When I say used to I mean the days of limewire, napster, and sublimedirectory to name a few. Or IRC or even ICQ.
The Piracy Eras:
- Pre-DMCA: The golden age of piracy, no one worried about anything. Music piracy was common, video files were way to large to bother with.
- Post-DMCA: Possible prosecution from big copyright, but also hard to track individuals down, so not a lot of worry, but a lot of angst about it.
- 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 video, expect multi-day or week downloads.
- 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.
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.
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.
It basically means you need a VPN to torrent because if you rack up enough letters they might shut off your internet, but there’s a big distinction between those letters and a lawsuit, they are way closer to just a scare tactic. Their text suggests a lawsuit might be a followup possibility, but that isn’t really true.
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.
Nice summary! Thanks for explaining!
Thanks! I figure all this grey in my beard should be good for something.
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.
You wouldn’t torrent a car?
The hell I wouldn’t 🤨
I already got the specs if I need to 3d print one. And yes I would.
I got a cease and desist letter that forced me to get a lawyer and start court proceedings which stretched over three years, to avoid paying a monthly income in “damages”, for torrenting The Hurt Locker (allegedly).
So now I use a VPN.In minecraft
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.
Where’s the love for Usenet?
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.
Here in the third world we keep on sailing
Mind if I ask you what country so I know which one we have solidarity with?
Dude, nobody owes you anything for free. Back in the days before internet piracy cost postage and floppies and video cassettes and dual tape decks and sneakers, not to mention making and maintaining contacts. Quit fucking whining for having everything effortlessly at your fingertips.
Thanks for the input Lars.
got em
No problem, main character.
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.
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.
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
Find a movie on imdb and once on the page for it put play before imdb in the address bar.
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.
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.
yt-dlp replaced those and its largely the same usage. I dont even use a VPN cause its not illegal iirc
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.
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.
Try soulseek. But $ ruined nearly everything
