Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft | Hacker News Reader

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NoMoreNicksLeft

> more customers will pirate media.

This seems improbable. Copying media (I've never hijacked a ship at sea) is a skilled activity. Those not constantly practicing the skill, soon lose it. It's not as if you can just ask somewhere how to do it... never mind the bad advice you'd get ("Just go to this shithole website with 1900 popups, postage-stamp sized streaming, and malware!"), but places like Reddit and other social media shut down any such conversations in a hurry. They're onboard with the status quo.

If someone who understood torrenting stopped 10 years ago, but feels compelled to start today, what can they do? Kickass is dead, Rarbg is dead. EZtv long gone. A half dozen others. Many of the private trackers are gone, but even those that aren't you'll find your accounts all deactivated.

And, the latest generation is just completely clueless when it comes to technology in general. "How can I torrent this, I can only use my phone! Isn't there something that works with my smartphone!?!?!" They don't own the hardware, are unwilling to invest in having it but even more than the money hit of that they're just completely disinterested in it.

The pro-copyright jackoffs might not have won yet, but victory's in sight and they're mostly patient (at least when they're not binging on cocaine).

Maybe some people won't. But those that were able to navigate pirate sites in the early 2000s will be easily able to catch up on what somewhat trustworthy sites are used today. I'd wager that it's even a nicer experience now that say in 2010 were internet connections are fast enough to download a movie in a few minutes and all versions of Windows now come with a good built in antivirus program.

The ones that are clueless when it comes to technology will either have to learn about the stuff, or ask a friend to do it. The same thing happened 10 years ago, maybe not with smartphones but copying a movie into a flash drive to watch in one of those fangled new TVs that could play media from an USB mass storage device was certainly a thing.

Asking for a friend, what is the best way to sail in 2023? I’m fairly tech savvy but I only know of 1337x and TPB. I’m also wary of any private trackers because they block using VPNs.

Public trackers are pretty awful at the moment. I like PSA alot, but they're only doing new releases, even that not very comprehensive, and some shows only in 720p (this last one's bizarre imo).

I've slowly over the years lost whatever toehold I had on private trackers, but even when I had that it was just impossible to expand it. Until this last year whenever it was, I was happy enough with Rarbg. The night before it dying, I remember thinking to myself "I am so fucked if they go out". I think I might have been the one that jinxed it.

> I’m also wary of any private trackers because they block using VPNs.

Yeh, that policy's not great. It's only 50/50 that they do that so they can snitch on you if they get raided.

How good is software like radarr/sonarr/etc? I’m not super familiar with them but they sound kinda like trackers of trackers, and somehow are developed in the open on GitHub so I feel like they should be fairly trustworthy.

> How good is software like radarr/sonarr/etc?

It's usable. Was a learning curve, and though it's been awhile it seems like I spent more time getting it configured than it should have taken.

> and somehow are developed in the open on GitHub so I feel like they should be fairly trustworthy.

They're like 5 steps down the "contributory infringement" hierarchy. Though that probably wouldn't help them in sued, because the punishment for facing a lawsuit comes as soon as it is filed, rather than after judgement.

RuTracker is the way to go if you're not keen on playing the private tracker game. Good selection and well seeded, especially for content that doesn't tend to have good retention on other public trackers (e.g. FLACs, high bitrate encodes/remuxes etc.)

Torretfreak is a great site to check on Sailing the Seas in general. They also do annual roundups of public trackers. It's a place to start.

Firstly, I generally agree. There is a barrier to piracy. Personally, I don't think it's a lot to overcome, when someone wants to.

There are a number of torrent sites still active and when they go down, others will appear. That's how it's happened historically.

Usenet is still alive and well.

Pirate streaming sites are still out there.

Torrentfreaks is a great source for sites, etc.

There are a lot of ways for media to be pirated. Operating a vpn and torrent, while not part of most people's skillsets, the tech has advanced to the point where it's not difficult.

There was a tech barrier, but advancements in tech, make VPN as easy as, install WindScribe. Register an account. Click a button. VPN connect active. (Note: I'm not advocating WS, they are a random VPN provider I used as an example)

If you're not using the haugene/transmission docker image, you're doing the VPN wrong. There was a period of like 3-5 years on reddit where every other post in some of these subs was "my vpn shut down but the torrents kept torrenting and now I'm getting nasty letters from my ISP, why didn't the killswitch work!?!?!"

That's because a killswitch is a dumb idea. It's bad software written badly for a consumer operating system, but the job you were asking it to do was as critical as any control process some esoteric barebones RTOS wouldn't have been perfectly trusted to do.

I don't say this because I'm some genius... I'm saying that I'm the dumbass who learned these things slowly, over years, by fucking it up over and over.

> Pirate streaming sites are still out there.

This may be in the same universe as "piracy", but even so the light from real "piracy" will never reach it, it is that far away.

I use a seedbox and SFTP transfer to my home, so moot, in my case, at least. The VPN was just an example of the lowered technical requirements to enter the space.

Seedboxes are even easier, albeit less well known.

The point is when there is a will, there will always be a way. As things progress, more and more people will start looking into other options, like piracy and the barrier is lower than it was in the Usenet days, for example.

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