this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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cross-posted from: https://yiffit.net/post/1072752

For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn't want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/K4EIh

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[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Good news for Lemmy. Pirate the fuck out of everything and never ever feel any guilt about it comrades.

🏴‍☠️ ☠️ 🏴‍☠️ ☠️ 🏴‍☠️ ☠️ 🏴‍☠️

[–] Reocken@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

24 years of continuous piracy. All I pay for is a seedbox. Paying these scummy corporations nothing each month feels great!

[–] orca@links.hackliberty.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

May I ask what are the benefits of a seedbox?

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So with a seedbox its basically an offsite swrver that you tell to download the files you want, rhen you download them direct from the seedbix. Because theyre dedicated servers you get better download and upload speeds for preserving your ratio, you don't have to use local storage to seed things, and it can be safer if your seed box is in another country because your isp doesn't see any torrent traffic.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

...but if you're paying for that seedbox with your credit card, aren't you creating a pretty clear paper trail between you and your piracy?

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If the seedbox is in a country that doesn't care about torrenting and is hosted by a company that doesn't care, they're the only ones who would be aware of it. It's not illegal to pay for a server or to download files from your server.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What countries don't care about torrenting? Surely most countries with decent bandwidth are signed up to WIPO?

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lots of countries don't care about torrenting , at least not the way the US does. Without the riaa/mpaa going after individual users can you point me to a single high profile legal case involving an average downloader? People in alot of other countries don't even bother with a VPN. Not sure why you're bringing up a un group as I'm pretty sure that's mostly for diplomatic disputes, I've definitely never heard of it used to prosecute someone for downloading movies. This info is all widely available online. I'm happy to have answered a one off question for you but if you're just trying to be difficult I have no interest in continuing to answer your questions when the info is very easy to obtain with a quick search. There's lots of torrent friendly countries out there where the movie studios don't make legal policy.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm honestly not trying to be difficult. I live in the UK and used to live in the Netherlands so my concerns are largely with European jurisdictions. In both countries the government has taken steps to prevent piracy and the UK recently changed its laws to ensure 10 years prison time, though that's for "commercial" piracy only. They've also brought in Draconian new surveillance laws explicitly to combat piracy.

I bring all this up because I'm honestly confused. A lot of the seedboxes I see are based in the Netherlands (fantastic bandwidth there!) but I know that people living there are generally quite fearful of being caught torrenting (newsgroups are more popular for this reason). It seems reasonable to me that given that the authorities across Europe generally play well together that they'd share enforcement of this sort of thing, so I don't understand how feralhosting manages to function then.

I mention WIPO just because it's an international agreement that all signatories would make efforts to prevent IP violations, so I assume that this means that most countries would at least share information on this stuff.

It just seems weird is all. A seedbox in Egypt, sure, they're not likely to care about American copyrights all that much, but the Netherlands? Germany? How does that even work?

Idk I think it's just not worth those countries time to waste resources on individual piracy, just to enforce American copyright. The Netherlands is probably worried about protecting their own content, and regardless, it's the seedbox company taking most of the risk. You lived there so you'd probably know better but I haven't heard of anyone in the Netherlands being prosecuted, and definitely not anyone in North America being prosecuted for what's on a NL server. Idk its always risky I guess but seedboxes seem to minimize the risk similar to a VPN and come with other benefits if you're into private trackers etc.

[–] rich@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I cancelled all my subscriptions and just pay for a seedbox instead.

Only two subscriptions I have now are Spotify and Game Pass...because they are actually worth it.

[–] anemoia_one@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 1 year ago

Even Spotify though continues to Jack their prices with no extra benefit. I’ve hoped for lossless audio from them for so long, but instead they just charge more for a bad UI driven by engagement instead of user experience

[–] Grieves@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What exactly is a seedbox and how much is it?

[–] rich@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's, in layman's terms, server space you rent out and can use for your downloads. torrent clients like transmission are usually built in. I pay £5 a month for 2tb space and enough bandwidth to keep a good ratio.

So instead of downloading to my pc, I download torrents to the seedbox (at a blazing fast speed) and then download files from there to my pc whenever I feel like it, again at stupid good speeds.

I have FTP access, so I've just added it as a folder/mounted drive on my windows and Linux mint file explorers. Works great. Also have it on my smart TV as a web address for quick streaming of whatever I downloaded.

Edit: this also eliminates the risk of downloading Torrents locally.

[–] MaggiWuerze@feddit.de -1 points 1 year ago

It's basically a web based software that handles the download of torrents for you and then offers a download link for you to get it on your machine

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Same for me. Had Netflix and Prime.
Cancelled Prime. Student plan ran out and wanted to spend less (on Amazon and buying random stuff.
Cancelled Netflix. Didn't use it, convinced my mother to let it go (only after saying how much it costs).

Renting a seedbox for 15€ per month, Spotify for music and since this month I burried my life long hate for YT premium and now also have that (and wish for a plan without yt music for 3-4€ less).
Reason why I did YT premium was, because I already watched more YT than Netflix anyway. And it's near daily for about 2-3h. Well worth it (for way too much money).

[–] Acid@startrek.website -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For YouTube premium I just did the whole vpn to turkey and pay for a year upfront which was like £12 for the year

[–] yum13241@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How about you use Revanced?

[–] Acid@startrek.website -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cause I use an Apple TV and an iPhone?

[–] yum13241@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your fault for buying into the anti-consumer Apple ecosystem

[–] Acid@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure and with that trade off I have a rock solid experience with no issues at all.

Sometimes you get tired of android and the jank and want shit that just works so you can get on with your day and just focus on other things.

[–] yum13241@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple is a huge mess tbh, you have NOT done tech support for Apple stuff, it's a pain. Android, otoh, is a breeze. I've always found Apple stuff jankier.

[–] Acid@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't needed to tech support on any of my Apple stuff in the entire time I've owned them, I have at home both a Linux server and a Mac mini running as a headless server. Guess how many times I've had to fix the Mac mini 0.

My iPhone I've had 0 issues with and my M2 Air which I use for work has had 0 issues.

I don't really see a situation where the sorting out a mac would be troublesome it's pretty much all simple as hell.

Oh and fun fact, I have done tech support for apple stuff on a daily basis as part of my job as a store manager of a retail tech store and I'm constantly thrown problems from Android/iOS Devcies as well as MacOS, Linux & Windows Devices and guess which ones give me the most problems.

[–] yum13241@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorting out a Mac is troublesome. Errors that give you no information, lack of easy access to advanced utilities, and of course, it bring all in the name of "It Just Works! (TM)". I found myself cursing at a Mac, but never had on literally any other operating system ever. Even TempleOS is easier to troubleshoot.

Errors on every major OS:

Windows: The application could not start because of missing dll X (0xb). Reinstalling the program may fix this problem.
Linux: Could not find libfluidsynth.so.1. Reason: No such file or directory!
macOS: Could not connect to this network.
Android: App not installed. There's also another "There was a problem parsing the package" which either means it's corrupted or your phone is from the Stone Age.
iOS: Literally reboots your iPhoney every 3 minutes because the fucking microphone is broken.

Now let's see what those errors tell me.

Windows: A DLL is missing. Either it got corrupted or the user fucked up.
Linux: App is linking against a super old library. Update the app or compile it to use a newer library.
macOS: LITERALLY NOTHING. Super vague, but at least the Android one below only appears when you are sideloading (you should know what you're doing)
Android: While the error itself is vague, it usually means "no space left" or "bad signature". Again, if you see this error, you should know what you're doing.
iOS: I couldn't tell unless I knew the mic was broken.

Guess how many times my Dad had trouble with Bluetooth on macOS. More than I can count, to the point of needing to steal my mic from me.

[–] Acid@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lack of easy access to advanced utilities

Me and you have very different experiences to this, at work I've found MacOS the easiest of the three to sort out.

I'll give you a recent windows example, A PC comes in for repair with a b450 MSI board no audio on the Front panel or the rear I/O. Naturally we install all the drivers off the MSI web page except windows won't even detect the sound card. Throw on a Linux USB live environment instantly detected.

Naturally we're like no worries let's use the inbuilt Windows tool to reset the PC with a cloud download, nope that doesn't fix it. Required a complete reinstall from a USB. This was windows 10 22h2 iirc.

At work I see Windows/Mac/Linux daily and Windows, gives me the most trouble on a daily basis. With Mac/Linux most things you can fix from the terminal pretty quickly, or with Mac just use the inbuilt reset tool no matter how much a customer fucks up their machine.

[–] yum13241@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

The problem is I don't want to reload macOS over every tiny fuckup like in the SymbianOS days.

[–] fckreddit@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Trusting promises of corporations is like believing that a wild cobra won't bite you. It's definitely possible, highly unlikely they will keep the promise.

[–] emizeko@hexbear.net 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

chomsky-yes-honey remembering when cable television didn't have advertisements

[–] CrowAirbrush@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

My memories go as far back to when a full commercial block was 60 seconds and only happened once in the middle of a movie and usually around once per hour on regular tv.

[–] Grownbravy@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

::: spoiler Cant have mid-stream ads on a torrent

Yet yes-honey-left

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Also love how they're all going to make a cheaper plan with ads so they can either double dip or push you towards the more expensive plan. Nothing but making things shittier for the end user, love that innovation.

[–] JelloBrains@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Disney's Bob Iger openly said that he would prefer more people use the ad tier because it was more profitable.

[–] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Netflix's ad tier is also more profitable.

[–] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Stremio is pretty cool. Allows for streaming torrents with a lot of seeders. Watch most TV series and movies on there nowdays

[–] Gailthesnail@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

stremio has gotten way worse after rarbg went down. doesnt seem to scrape torrentgalaxy correctly even with the torrent already cached and i have no idea how to fix it

[–] Melonius@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any good guides on setting it up?

[–] YoungBelden@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

idk if it has other capabilities, but to use on android basically just install it from the play store then install a bunch of community plugins for various sites. torrient io scrapes most public trackers

can cast to TVs too if your phone/tv has the capability