UTC

themagician wrote: post #456

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 t…

Law firms must love how many billable hours such quests generate for them.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#512

Post by AdamH12113 » Wed, May 31, 2023, 8:39 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #24

o7 thank you for your service, keeping the Internet awesome and anti-corporate. Where one piracy site dies, a thousand spawn from its corpse. Maybe the media companies will eventually pull their heads out of their collective arses and quit their cartel, allowing the existence of legal, paid streaming sites a-la-Spotify with access to 99% of the repertoire. Until then, torrent is how we protest while they create more…

> Maybe the media companies will eventually pull their heads out of their collective arses and quit their cartel, allowing the existence of legal, paid streaming sites a-la-Spotify with access to 99% of the repertoire. Until then, torrent is how we protest while they create more and more insular streaming services to milk people $9/mo at a time.

I have been hearing people make this same basic argument since the 90s. (I'm sure it's older than that.) During that time the price of video and audio entertainment has decreased while availability and quality have vastly improved. Despite this, piracy is still going strong. The ideological goalposts used to justify it keep moving, but the desire for free stuff is timeless. (Not judging here -- I've certainly done my share.)

Adjusting for inflation: Twenty years ago, a DVD with one recent movie cost ~$30, or you could rent one for $5-8. One album on CD cost ~$20. Buying individual songs for the then-unheard of price of $1.65 (99 cents at the time) on iTunes was brand new. They had limited bit rate and DRM, and you had to buy an expensive iPod if you wanted to use them conveniently. If you wanted good TV shows, you paid something like $60-80/month for cable TV (more if you wanted to watch The Sopranos) and had to watch on a schedule, with lots of ads.

If you compare that to today's world of cheap streaming services, high-quality DRM-free music, and even cheaper physical media, it's not even a contest.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#513

Post by comprev » Wed, May 31, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #469

tejohnso wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please indicate which is better. Where can I click on "top 100" or similar, and instantly see a page full of recent releases with screenshots, synopsis, and comments one click away?

Rutracker is the best. You need to understand some russian. But everything is there.

Google Translate is your friend here. RUTracker has excellent quality music - often complete label discographies too.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#514

Post by GaggiX » Wed, May 31, 2023, 8:47 PM UTC

rabuse wrote: post #509

m4r1k wrote: post #92

Probably the largest blow to the torrent sharing community since The Pirate Bay got shut down. The impact of content availability will be noticeable for years to come

RARBG was my favorite for finding HDR/4k content. Anybody got an alternative?

I usually just try to find stuff on DHT using BTDigg.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#515

Post by kelnos » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:00 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #132

gersg wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google takes down content when they get notified, rarbg doesn't.

I've yet to see Google not return a piratebay link at any point in history. Is it a loophole where they take it down, but their indexer then immediately puts it back in the next pass, lol?

Google will only remove specific URLs, not entire sites/domains. Even if every copyright holder with content on TPB sent a DMCA notice to Google today, new torrents -- at new URLs -- would pop up tomorrow.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#516

Post by roncesvalles » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

cykros wrote: post #462

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been 5 or 6 years ago now, but one night I searched for torrents for a particular movie, and Google returned hundreds of results from a dozen sites... and the next evening they returned 0. I think it was an October. While I don't doubt that a torrent link shows up once in awhile, Google no longer usefully searches for such things. Or really anything, legal or not. It's more like a purchase recommendation system…

Google used to rule the net. These days they're not even the best search engine for legal content, let alone overall net searching. Bing and Yandex will get you most everything you want.

It seems Google's tech can't keep up with the scale of the Internet anymore. It simply doesn't index a very large portion of the Internet now.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#517

Post by mvanbaak » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #135

mvanbaak wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the globalisation, there is actually a 4th reason rising: availability of content in specific regions. I sometimes want/need content with audio and/or subtitle language X, which is not available legally where I live, but the exact same platform does have it available in the region that speaks this language. pirating is in this case the best solution as I can pick the quality I want, with the audio and subtitle l…

I think this is just the second reason rephrased a bit differently. And it isn't at all new — pretty much all Japanese game and animation studios have refused to acknowledge our region's existence for about as long as these industries have themselves been around. For example, Nintendo consoles have been unavailable since the 90s — which is why we've been using these clones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendy_(consol…

Nintendo consoles and games are available in western europe as well

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#518

Post by adastra22 » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

What is the best alternative? I know usually people use a seedbox + private torrent server. But which private server?

RARBG was amazing because it had everything, but still curated the releases for minimum standards of quality. Is there an alternative out there?

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#519

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:11 PM UTC

maeln wrote: post #152

slazaro wrote: post #125

I keep wondering all the time why torrent search is based on websites (centralized), which can be taken down, etc., while once you have a torrent file or a magnet/hash everything is distributed. Is there a main reason why there isn't (AFAIK, even though I haven't really researched) a distributed search that wouldn't have these problems? Is it a tech problem that literally can't be solved? Or it just hasn't been done?…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#520

Post by terminalcommand » Wed, May 31, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #511

themagician wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Law firms must love how many billable hours such quests generate for them.

In my experience law firms would not hop through these. That is the job of hired ethical hackers, police and prosecutor's office.

A law firm would be useful in (a) applying to remove illegal content, (b) seize any profit generated by illegal use of clents' content, (c) (if the client requests) horrify users identified of such illegal services, (d) pressure the authorities to crack down on the operation.

Most lawyers do not understand the technical details. We do a hell of a good job of understanding experts' findings and put them in a clear legal structure though.

Most of the boring but billable job I ever made was searching through company registries, google searches, sanctions searches, panama papers searches, reviewing countless pdfs to either (i) mark them as privileged so they cannot be used as evidence, (ii) scan whether there are any documents that may directly implicate the client and if so try to find a way to legally claim it is unusable.

I believe law firms do provide decent service. Billables are there, but no lawyer I know would willingly generate busywork that does not lead anywhere to charge more. OTOH, I HAVE seen instances where a work got reviewed multiple times by different lawyers, because the client was willing to pay more. But even in these edge cases, multiple reviews did benefit the client and they received a better work product.

My advice would be establish a good working relationship with a lawyer in the firm that you trust, continuously send work. Ask estimates if you are on a tight budget. But do not be cheap and try to get things done with less budget. Law firms provide a service you need, if you pay them decently you'll receive your money's worth. Lawyers will literally take a bullet for you to make things happen when you need them.

Apologies for the long rant :).