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Rarbg Is No More

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Re: Rarbg Is No More

#591
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.…

That's a very US centric view of the problem. Because these days if you leave the borders of your country, you'll see that the streaming world is still a fragmented archipelago of crappy B-tier licensed movies, while the good stuff people want to watch is only available in the US through a VPN.

And cable TV or films at the cinema are as expensive as ever.

Which is why Spotify has had an incredible success worldwide and music piracy has reduced dramatically: their repertoire is very comprehensive and mostly the same everywhere in the world.

People really want to believe it is a money issue, and they are just terribly misguided. Gabe Newell is absolutely right here, and he knows piracy, as he deals with the demographic with expensive needs (gamers wanting the latest $70 game) and the least money (as young gamers don't have a job, or don't earn a lot)

It is not a money problem.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> somebody has to pay for the actors and the grips and the foley artists They are paid. If they're not paid enough then that's on the companies behind the production of those shows and movies. These corporations make billions. Piracy isn't hurting them. However, these corporations are causing harm to society. It doesn't make sense to white knight for them.

Many corporations make billions. That isn't an argument to not pay for the goods or services they offer. I'll add, since I'm not the person you were replying to, I don't care about who gets paid what. I don't care if the actors get paid or not. All I care about is some basic consistency if we're going to have morals about anything. Is it wrong to steal? Yes? Then piracy is wrong. (Or, no? Then let's skip this convers…

I agree with your plea for moral consistency, but it should be noted that describing the unlicensed copying of data as "stealing" and "thievery" is a metaphor. If I steal a car, I have denied someone else use of the car. If I pirate a film that I would never have paid for, I have enriched myself at no cost to anyone else. If I pirate a film which I would otherwise have paid for, then yes, I have impoverished the studio.

Sorry to be picky, but I think it's important to remember that intellectual "property" rights are a legal construct that societies create in an attempt to make society as a whole richer by encouraging creativity. I worry that overuse of metaphors like "property" and "theft" elevate IP to a god-given commandment (thou shalt not steal), obscuring the fact that we should design our intellectually property rights to ensure they're doing what we want. Enriching creators is not an end goal in itself.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being doxxed by your own ISP.

Of course they have to obey court orders. The Dutch ISPs fought this in court but they lost in some cases.

There's a difference between getting a court order and someone saying - "I saw that X IP address shared a copyrighted file - can I get their name and address?"

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#594

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?…

You can easily decentralize search, but not fetching seed/leech counts essentially

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#595
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. If ISPs were allowed to share home addresses then a lot of creeps and scammers could abuse that system.

Welcome to America! ISPs do that, but it's a lot worse if you consider your mobile provider to be an ISP. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-brok... https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunte...

I'm pretty sure that sort of thing would be a gross GDPR violation in the EU.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#596
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the ISPs detecting you torrent. It's rightholders joining a torrent swarm, getting an IP-address, and asking the ISP for the person behind that address. It differs between jurisdictions whether the ISP has to comply or not. In the Netherlands they do not, (but Surfnet, a university focused ISP complies anyway). In Germany they have to comply. Lobbying is always happening to require ISPs to cooperate though…

>In Germany they have to comply. Seriously, screw Germany here. The way they oppressively Gestapo your internet traffic just to catch you downloading an mp3 to treat you like criminal menace, is unheard of in the rest of Europe. Can't believe the so called "privacy conscious" German public are okay with this invasiveness of their internet privacy when they're the only EU country as hardcore on this "issue". If only t…

> If only they would invest as much resources in digital innovation as they do in catching people download a DVD rip, Germany would rule the tech world.

I don't think it's expensive, once you've the software: 1- regularly pull the torrent IDs from the latest releases on most popular torrenting website 2- download and stream the movies 3- wait for German IPs to connect 4- filter out IPs behind a VPN 5- identify the IP provider 6- send the request, probably by Email 7- profit

Not sure how advanced the software, but I don't see much manual input needed, it must be actually very lucrative

> Can't believe the so called "privacy conscious" German public are okay with this invasiveness

Nothing against Germans but there is a lot of hypocrisy in their society: - Energiewende vs. shutting down Nuclear Plants and turning on Coal - Green cars vs. 300km/h on the Autobahn - Go to a restaurant in a big German city, guys tell you they don't accept cards, then hand write the bill on a napkin (...) vs. Greece where restaurants are legally obliged to accept cards and if they don't, then you can just walk out without paying (!..) (all this since the EU driven by Germany bailed Greece out)

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#597
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linking to pirated content is illegal in many European countries.

That’s why magnet links were invented for torrents. They don’t link to any content, just give your client a unique ID to find peers for. Like saying a site mentioning that you should look for “cannabis” if you want to get high is illegal. Selling the substance is illegal, telling you how it’s called isn’t.

I didn’t know this but would like to know more. Can you expand on how they try to circumvent linking and do they circumvent it?

It is surprising to hear because as a user they _seem_ like a link. Copy the link into something and get the (illegal) files.

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#598

What a shame. They could have asked for donations but me as an Eastern European, I get it -- usually if we get to the point of needing donations we feel ashamed and humiliated and just close shop. I hope somebody picks up the flag. Illegal and copyright-protected piracy aside, there were tons of royalty-free and non-copyright-enforced works of art there and it would be a big hit on humanity's culture at large for all…

They _really_ should give a dump of all the torrents, magnet links and seed/leech counts...

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#599
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the site. RARBG themselves were responsible for many of the video encodes, hence the "RARBG_DO_NOT_MIRROR.exe" included in many of them: https://torrentfreak.com/rarbg-adds-exe-files-to-torrents-bu...

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

ah standard warez drama

maybe the p2p groups should copyright the encodings

Re: Rarbg Is No More

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why magnet links were invented for torrents. They don’t link to any content, just give your client a unique ID to find peers for. Like saying a site mentioning that you should look for “cannabis” if you want to get high is illegal. Selling the substance is illegal, telling you how it’s called isn’t.

I didn’t know this but would like to know more. Can you expand on how they try to circumvent linking and do they circumvent it? It is surprising to hear because as a user they _seem_ like a link. Copy the link into something and get the (illegal) files.

Magnet linking is rather like standing on a street corner and regularly yelling "have you got any cannabis"?

Here's a random RARBG magnet link that may or may not work

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:468043aa374080fed5ff65e4cd8d4fed002986b5&dn=Rizzoli.And.Isles.S05.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG

It doesn't link to a file or embed any tracker names but it does name a 1080p HEVC (x265) encoded season pack of season 5 of a US police procedural drama (which is excess and unrequired but humans do like readable names)

What it does provide is a unique hash code that matches the exact torrent ... should you find it.

When you add that magnet link to your torrent client it triggers the act of polling any public trackers your client knows about and any peers that have "hit me up about magnets" enabled.

Ideally word spreads and eventually some other client | tracker hits you back with word of other peers that at least have some cannabis .. (err, bits of Rizzoli&Isles Season 5 HEVC pack).

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