One thing that leaps out at me about this ruling is that courts understand the internet a lot better nowadays. A decade or so ago Sony would have probably gotten away with the argument that Cox profited from the users’ piracy; nowadays judges themselves use the internet and are going to go “lolno, they probably would have been Cox customers anyway. It’s not like anyone pays for internet connection solely to pirate. And in most areas people don’t even have a choice of provider, so how is Cox profiting from this?”
Don’t believe that you’re always gonna be protected by some judge somewhere.
Get a proper VPN, dammit!
Your so-called “rights” won’t hold to the pressure of massive media capital alone. It will erode away.
They have so far. It’s still legal to use a VPN without verifying my identity. It’s still legal, though difficult, to access the Internet anonymously. The local police department doesn’t blanket monitor everyone’s search history.
increasingly difficult tech solutions for privacy are a bandaid not a cure.
I just wish they would advertise the truth. VPN’s are basically useless nowadays for everything except torrenting. Most websites once they detect a VPN address will just shut down. Go ahead and give Imgur a try with it turned on to see what I mean.
I’ve never been able to find a private tracker to join in like 20 years of this shit. Everything is closed off to registration and you basically have to find some guy in a dingy alley to suck off for the chance they might give you an invite.
TorrentLeech has open registration several times per year. Keep an eye on Opentrackers.org for any of these. Note that some are open, while others are open application. The latter means you must meet certain criteria to be accepted. Typically this is proof of your stats on other trackers, but sometimes it’s exclusively for refugees from one that failed.
Keep in mind that you will not ever find open registrations on an established, reputable tracker. They don’t need more users. They only recruit from lesser, more accessible trackers. You will need to start on these to establish yourself. There are plenty of guides on this, with most starting on RED or MAM.
If you aren’t on any of these, it’s not because they’re too hard to get into- it’s because you don’t want to put in the effort. Which is exactly what private trackers want to avoid.
Also, smaller doesn’t always mean bad. TorrentDB was a rising star, with regular open invites, right up until its collapse. Even the giants like PTP started from nothing. Getting in early is a perfectly viable strategy, especially if you help grow it.
Yo! What exactly is different about private trackers? Like how does that help? Im lucky enough to have one but due to the seed ratio rules, I find myself downloading from my usual sites more frequently because I worry about seeding indefinitely.
Private trackers are a false sense of security. If you’re able to get an invite to a private tracker, you really think a multi-billion dollar industry won’t also be able to get one?
At most, private trackers offer more consistent content and more accurate seed/leech counts. But they absolutely won’t protect you from the lawsuits from media companies. If anything, being on a private tracker increases your chances of getting fucked in court, because enforced seed ratios means every single user is liable. Remember that leeching isn’t a crime, but seeding is. Because distribution is what the media companies care about, and that’s only accomplished through seeding. Just like how cops won’t typically be interested in busting a drug buyer, when they can bust the dealer instead.
Your nice shiny 12.0 ratio means you’re getting fucked hard when the dildo of consequences finally arrives. And the dildo of consequences rarely arrives with lube.
Folks need to learn how to rip. It’s a little more tedious but you can’t be tracked and the quality is almost always better. Even the most inexperienced can get started after a few hours of research and tinkering.
“don’t use public trackers”
it’s next to impossible to qualify for a private tracker
let alone if the one you find has the stuff you want
let alone making their so-called “ratio”
¿???
Am I right in thinking though, if everyone used a debrib service, nobody would be seeding the torrents and it would all fall to bits?
Yo! What’s a proper VPN these days? It seems like all the ones I used to trust went to shit.
mullvad no longer portforwards, so probably not a good option to torrent with. proton is good if you use their whole ecosystem.
I personally like Mullvad, their practices, and their straightforward price of 5€/month. They’re not going to try to lure you in with discounts by subscribing for multiple months or years. Now if Mullvad has gone downhill, someone chime in.
Edit: looks like I need a new VPN…
I use private internet access (pia). It’s reasonably priced, really good for the number of devices, and I don’t believe they keep logs. At least it used to be that way, but I haven’t checked that since I signed up a decade ago. I have had zero issues with anything or anyone while using it for any reason. Uptime is basically 100%. Also has mobile support if that matters.
Same, I used to use PIA for about a decade, but I could’ve sworn I heard they were one of the ones that had gone way downhill. Otherwise I never had an issue with them. I’ll have to do some digging, see if it was founded or just a reddit rumor.
Ain’t nobody going to talk about that guy in the thumbnail eating a CD while wearing that hat? Stock photos are weird.
When will Sony be sued for stealing their customer’s legally purchased digital media
Internet is a utility and should be treated as such.
Up next Sony sues Pacific Gas & Electric for profiting off of piracy. All those torrents were powered by Pacific Gas & Electric.
Billion? What are they smoking???
Ikr? It’s like they’re counting every act of digital piracy ever to be their lost profits when that’s obviously not the case.
It’s not “like”, that has been the argument with these piracy cases for ages. If I pirate 100 movies, it obviously means that if I couldn’t have I would have gone to the shop to buy each and every one of them. It’s even worse for anyone caught distributing the downloads, where a site host can be hit with this logic for every user download ever.
Apparently these days they are claiming that movie and TV piracy costs the US film industry $29-71 billion a year and the US GDP a cool $115 billion in total
Because, you know, we have all that money just floating in our pockets now thanks to piracy.
Video game piracy has led to more purchases from me, because I’ll download a game to try on a whim that I wouldn’t have purchased, find out that’s it really good and buy it
US GDP is not 115 billion. My tiny European country’s GDP is like 700 billion. The US’s must be well into the trillions
Edit:
It’s 28 trillion. That’s 28’000 billions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
