What happened to us Pirates? We used to sail the web and never even thought about reprecussions just sharing. Now it seems like it costs to be a pirate like a VPN and such. WTH happened?

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Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Patnou@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

When I say used to I mean the days of limewire, napster, and sublimedirectory to name a few. Or IRC or even ICQ.

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BartyDeCanter@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The Piracy Eras:

Pre-DMCA: The golden age of piracy, no one worried about anything.

Post-DMCA: Possible prosecution from big copyright, but also hard to track individuals down, so not a lot of worry.

iTunes Music Store: Did more to end music piracy than any legal action. Cheap enough and easy enough that a lot of people stopped bothering. Pirate Bay for the rest.

Torrent tracking/poisoning and ISP consolidation: More prosecutions against small pirates put more of a damper on it.

Cheap Streaming: Did to everything what iTMS did to music piracy

Expensive Streaming: Now. Bringing back pirates, but people are more cautious due to 4.
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- chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  One thing I think is worth mentioning (US specific), there was a period in the 2000s with a lot of prosecutions, but then industry groups switched tactics to pushing ISPs to do enforcement with mass copyright letters, and ceased actually bringing lawsuits against small pirates for the most part. People are normally more worried than they need to be.
  
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  - BartyDeCanter@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Oh definitely. And it really depends on your ISP. Before the ISP consolidation it took enough work that sending out those letters to every small local ISP that they wouldn’t bother for Jane Rando who downloaded a few episodes here and there. Now that (in the US at least) most people use one of two or three ISPs who all have a cozy corporate relationship, it’s harder to fly under the radar. But if you have a good privacy-forward ISP it’s not a worry.
    
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- VibeSurgeon@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Here in Sweden the launch of Spotify was the step that basically killed music piracy overnight. They even had the creator of uTorrent working on building the service, interestingly enough. I believe I downloaded my last song the day before I got a closed beta account.
  
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- SarahFromOz@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Nice summary! Thanks for explaining!
  
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  - BartyDeCanter@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Thanks! I figure all this grey in my beard should be good for something.
    
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nymnympseudonym@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Tor is untraceable and 100% free

Thanks to node operators like me 🏴

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- Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I thought Tor says NOT to use it for piracy cause it’ll be slow as balls
  
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  - HeHoXa@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That does not dissuade the keepers of the old ways who know the agony and triumph of whole series downloads spanning month, watching that extra green pixel light up as another random chunk came through day after day until finally the progress bar became whole.
    
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- roux2scour@jlai.lu ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Thanks for the node
  
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- scutiger@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Don’t governments run their own Tor exit nodes as honeypots?
  
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  - Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    it is a US military program, so yes, they run nodes as honeypots.
    
    this is way to valuable to be used against pirates though.
    
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  - iocase@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah you’re right and the only secure method I know of is Tor hidden services which never exit the network itself. Both you and the server will never know where the other is. It’s kind of like an anonymous dead drop in a park between a spy and their handler.
    
    I2p is another good system to use for torrenting as well it’s just slow as balls (might be better now?) but you don’t need a VPN for that either since it uses garlic routing inspired by Tor’s onion routing.
    
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- redsand@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I2P is significantly better for torrents and file sharing. Check it out, there are implementations in C++ and either rust or go as well as java: i2p.net
  
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  - nymnympseudonym@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Very true. Different solutions with different strengths.
    
    I haven’t tried Nym but IIUC design-wise it seems like the best anonymity network for torrenting
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nym_(mixnet)
    
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- Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Can you dumb it down for me how to get started with tor? or link me in the right direction?
  
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  - nymnympseudonym@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Download Tor browser
    
    Browse with Tor browser
    2a. Go to Tor “hidden services” listed at places like https://dark.fail
    
    https://torproject.org
    
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Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I got a 1900€ bill that I had to hire a lawyer to fight, so now all my devices wear a condom to hit the internet no matter

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- Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I read it but can you dumb it down?
  
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  - Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I downloaded a song for my kid 15ish years ago and Telekom tracked it to me so I got a fine.
    
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nocturne@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Image

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- sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Fuck Metallica. I went to a handful of their shows back in time, but have refused to even listen to a song on the radio since the Napster bullshit.
  
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  - mech@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    One of my proudest moments was climbing the fence to get into a Metallica concert for free.
    I pirated their live music.
    
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  - harmbugler@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Their music sucks now, but I pirate and share it anyway. I don’t listen to it.
    
    Let me know when they sue Meta or Google for training models on their music.
    
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- Aetherial@nord.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Lars Ulrich, the only Dane I never liked. Most Danes are agreeable but Lars had someone piss in his baby bottle and he never got over it.
  
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  - fleem@piefed.zeromedia.vip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    (this is coming from a kid who thought they were awesome until i started playing drums myself)
    
    that and he’s a fuckin glorified metronome. terrible drummer.
    
    to be that talentless and still bitching about napster..
    
    yeah 12 year old me got the fuck over some lame ass metallica
    
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BurgerBaron@quokk.au ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Canada is still a piracy safe haven, I don’t use VPN. I get funni letters sometimes and laugh at them. Prosumer reseller ISP don’t give a dang. Penalty caps are so low that it’s basically malicious compliance at the Federal level, so nobody gets sued because there’s no money in it for the copyright trolls. Just have to avoid dealing directly with the telecom mafia: Rogers, Shaw, Telus.

Tbh I use direct download as a source more than torrents these days. There’s a lot of free hosts now that aren’t painful to use like in the past when you needed to pay a subscription to some company like Rapidshare to get anything done on sites like Warez-bb.

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neidu3@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I still pirate without a VPN

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- RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah I pirate straight to my TV no VPN, no debrid, nothing.
  
  All I do is require encryption on all connections.
  
  Uninstalled pretty much all the streaming apps because it works well enough my whole family prefer pirating to finding the right app for a given show.
  
  Only problem is the cache builds up fast and it’s a closed source app so I can’t fix that
  
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MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You wouldn’t torrent a car?

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- Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I already got the specs if I need to 3d print one. And yes I would.
  
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- crandlecan@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The hell I wouldn’t 🤨
  
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LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The high seas have always been a constant battle. Are you really asking why both sides keep trying harder?

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- Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Ah screw it. This early in the morning you piqued my interest. So yeah why both side keep trying harder?
  
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  - blackbelt352@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Its the same kind of arms race that cybersecurity is going through, one side creates defenses, the attackers (all color hats) figure out bypasses and exploits, the defenders patch out the exploits, attackers find new exploits, defenders keep reacting, attackers keep finding new exploits, and the cycle keeps continuing. In an attempt to break the arms race, the defenders are going to turn to legislation to make engaging in the arms race illegal unless you’re certified.
    
    Side note but I’m not making a value judgement on either side, there are defenders protecting bad people and attackers who are justified in their attacks and have released important information out to the public, but protecting your own information from malicious attackers is also super important, stuff like login info to critical infrastructure systems or your financial details so bad actors dont open up a dozen credit cards in your name and destroy your financial reputation needed to survive in this world (fuck credit scores but they are unfortunately part of our reality.)
    
    Same sort of deal with copyright holders vs pirates, copyright holders are trying to protect what is legally theirs, and pirates are trying to bypass that. (Again no moral arguments here, this is just the nature of the conflict). Pirates gain access, copyright holders create more hurdles to the content, pirates gain access again, copyright does the same thing. Eventually they just keep throwing more legislation at the war to make privacy becomes increasingly expensive through the courts. At the end of the day, unlike cybersecurity, this piracy war wouldn’t exist if every piece of media created was commodified for massive profit. Steam is evidence of that.
    
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  - LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    srsly? Because they both want what they want and neither side is giving up.
    
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mech@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I got a cease and desist letter that forced me to talk to a lawyer and start court proceedings which stretched over three years, to avoid paying a monthly income in “damages”, for torrenting The Hurt Locker.
So now I use a VPN.

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- Magnum@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  In minecraft
  
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  - mech@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The weird part is, it wouldn’t even have mattered if I did it or not.
    I was living with roommates and the contract with the ISP for the house’s internet connection was in my name.
    So according to German law at the time, I was legally on the hook for copyright violations by anyone on the shared WiFi.
    By the time all the legalese letters back and forth were done and the opposing law firm would have had to officially charge me in court, the law had changed.
    The old law would still have technically been applicable for my case, but I guess my push-back with a lawyer, and the risk of a judge being sick of the useless workload, made it too risky to be profitable for the copyright vultures.
    
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PieMePlenty@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The dream is still alive in small countries the corporations don’t care about! I sail in vast oceans without VPN.

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dewritoninja@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Here in the third world we keep on sailing

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- Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Mind if I ask you what country so I know which one we have solidarity with?
  
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whaleross@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Dude, nobody owes you anything for free. Back in the days before internet piracy cost postage and floppies and then phone bills, not to mention making and maintaining contacts. Quit fucking whining for having everything effortlessly at your fingertips.

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- Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Thanks for the input Lars.
  
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  - imdoneinteracting@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    got em
    
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  - whaleross@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    No problem, main character.
    
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BloodMuffin@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
in my country you can torrent all you want. if I forget to turn on my VPN I might get a message from my ISP saying they got a copyright call, but they didn’t give my info.

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Sanctus@anarchist.nexus ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
yt-dlp replaced those and its largely the same usage. I dont even use a VPN cause its not illegal iirc

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parlor3949@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Where’s the love for Usenet?

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x00z@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I don’t pay for a VPN but I do pay for a debrid. TorBox has a $3/month plan and it allows you to download torrents at 1Gbps from HTTPS endpoints with a no-logs policy.

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aramis87@fedia.io ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Private trackers?

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lightnsfw@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
People started getting consequences from their ISPs so they have to take measures to avoid that and those are not free. You’re welcome to still torrent without a VPN or seek out direct download sources but good luck with that.

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Arachnidbrilliant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Soooo this might be a bad time. But my pirate stream site is starting to suck (pop ups showed up/ things aren’t loading).

Anybody got a good one? AARGG

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- Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Find a movie on imdb and once on the page for it put play before imdb in the address bar.
  
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- Patnou@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Don’t know if we can mention any. Lemmy said something about legal reason but i think a DM or PM or whatever M is ok.
  
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  - Arachnidbrilliant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I think you’re right. What you’re saying rinings a bell…
    
    Idk a while ago on r/piracy it didn’t matter. So I got a hand full of sites back then. But they’ve all gone dark now a days.
    
    I hear the IRC channels are the way to go to find out new streaming sites now. But I’ve got no idea how to go about that.
    
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cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Doesn’t cost me anything. I’ve never paid for a VPN. You don’t really need it unless you’re in a country that firewalls you.

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- netvor@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  or someone who flexes their “downloading skills” on everyone they meet.
  
  many years ago a colleague of mine tried to flex on me without really knowing my position on ethics of piracy.
  
  (i have no problem with as long as it’s about enabling access to media and art that would be inaccessible rather than making money. on the other hand, if an artist decides to do Spotify instead of Bandcamp i generally tend to respect their wish and avoid them like the plague.)
  
  incidentally the same guy complained some months later that he got some notice from police.
  
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finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s because you didn’t pirate a VPN.

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- Hupf@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  You wouldn’t download a VPN
  
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devfuuu@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
capitalism and tech oligarchs happened.

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IronBird@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
soulseek is still around

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HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
i2p.net/en/

m.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tbAFccn8E

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thermal_shock@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Try soulseek. But $ ruined nearly everything

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Flames5123@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I don’t use a VPN with private trackers. And I see for 3 weeks.

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tordenflesk@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah, only normies use “VPN” to pirate.

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- Bazoogle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Why is “VPN” in quotes? Do you think it’s a euphemism for something?
  
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decapitae@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Piracy wuz Crapitalyzed

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