There are many topics people discuss that are problematic. Forget piracy. What about people from authoritarian regimes, people from countries that are in danger to fall to authoritarians, even if they haven't yet. Anything from years ago could become problematic if the wrong government gets into power.
Making jokes about God is no deal under some regimes, it's blasphemy in others.
Drugs are a problem in a lot of countries, and a literal death sentence in some.
Making fun of a fringe politician is nothing when they are not in power, but becomes a problem if they get into power.
I am sure Reddit gives some data in cases of actual danger, which is fair. But if they start to hand out data for something minor like piracy, it's going to be a problem for discussion on the discussion plattform.
Whatever. It’s not really admissable. People talk about tons of things that they don’t actually do. For example, I talked today on teams about deleting a problematic app from our vcenter just so we didn’t have to deal with a compatible issue. Didn’t actually do it.
I wonder if there’s a Lemmy out there with Tor access. It shouldn’t be too hard and it would solve the IP address leak risk for servers like dbzer0.com.
This was something I suggested for this instance, since there is even a guide for hosting an onion service: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/135234
Maybe /u/db0 will have more time after the spam settles down, but it seems he’s got a lot on his plate at the moment between being an admin and doing AI stuff.
That’s a good point. You’d probably need to go invite-only for the Tor side of things (Beehaw style) for Tor instances to kick out the black markets/pedo networks. I don’t think Lemmy can do that (federate with all clearnet servers, whitelist for Onion services, require validation for Tor+Tor exit node user registrations).
I think you can throw something together with a reverse proxy setup (refuse federation from .onion sites that aren’t on the whitelist, disable access to the registration API), but there are probably issues I’m missing here.
This is basically true. You need to have certain DNS configurations you cannot afford on Tor hidden services to federate, and while you still could be listening on a Tor hidden service, clearnet servers would still need to reach you to federate.
On top of that, even if you somehow manage to do that, either youre federation trafic goes through Tor (lmao how to DDoS Tor in 1 step), or It doesn’t and all servers can see your public IP, which deafeats the purpose.
Lemmy federation traffic can be measured in kilobytes per second, I doubt you’ll take down Tor. Tor works at speeds closer to one or two megabytes per second these days. The latency will be abysmal, so you’ll effectively be slowloris-ing every server you federate with, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work from a technical point of view.
The MPAA really is grasping for straws aren’t they. Ever since people were able to stream movies during the pandemic and found it was a much cheaper more enjoyable experience, they have been trying to invent ways to drive people back to the theaters. Now they are suffering major block buster busts and they have to point the finger at someone so they think, “it’s those darn Reddit pirates!” Its funny that they don’t realize they caused their own demise. But really I wonder, why specifically 2011?
Sounds more like they’re going after Grande. Belief being the testimony would allow them to build a case that Grande incited or somehow induced privacy which would strip them from a number of legal protections that may apply to service providers.
Right? Yeah, piracy is the reason people don’t go to the movies. It has nothing to do with the overpriced, nasty concessions (cold, overly salty popcorn), dirty floors, uncomfortable “reclining” seats, gimmicks (4DX, RPX, XD), staff that can’t be bothered to turn off the lights at showtime or properly configure the sound systems. All while you’re paying $15 per ticket and $30 on snacks.
Yup. Where I’m at two tickets and two popcorn will be 60$…sixty fucking dollars, that’s a lot of fucking money to sit in some shitty seats listening to other people eat and slurp.
It’s funny because we subscribe to the AMC A-List and go to the movies quite a bit (obviously this is in the US). But it’s because a) we have a couple of AMC theatres close by, and b) it’s just me and my spouse, no kids involved. So it’s something that to us is worthwhile (having a night out a few times a months to see a movie on the big screen). Also, we never buy concessions. I can’t imagine how an average family with a bunch of kids can just go and drop over 100 bucks on tickets and concessions on any given night.
Disagree that it’s more enjoyable than going to the theaters. There is a social aspect of going to movies with friend groups that’s hard to replicate at home. People don’t have space to fit 12 friends to comfortably watch a new release.
On a similar note how safe is it to use private torrents such as IPTorrents? They obs keep a log of users and upload/download stats and probably the torrents downloaded and ip addresses. Surely rights holders would be better off going after this data no?
All they have to do is get an account and sit there seeding their own movies, then keep a log of the IP addresses of the people they connect to. That’s how most P2P enforcement is done.
Problem is that anyone with enough knowledge to get private torrent access also knows enough to use a seedbox or VPN. The whole business case for a VPN revolves around not giving out IP addresses so that’s generally a dead end for copyright holders.
Eh, you shouldn't get hit with anything serious unless you're hosting a server that's seeding tons of content. The worst I've seen people who occasionally pirate getting is a 'stop being a pirate, asshole!' letter from Disney or something. I tried cyberghost for a while and it was such trash that I wish I hadn't wasted money on it, I've just not bothered with VPNs since.
Agree with cyberghost being absolute garbage. I got a letter like that for downloading a Megamind cam once. Ironically it was to cut out a piece of the movie to show my friend to recommend he go watch the movie.
I recommend people use a VPN even when using private torrents. Mostly because aren’t really private, they are semi-public but kept behind some sort of application gate-keeping process. Do you trust every single user on these sites all the time? Are they actually vetting new applicants? Do they audit users at all?
Generally unless you personally trust every single user it just takes one bad actor to log IPs and start sharing that information somewhere else to compromise the privacy of the entire userbase.
If I were to torrent I could see myself using a seedbox for the downloading and uploading but sure I would be lax when it came to visiting the torrent site so my ip address would likely be captured… ;-)
Exposing your public IP to the website itself is not typically as much of a risk. Bad actors would have to get law enforcement to force the website owners to turn over visitor and activity logs to prove that your public IP visited a site and downloaded a torrent. But if that same IP never downloaded or uploaded content using that torrent, then there is no real evidence of actual media sharing.
That makes sense but leads me to another question… How do site like IP torrents track the user upload / download ratio? Say if I were to log in and use my home internet connection to download a torrent file from there and then use a seedbox to do the download the contents? It can’t be IP based as the IP’s would be different; is each torrent file downloaded different for each user?
My experience with private torrents is a little out of date but you might be right, that could cause problems with how your seed ratio is reported for trackers.
Just went down a rabbit hole… Turns out IPTorrents give a different torrent file for each user so it’s independent of IP address. It’s the torrent client that reports back the down and upload volumes. Now need to see if this info could be used by the rights holders for claims…
In a way this does make me slightpy concerned about Lemmy servers, Reddit has a team of lawyers and tonnes of funds behind it to fight pointless demands like these
A lot of server owners won’t and will be much easier to coax into giving up information about it’s users
The thing is, chasing individual instances is a game of whack-a-mole, with a lot of downside and not a lot of upside. Established companies follow laws and regulations because they are easy targets, with local assets, offices, and public figures that are worth serving/seizing and can be compelled to comply to court orders. How TF you going to enforce a court order in a country that doesn’t recognize your jurisdiction or laws?
The other thing thing is, if you run an instance with moderation rules that skirt the law, you are incentivised not to log personal information and disseminate it because a) that makes you a target, and b) you’ll get called out by your own users for logging and leaking IPs, and people will just move to a different server.
It seems pretty obvious to me that you should assume at all times when you are online that you are basically in a public space, like in a public cafe: People can see you, even if the fact that they are not paying close attention to you creates the illusion of privacy. If you start doing something to stand out, people will start to pay attention to you, and it’s all visible to see unless you actively take precautions to hide your identity. That starts–but doesn’t end–with not browsing piracy on main.
Both IVPN and Mullvad have just removed port forwarding. I hear the options now are proton (which I hear may not have port forwarding on linux yet, but say they will) and AirVPN.
While it can be abused, it can also not be abused, surprisingly enough. I don’t want a secondary cheap vpn for DOWNLOADING, I happen to SEED, you leech, and also use slsk which means I now can’t connect to anyone who also can’t forward their ports because they also use one of your cheap VPNs with no port forwarding for DOWNLOADING.
You are condescending, have added no new info, and you’re clearly just a leech, I’m pretty done with this conversation, sorry “pal.”
Now is a good time to remind users that you are placing some trust in the instance that you use. Lemmy is not anonymous. It is pseudo-anonymous. Your instance can do pretty much anything with your account up to and including turning your account into a sock puppet, and they know exactly where you’re connecting from.
With that said, it’s a lot better than most social media today that actively tries to violate your privacy at every turn.
To add to this: some instances require your email address, and others don’t.
Obviously there are plenty of other ways you won’t be really anonymous, but if it’s important to you, one step in mitigating issues is not to have an email associated with your account.
I’ve been partial to mailinator.com, but some services are getting wise to it (and blocking *@mailinator.com addresses). Thanks for sharing an alternative!
This is part of why I signed up through FMHY. If anybody is going to try to protect my privacy it is probably going to be the very actively pro-piracy group.
Seems this has become standard operating procedure for much of this industry - make shitty movies, wonder why they flop at the box office, then go scorched earth against alleged “pirates” and blame them for your “losses”. When the studios make movies that are worth seeing, people will go to see them. See: Top Gun Maverick and Avatar 2, among other recent multi-billion dollar hits.
It is worth noting that many of the more egregious abuses of the legal process as of late seem to be by this one company Millennium Media and their many subsidiaries (Bodyguard Productions, HB Productions, etc.) They are basically just a bigger version of Strike 3, just professional trolls who would rather profit off of legal shakedowns than make good movies.
Funny, those are the same movies I’d point to as what’s fundamentally flawed with the film industry; chasing the lowest common denominator and avoiding interesting and artful risk.
Name 10 interesting and artful films and you’ll have also named 9 box office bombs. Hell, Fight Club didn’t even gross half it’s budget at the box office. Very few people want good films.
It seems strange to me how many these days openly discuss piracy, and what they are doing, how often, etc… It’s one thing to give vague instructions or point someone towards a website. But to actively say, ‘I downloaded X, from Y. It worked great.’ and/or ‘I’ve downloaded loads from X, I have over a thousand X, and they all work.’ it makes me cringe.
Possibly has to do with age. Piracy started for me by exchanging tapes of Dragon 32 games, and I guess recording the top 40 on a Sunday. You kept a low profile. I didn’t think I would get caught. My father was friends with a policeman who was our main source for pirated VHS videos and many games. So I felt whilst it was illegal, nobody gets caught unless you put your head above the parapet. That’s the point today, many seem to be a little too carefree. Helping each other out is great, and after all, piracy is about sharing. But do try and cover your tracks. Be sensible.
Silly nonsense. Just cause I said I downloaded something isn’t proof I did it. If I said I murdered someone you still have to proof I did it especially if there is no god damn body. In other words: they have to link my comments to a download I did via vpn years ago. Yeah, good luck losers.
I do know the law. You should try walking into a police station and saying, ‘I murdered someone.I’m just talking shit, there is no corpse or murder, just saying this for shits and giggles.’ then see what happens.
Seriously, maybe it’s just me, I prefer a quiet life. I don’t want the added stress of a corporation or lawyer threatening me, even if it is going to lead nowhere.
They would never get a conviction on the statement alone though. What it probably would do, is lead to them turning over every stone in your life to find proof. They’d do that because it’s enough to arouse suspicion but not enough to get you convicted in any way.
Alright buddy, that’s a horrendous example. You’re comparing MURDER to downloading End Game…
Here’s the real comp, go into the police station with a grin and say I just littered 3 towns away in a park, I threw a candy wrapper on the floor, it even has my fingerprint! But you’ll never catch me coppers!
They’d shrug and ask you to leave. No-one is starting a manhunt.
Bit of a leap there. I’m talking about confessing to murdering someone on reddit for instance cause that is what we are talking about: comments made years ago on reddit. Yeah, sure, maybe someone will tell the cops and they will have to investigate you based on your comment about murdering someone, but then what? Sure, it will have consequences for me, but they cannot convict me based of a single comment and nothing else. How the hell is that going to hold up in any court?
And now think back on what we are actually talking about: comments admitting to having illegally downloaded some content. I would assume they won’t even try to start investigating that. Like how on earth are you going to get proof of that?
I would expect that to be true as well.
For some reason I can’t really explain anymore, I was thinking of a situation where the confession is made, and reiterated at every step in the prosecutorial process, without any other evidence (for or against) being available for the process.
Right, if you go to the police and confess to the murder of someone who vanished you are going to be in trouble. But we are talking about some reddit comments “confessing” to downloading something illegally. I could have been more specific with the example though.
If they have no proof prior, they will absolutely wreck you with a comment like that linked to an account you own. That’s a confession, which you made, it is idiotic as you gained nothing admitting to it.
Only because many people don’t care, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.
Also it’s no proof that any piracy took place. It would be a different thing altogether if they already had evidence and you confessed to it, but as is, not everything said on the internet is true. Here, my “confession”
I broke into Area 51 on September 5th 1997 at 07:43 AM and I took photos of a top secret spy satellite program meant to track UFOs.
The fact I said that in a comment on Lemmy doesn’t make it true.
Also keep in mind that at least in Germany the act of just downloading something is not illegal. Only the uploading/seeding of content is. So just admitting to having downloaded something is not admitting to a crime at all.
I highly doubt there are any actual pirates on here, it’s just users being edgy. A bunch of dorks that don’t even own a boat role playing badass pirates.
I think many people just couldn’t care less about pirating and believe the companies can’t figure out who they are. For example, I discuss pirating stuff pretty openly on my reddit account. But every single comment I make, I consciously make sure to not reveal enough for people to dox me.
I also don’t have Facebook which is how most people figure out identities.
“Hmm, they’re an underwater welder from a specific small town and they have three sons. Well this is the only Facebook profile that matches that so I bet it’s this person” type of thing.
You are only truly anonymous if you always use a VPN or Tor. If not, Reddit has your IP and the ISP knows who is behind the IP. If LE knocks at Reddit’s door with a warrant, they will give them your IP, with which they go to the ISP to get your name.
they’re an underwater welder from a specific small town and they have three sons
You would be suprised of how much less info than that is needed to ID a person. There are studies about ID’ing people via their favorites and last-watched lists on netflix.
. But to actively say, ‘I downloaded X, from Y. It worked great.’ and/or ‘I’ve downloaded loads from X, I have over a thousand X, and they all work.’ it makes me cringe.
I think a lot of it is to do with the actual chance that the individual is going to get charged with it, big companies generally go after the Distributors and not the individuals regarding it. Plus staying online that you did something doesn’t prove that you actually did it so they would still have to get solid evidence that you actually did it which costs money A lot of times more money than they would have lost from the pirating activity in the first place which is why a lot of them just settle for sending a dmca to the ISP and the ISP for as it saying LOL you better not be doing this
Been teaching my kid this. Do what you’re expected to do, follow directions from teachers and parents, so that when you do something you’re not supposed to and if you get caught, they won’t even believe you did it. Hide in plain site and cover your tracks by thinking of what you’d look for trying to catch someone.
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