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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#71
The article concludes that:

> The internet is now dominated by legitimate choices for video streaming.

I really, really would love that to be the case, so that copyright holders stop freaking out about their presumed losses due to pirated content, and would just leave the pirates be.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#72
post #16

At least where I live, Hungary, torrenting was decriminalized some years ago as long as someone isn't doing it for profit. It's still illegal but they stopped going after end users. The biggest private tracker has 770k users atm with an exceptional 1452% seed to leech ratio. Basically almost everyone (ie daily internet users) is using it in the country. Also they introduced a "blank media" tax on everything (CD, DVD,…

When I briefly was a subscriber to FREE internet in France, I was amused to see that their cable box came with a Bittorrent client enabled by default, despite some strong anti-piracy laws on the books in France.

Free (aka Online.net, aka Scaleway) also offers a uTorrent with web ui in their distro installer for their servers, out of the box.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#73
post #53

This strikes me as an area where distributed apps on a blockchain could have a big impact. Currently, top piracy options like torrent websites and Kodi addons constantly get taken down by the government (through methods described in this article). But what happens if a distributed YouTube exists with every movie in pristine 1080p quality, that lives on a blockchain so the government can't shut it down or issue DMCA t…

Why can't goverment DMCA requests work for blockchains? How is your suggestion much different than bittorrent? The goverment could just as easily take down links to the blockchain as they could takedown links to a torrent.

Exchanging trackers for pow isn't a real advantage. Especially for large datasets (Youtube) where a third party will have to index the blockchain for reasonable to access it.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#74
post #16

At least where I live, Hungary, torrenting was decriminalized some years ago as long as someone isn't doing it for profit. It's still illegal but they stopped going after end users. The biggest private tracker has 770k users atm with an exceptional 1452% seed to leech ratio. Basically almost everyone (ie daily internet users) is using it in the country. Also they introduced a "blank media" tax on everything (CD, DVD,…

Until the EU want to do a new trade deal with the US, and the US decides it wants to co-opt your legal framework to enforce its commercial appropriation of European culture, history and stories through Disney and Hollywood. And then you'll be getting lots of enforcement. The whole copyright thing is just a US export thing, as soon as it becomes a problem for them, they'll force the EU to make it a problem for you too…

this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think copyright is a good thing, as it allows for artists to actually get paid for their work

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#75
post #8
post #3

Putting Kodi under "Streaming Piracy" is pretty inflamitory. Kodi isn't there to enable streaming piracy. (There are non-offical plugins that do that, but they've made many announcements about Kodi's stance on Piracy)

But let's be honest, 99.99% of Kodi and Plex use is purely for pirated content. Otherwise, I'm not sure where everyone is getting all these non DRM digital downloads. And most aren't using special plugins with Kodi, they just use Kodi to play their content they get from torrents and Usenet.

I don't think so. Would youtube account for less than 0.01 % av Kodi use?

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#76
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is illegal, then I am breaking the law when I modify a computer program for personal use. As far as I am aware, if they are not distributing their changes, there is no copyright violation. I'd be interested to see what laws they are violating.

I'm reading a tiny bit into the comment so let me state it plainly: > A few people I know just check out movie from the local Library on DVD or Bluray, rip them and then watch them from Plex, [and then return the DVD or Bluray without deleting the ripped copy]. This is textbook piracy.

Again when it comes to the USA copyright law, it is about distribution.

A person who copies a specific work and does not distribute it is not breaking the law as far as I am aware.

That is why I'd be interested in seeing what laws have been broken.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#77
post #8
post #3

Putting Kodi under "Streaming Piracy" is pretty inflamitory. Kodi isn't there to enable streaming piracy. (There are non-offical plugins that do that, but they've made many announcements about Kodi's stance on Piracy)

But let's be honest, 99.99% of Kodi and Plex use is purely for pirated content. Otherwise, I'm not sure where everyone is getting all these non DRM digital downloads. And most aren't using special plugins with Kodi, they just use Kodi to play their content they get from torrents and Usenet.

Back in my day we ripped dvds to our systems.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#78
The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows):

a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice.

b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know that I live in Germany. That does not mean that I don't want to have the option of watching anime in Japanese with English subtitles. And Amazon, it's great that I found out you are now showing advertisements before every episode, but it's also in German. While everything else on amazon.de is in English for me.

c) Quality. I don't care that your algorithm thinks my network is not fast enough for HD. Just let me tell it that it's wrong. Or I could torrent and download something in actual HD within just a few minutes.

The worst thing is that all of those are completely artificial. There is no technological reason for any of those problems to exist. And ignoring if I want to or not, in most cases I don't even have the option of throwing absurd amounts of money at them to make them go away. Because of greed, laziness and/or stupidity, torrenting is still the superior option in most cases. For me.

PS: Mostly thanks to Bandcamp.com music torrenting is completely dead for me.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#79
post #16

At least where I live, Hungary, torrenting was decriminalized some years ago as long as someone isn't doing it for profit. It's still illegal but they stopped going after end users. The biggest private tracker has 770k users atm with an exceptional 1452% seed to leech ratio. Basically almost everyone (ie daily internet users) is using it in the country. Also they introduced a "blank media" tax on everything (CD, DVD,…

The blank media tax is probably a compensation (i.e. not a tax) for the right to do private copies of legally acquired media. At least, this is what it is in France.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#80
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but who goes through the trouble of ripping blu-rays to put them on plex?

Present Most publicly available pirated content is terrible quality anyway. If there are shows and movies you really love it's worth it to make yourself a high quality rip. Emby/Plex are super convenient, especially playlists. Who wouldn't want their own private streaming service with all the content they love. The discs sit in the basement as disaster recovery.

I don't know where you are looking, but I have no problem getting fully digital rips of current run TV shows in 720p/1080p that are wonderful - excelled only by BluRay rips from the box-sets when they come out.
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