Telegram is the hot new source for pirated content | Hacker News Reader

Telegram is the hot new source for pirated content

theoutline.com

51 pointsdarkkknight52 comments

> Law-abiding citizens: Please do NOT download. Thank you.

I am not for piracy, but yes, let's all keep using SMS which has been compromised (and not fixed) for the last 30 years, and let's not use anything that gives us any security/privacy.

All because some 0.001% of all users are stupid.

Thanks but no thanks Mr theoutline.com

> “Telegram is also very popular here,” a Russia-based channel owner

I remember reading/watching in the news how Rusisa wants to outlaw Telegram, not because of piracy, but because the gov cannot spy on its people...

Who does this article really work for?

> I remember reading/watching in the news how Rusisa wants to outlaw Telegram, not because of piracy, but because the gov cannot spy on its people...

It is actually happing now. Telegram can be blocked even today: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=h...

One minute after your comment a court made a decision to block Telegram in Russia.

You're assuming that if an app offers you encrypted conversations, it is okay for it to let a cottage industry of piracy marketplaces to thrive. If that was an okay thing to do, WhatsApp, Apple, WeChat and others would allow it to. The article illustrates that Telegram has a piracy problem. Piracy is not a cool thing. Anyone could search for "movies" etc terms and end up on these channels. They are open and you don't have to join them to read the content. The least Telegram could do is monitor open channels. Check Twitter, and other forums, there are countless posts from creators asking Telegram to take down the channel, but Telegram doesn't seem to care. If these creators were able to find their own stuff floating around on these channels, Telegram should be able to do that, too. Don't start the encryption debate, that is not what this article is trying to talk about.

>Who does this article really work for?

An important point. Criticism so far of Telegram has almost exclusively been of the fact that they refuse to hand over encryption keys to governments. For P2P piracy, there are more effective and more popular options than Telegram.

When encryption is being debated, you can be sure a few cards will always be played, among them are: intellectual property (piracy), black market commerce, and child pornography.

> Who does this article really work for?

Judging from number of Russian references - I'd say it's trying to whitewash recent Telegram ban. Like "See - it was all piracy, bad Telegram, bad!"

Am I the only one who senses a huge bias in this article? Arab writing, citing Russians, telling "law-abiding" citizens not to download. Everything seems to be designed to scare away the "good American people".

Also...yes, you can transfer files over IMs. Yes, having good encryption protects everyone. Duh, where is the news? Maybe that's part of why the article feels extremely sensationalist to me.

EDIT: > "It's actually a challenge to use Telegram and not run into these sketchy groups."

Well, it's a challenge to use ANY messaging and not run into sketchy stuff. Just take a look at your Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever timeline...

> Also...yes, you can transfer files over IMs. Yes, having good encryption protects everyone. Duh, where is the news? Maybe that's part of why the article feels extremely sensationalist to me.

According to the article, you can upload as many files as you wish, each up to 1.5G in size to be hosted and shared publicly by telegram and you can do so anonymously. No other IM system allows for this.

Thank you for pointing that out. I was not aware that the content is actually stored on Telegram's servers. The first example picture looked like typical link-sharing in some IM channel and I kind of overlooked the download buttons.

Still, that does not change my critique of the article's style.

At least in the us, it’s not against the law to download pirated content, only to share it.

I'm using telegram and I have never encountered illegal content, I suppose you have to actively looking for it

Visiting this article prompted my virus scanner to protect me from a bitcoin miner trojan.

http://www.sunbeltsecurity.com/ThreatDisplay.aspx?name=Appli...

First time I have ever seen this actually being discussed online.

Twenty or so of my friends of friends use Telegram. None of them use it for mundane things such as chatting. You name the content, you have a channel for it, ergo you have direct download links for it.

But how is this any worse than downloading illegal content through torrents (TPB et al.)?

EDIT: Should have worded this more correctly. I am not a participant in pirating stuff through Telegram, my friends are; I use it for Android stuff (Substratum, custom ROM support, etc.).

> Twenty or so of my friends of friends use Telegram. None of them use it for mundane things such as chatting.

Alternate anecdata: twenty or so of my friends use Telegram. All of them use it for mundane things† such as chatting, none for piracy. It hasn't even crossed the mind.

† We use it as an alternative to Facebook/Facebook groups/Instagram/Messenger.

The only thing I've done on telegram remotely related to piracy was moving a (admitedly torrented) video from one machine to another.

Use it daily for communication

I didn't consider using it for piracy cause I didn't even know Telegram had groups. Heh. Talk about drawing attention.

I see they are using the built-in download feature. So video content is stored on Telegram file caching servers? That would make Telegram a direct participant in the ilicit trade.

Once a group reaches a certain size and it is public, it's impossible to claim "they are just some friends trading private files thorough a neutral communication app". Telegram becomes a bona fide pirating app, and the "uploaders" just minor co-conspirators.

When you don't offer all the content to an affordable price and availability, you get others doing that for you.

How about "when you don't offer content". For example, netflix outside of U.S. is ridiculously low on content.

Is this article satire?

>Law-abiding citizens: Please do NOT download. Thank you.

Is this in jest or not?

Why is this vewed as an issue ? Copyright law is clearly law created by and for the corporations. Because real would concepts, such as stealing, do not really apply to the digital word. If you think of , say a movie as bread and say Netflix and a baker, then pirating a movie will be the same as buying a bread from the baker, make infinite copies of it and distribute them freely, it is not the same as stealing bread.

I don't see how is this wrong. Broken buisness models, which did not account for the web and lobbying made copyright what it is today, it's not a law which I feel morally aligned to.

I agree with you, except for the fact that I have a couple of apps in the Apple Store and I wouldn't like someone copying and distributing freely my apps, and having 100,000 people enjoying my app while I collect only $1.

That said, we fought to have DRM-free material, not for piracy purposes, but for ease-of-use. Let's please not lose this Right because of some thieves.

[OT] And when your app only costs a dollar to begin with, then people feel justified to pirate it, because it's basically worthless crap anyway or you'd charge more.

So it’s okay to steal chewing gum because it’s cheap and probably crap?

No you don't steel anyting. You go to a guy who has bought the gum, and he somehow clones it and gives you the clone for free. This is not steeling, it sound more like a way to end word hunger.

That's a physical product, that's proper stealing, is that!

I hate when people do this, what if I download the app and it will be garbage ? Id lose money, that's also a reason for pirating content, when I search for a book on a certain topic I usually would discard 3 or 4 matches before choosing what I need, and the only way to discard these matches would be to read part of the book, the part which usually doesn't get in the previews.

Piracy is not just a way of getting content for free it's also a way not to lose money.

Low quality content is being intentionally sold to you. Just look at some books on programming, they trick you on thinking that they do have quality info, but in fact are just lazy rewrites of specifications or man pages. I also remember reading from HN about a guy who made millions by selling total garbage books on amazon.

Eventually if I found a good book I buy it as a way to thank the author, but buying books before reading them it is just a way to motivate people to produce more mediocre content.

Piracy fixed some issues (like extremely inflated profit margins in the Music/Movie industry) but it also created some others. It is no longer possible for small producers of movies or documentaries to fund themselves. It's also not possible to distribute software for people to run on their own machines and still get paid.

The piracy era was incredibly beneficial for society because it gave a lot of people access to software tools and knowledge they previously could never afford to access, but when it proliferated too much, the companies and individuals that produced software and books and video could no longer sustain themselves financially.

This doesn't mean piracy is inherently bad but instead we need a better system that can provide income to those producing useful material while ensuring access to that material to everyone that needs it. It's hard to achieve but it's certainly not impossible.

> It is no longer possible for small producers of movies or documentaries to fund themselves.

When was this golden age? Before the internet was widespread, small producers could not even get broadcasted due to the prohibitive cost of broadcasting methods.

> The piracy era was incredibly beneficial for society because it gave a lot of people access to software tools and knowledge they previously could never afford to access, but when it proliferated too much, the companies and individuals that produced software and books and video could no longer sustain themselves financially.

There's currently no research suggesting that piracy makes creators lose money unlike the movie industries are claiming.

> It is no longer possible for small producers of movies or documentaries to fund themselves.

KickStarter allow small producers to fund themselves, YouTube allow to monetize your views.

Isn't this an issue with any chat app that permits groups and bots?

Wow I did not know about that. I will go and check it out.

I don't quite understand how Telegram can host the content. If it is just distributing the links, it does not count.

Telegram lets you upload content directly on the platform -- as long as the file size is under 1.5GB. Once you have uploaded the stuff, you can share it with others, who only need to tap on the download button to directly get the file on their device from Telegram's servers.

Doesn't it also mean that Telegram is a database of copyright infringing users associated with a phone number and all their actions cryptographically signed(can't claim you did not shared/viewed something)?

You can argue if the copyright laws are good or bad but infringing these laws un-anonymously seems needlessly risky to me.

Never understood the logic of a privacy focused app asking for a phone number at all, let alone requiring one.

Really not a fan of how the phone app store market has normalised this.

Here's a [video](https://twitter.com/refsrc/status/984643353768685568) -- by the reporter who wrote the story -- which shows the widespread of the issue.

"issue"

Piracy is a real issue. It disrupts the money flow towards media distributors and artists, and thus weakens the economy.

Er, how does it weaken the economy? The money that the corporations don't get doesn't actually vanish in a puff of smoke, it's still in posession of economic actors, who either purchase something else or invest it in a bank/stock.

What it does is reduce the profit of those corporations, which may make their business unsustainable and lead to this market shrinking, which may cause economic instability while people reorganize their effort towards another market. Those are all hypotheticals though, because the industries affected by piracy are all growing fairly rapidly.

Does competition weaken the economy? There's plenty of examples(e.g. computer hardware) where competition has eroded profit and changed the market dynamics, especially for new entrants. Do clearance sales weaken the economy? Free samples? Does generic medicine hurt the economy? There's so many cases of corporations not realizing the profits they might have wanted, but I don't see how they weaken the economy.

Well my friends who pirate just hoard the money they would otherwise be spending. If you're at the point where spending on entertainment would come out of money, that you would otherwise spend on something more worthwhile, you shouldn't be watching movies and listening to music in the first place! You should be working and bettering your economic position!

Not everyone can afford to have fun and that's ok. Some people's place in life is to be workers.

Clearly the poor are such degenerate creatures they should only be working.

I congratulate you on winning the genetic lottery.

Do you have any suggestions on the prefered skin color or ethnicity of the people who need to be workers ?

Lol. Do they keep their hoarded money under a matress? If it's in a bank account it's being actively used. It actually doesn't matter whether the money is in your friend's bank account or some corporate bank account, the money is still being lent out, and used to grow capital. It's fundamental to how fractional banking works.

As for people affording to have fun, my experience is that the working class aren't using entertainment to have fun, so much as they're using it to dull the pain and tedium of a fairly shitty existence.

I tend to agree that one should tend to work to improve one's life, but never forget that actively finding content to watch is work. And having access to a large library of digital media is something no amount of money could afford 100 years ago. And lets not forget how cheap super computers are that even homeless people tend to have one in their pocket. So, yeah econonic position matters, I guess.

It also helps spread content, like a modern version of word of mouth. Assuming every download is a lost sale is a debunked myth. I agree there's a problem, but the solution isn't prosecution but education.

Also, piracy is, most of the time, a master of convenience: Netflix/Steam have reduced pirating way more than any anti-P2P law.

I couldn't imagine how I could finish college without pirating most of the text books. Piracy gave me an opportunity to grow professionally and morally through infinite media access. Shure if your upper middle class this is an issue to you , since you can afford anything , and now you can moralize and shame people for pirating stuff, which to me, is the same as bragging of your social status. But I am not rich, and to me piracy isn't , like a choice , it is the only option.

[citations needed] I'm not aware of any research demonstrating that despite hearing this from the movie industry.

But why would you even download files through something like Telegram?

This looks like the perfect distribution network for any kind of viruses etc., so wouldn't you just be better off going through TPB or other torrent services?

Article mentions that web is just too complex and ridden with ads. Telegram is simpler. One click download.

Any Channel recs? Is there anything that’s hard to get through the standard means?

why usrname dar kkk night ???

Telegram condones piracy to boost their growth. Simple as that.

you wrote freedom wrong

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