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> I use a VPN for other reasons (downloading Ubuntu ISOs mostly).

This made me smile. Good one.

For context, copyright trolls recently tried to extort torrent users for downloading and sharing Ubuntu ISOs.

If you want to give context, a link to the story would be nice:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/fake-dmca-takedown-n...

Importantly, OpSec (the company doing this torrent-dmca-for-hire stuff) says the DMCA itself was spoofed

> OpSec Security’s DCMA notice sending program was spoofed on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, by unknown parties across multiple streaming platforms.

...who names their company "OpSec"? Are they actively wanting to be made fun-of at the next defcon?

I mean, they're willing to work for ISPs doing torrent detection, which has been a scummy business from the start. Somehow, I would imagine they would be even less respected than the feds at defcon, since the feds actually do technically challenging things occasionally.

Is anything worse than "Web Sheriff"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Sheriff

https://web.archive.org/web/20090122235038/https://thepirate...

The emails between pirate bay and web sheriff are pretty funny.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090105141217/http://static.the...

> We shall look forward to hearing from you.

We look forward to receiving more of your so exquisitely designed HTML e-mails with the shiny wanna-be-police-star.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081221100050/http://static.the...

> Dear Frederik,

>

> Hello.

Hi! Please, learn to quote properly in your e-mail messages. You can learn from how I do - I promise you that proper quoting is not patented.

Of course it was a false flag issue, it never made sense from the beginning.

In a world where white noise[1], birdsong[2] and someone playing Beethoven on the piano[3] get copyright strikes/takedown notices - I don't think someone getting a copyright notice for downloading Ubuntu is that far fetched.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42580523

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3637124

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004577

There's actually an album called Ubuntu. Quite possible some duncehead set up a bot to download all torrents with Ubuntu in the name and scrape the IPs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28album%29

"Linux ISOs" has been slang for a very long time:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Linux+ISO&am...

Anecdote from my MSc year in 2003. In the dorm room I had 10Mbps Internet connection via the University's network which was quite amazing for the time. So among the real Linux ISOs, I tormented also the other kind of ISOs. At some point the Uni NOC reached out telling me that I'm consuming lots of BW for torrents which is against the policy, at which I replied that I download Linux ISOs and I'm happy to schedule it for after midnight, outside of peak hours. After some days I get a reply that please do so from another guy who forgot to remove the quote from his previous colleague which went something like "hey we have a problem with this guy's answer"

So yes, Linux ISOs is an old thing indeed

Thanks for clarifying. I've not encountered the use before, maybe because here in the Nordics piracy has been -is- very normalized.

The other reply told about a uni tale. I've heard about a similar story about someone torrenting actual Linux ISOs on university network. That resulted in a stern warning else the student would be barred from using the network and computers. Basically an automatic fail for future studies.

The sad thing is that actual Linux ISOs are so over-mirrored that using BitTorrent generally has no benefit and may be slower.

High availability (through mirrors) is still a good thing. My experience is that torrent files are sometimes a lot faster, sometimes less so. Just as mirrors.

> trying to circumvent region locked content

Semi-related to this, but they do offer an option to pick between preserving your approximate location and using a broader location.

The example they took in one of the sessions was, if you live in San José, with the first option, you'll get an exit node near San José so you can still get local "content". With the second one, you could get an exit node in Los Angeles.

In practice in Europe, it looks a bit different. I do live in the north west of France, and with the first option I regularly get an exit node in the southwest of France (from Fastly), about 700km away (which is pretty fine by me).

With the second one however, I get exit nodes in Germany and the Netherlands (pretty much exclusively Cloudflare), which can become an issue with region locked content. I had the issue with Prime Video last week not offering me a Tennis match for which they only bought rights for in France.

Obviously it's still early and they might tighten a bit the locations outside of the US, but overall it's definitely quick and well thought out.

Last thing, all your traffic from Safari (and presumably some other Apple services ? Still unclear) whether http or https will be routed through it. Only http traffic from 3rd party apps (Firefox, curl etc) is routed through the relays, which I think is a pretty sensible default.

> It would be nice if the BBC didn't block like this, but UK residents do typically pay for the content whereas those outside the UK are unable to.

As an exiled Londoner, I would love to be able to pay to access BBC programmes. Unfortunately I can’t, so a VPN is often the only solution (well, I guess torrenting would be another one, but it’s not really better).

If only there was a way to store a user's information so that they could be identified with some sort of a login process that would indicate that they are a current valid member. It would also be impressive if this same system would allow the user to indicate that they are currently abroad to allow a temporary exemption of geofencing.

Obviously, this is something licensing agreements do not allow for, but it seems like such an obvious user friendly concept that it will never be allowed.

BritBox is a neflix-like service that has UK shows from the BBC and ITV. Decent catalog.

BBC Select is another option for BBC documentaries if you have either Amazon Prime video or an Apple TV.

https://www.bbcselect.com/

> but UK residents do typically pay for the content whereas those outside the UK are unable to.

In essence, what you're saying boils down to "it's already paid for, but nobody else can have it anyway". It's unreasonable and there is no need to make excuses for this behaviour.

It's generally down to the terms for content that networks (BBC in this case) buy licenses to. The IP owners don't want the networks to allow the whole world access to that content for the price that the network is willing to pay to show it to their region.

But also, and mostly, in reverse. The BBC is the producer and license owner of a ton of programming, and rather than offer that to the world for a subscription fee, they choose to offer it to select partners (previously mainly PBS, now Netflix and Amazon) for a licensing fee, or sometimes in a coproduction arrangement.

This is big money, up-front, with no need to build out a global delivery system or deal with millions of customers.

The BBC aren't allowed to. There are very strict terms in which the BBC can operate. So what they have to do is sell to subsidiaries like BBC America. And there in lies the licensing issues described in the GPs post.

This is one of those classic examples of something that looks really simple from an outsiders perspective but once you have to deal with the details you realise it's anything but simple. And through no fault of the BBC either, I might add. Various commercial stations and news outlets have campaigned relentlessly to shut the Beeb down. It's a miracle the service is still operating, even if their hands are tightly tied.

More generally, geographic licensing maximizes revenue without damaging brand goodwill for the vast majority of customers, so pretty much everyone is going to do it.

Hell, I thought the practice would die (or at least slow down) when Netflix started transitioning away from syndicated TV and movies; this never happened. Netflix will totally geoblock their own shows so they can, say, release a cartoon on a weekly basis in Japan but in binge-watchable chunks in America.

You will continue to see anything more premium than a high-subscriber-count YouTube channel be geoblocked until and unless one of two things happens:

- Geoblocking gets so heinous that it starts to push people away from shows and services, beyond ordinary subscriber churn. This is unlikely - the US is the biggest market for a lot of this stuff, and that's a market full of people who have no desire to watch foreign media ahead of an official release. Hell, most of us don't even have passports, and think that you can just move to another country by asking politely.

- Some country or trading bloc gets enough of a bug up their butt about getting releases late that they start amending copyright law to ban the practice. AFAIK, I've heard Australia was considering banning region locked DVD players at one point; and that the EU was considering forcing online video providers to license content on an EU-wide basis.

> the US is the biggest market for a lot of this stuff

I have a funny feeling that a very large percentage of that market comes from VPNs. Everyone I know watches the US Netflix and we aren’t in the US.

of all the streaming services, I have found Netflix to be the one that cares least about geoblocking. they appear to care on the outside to appease the production outlets, but on the inside they don't appear to block or discourage VPNs at all. unlike the BBC who actively, and aggressively, geoblock their content

> The BBC is the producer and license owner of a ton of programming

The BBC is complete license owner of virtually zero programming. Almost all (as in 99.9%+) of their content uses substantial third party copyright works where the cost implications of selling internationally still apply (just the music rights alone will drive you mad, and it's far from uncommon for BBC content that is shown in the UK to have a different soundtrack to the internationally sold version to the likes of Netflix due to the licensing cost and complexity).

It is also worth noting that the BBC makes a lot less than people think, especially if you consider BBC studios to be a quasi-separate production entity now (which it is!).

GP wanted to watch BBC News in particular. I don’t think there’s any licensing issue with that, surely?

> GP wanted to watch BBC News in particular. I don’t think there’s any licensing issue with that, surely?

Ha! There's SO SO MUCH. More than you can imagine.

totally agree. I had no end of shit trying to watch BBC News channel from abroad. I'm a UK national, I own a house in the UK, I pay UK taxes, I pay your stupid TV licence fee, you're broadcasting live over 3 separate CDNs, just let me watch the fucking news. I eventually subscribed to an illegal IPTV service for that one sodding channel. I don't even need the other 17,000 channels. the BBC drove me to it

It may be worth looking at the AAISP L2TP Service[1].

They are a domestic ISP, so I guess iplayer should work over the service.

[1]: https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/l2tp-service/

looked interesting, but is around double the price for around max 2 hours viewing per day, with no guaranty of supporting BBC streams. from experience I'll presume they know about this service and are actively blocking their subnet

I'm paying around half the price for unlimited viewing of direct streams (no faffing with client protocols) which come transcoded for home and mobile usage

Completely off-topic: great choice of name. That number is burned into my mind, and will be forever

To continue the off-topicness...

That number almost always works for store 'loyalty program' discounts too.

<local area code> 867-5309

especially at Jenny's Diner

Still more off-topic: I can only read it as 86-75-309

the joy of fitting 7 beats into a 4/4 signature

cheers ;)

Not running a vpn from your house?

the tenants wouldn't approve (they pay for elec and internet). plus I'm away for twelve months so no chance of onsite troubleshooting, physical reboots after power outages, etc.

So, you are saying that the TV license you are paying for is actually being used by the renters in the house you own. Is that a fair statement? That puts a bit of a different spin on it.

due to the timing of things, I prepaid for ten twelfths of their residence. I didn't seek recompense as I knew I would be consuming one channel. I am unaware if the tenants use a tv

It really hasn't already been paid for. For example, say you are a composer who wrote some music for a BBC series. You get paid more for something in wide release than for something released only in the UK.

> what you're saying boils down to "it's already paid for, but nobody else can have it anyway"

This is already paid for but the next show isn’t.

If the BBC were sold to the public as a soft dollar expenditure, it would be one thing. But it wasn’t. I’m not sure it could be in today’s Britain. Ignoring the freeloader problem threatens the support on which the BBC’s funding depends.

This is a debate with reasonable arguments on both sides.

Licensing issues aside, it would cost _additional_ money to actually serve all that content to a global audience (shipping bytes over the internet isn't free).

yet they deliver over 3 CDNs, yes THREE, for a maximum viewership of one country

Yes you're right, I was giving a reason more than an excuse. I don't think they should be doing it.

I wish I could pay for bbc iPlayer service outside old blighty. But they don't allow it.

This is as much to do with their content license agreements as it is BBC being disinterested. Material BBC licenses to distribute, they are limited to the UK, and content BBC licenses to foreign TV presumably can't be also distributed to that same region. There is a service BBC run which allows those outside the UK to stream some content (https://www.britbox.com/us/).

You still can in some places if I recall correctly. Notably not in US due to licensing disagreements (of course).

Like, commonwealth nations? Or just countries too small to bother with the legal fees?

Like, you can download BBC iPlayer (or could) and pay a fee. For UK license fee payers, the app and content is free.

I don't think the content was identical, but it was pretty broad. Some EU countries, maybe Canada?, at least.

smartdnsproxy.com - 2 weeks, no credit card needed. Works perfectly and you don't need to use a VPN, just one of their DNS servers.

I took a look at this, it seems the way it works is when you do a DNS lookup it does a lookup itself and rewrites the IPs before returning to you. It stores a mapping of client IP and rewritten IP to real IP and when it gets a request on the rewritten IP it looks up the original and proxies the request. Pretty cool, but I wouldn't trust it with anything unencrypted. It offers no privacy benefits.

this is showing up as a malicious site.

Why do you use a VPN to download free and publicly available iso images? (Ubuntu). Just curious.

Do you download directly from a mirror or use BitTorrent for this? (If the latter I think I kind of understand the rationale for the VPN)

“Ubuntu ISOs” is a common euphemism for pirated content like media or games.

Probably because of this - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/fake-dmca-takedown-n...

Until a few months ago, I had never really used BitTorrent to do anything - save for about 20 minutes back in HS almost 20 years ago (!)

(I think I was running uTorrent on Windows, it was weird and I really didn't know how to use it.)

However, in order to "acquire" [this][1], torrenting was realistically the only sensible option I had. A direct download from the Internet Archive would have taken roughly 7 hours @ 100 Mb/s. The torrent file was done in an hour.

To my great surprise, the link isn't dead, so...yeah :)

Transmission CLI FTW.

[1]: https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/2/14/a-concert-for-charlottes...

13GB would take less than 20 minutes at 100Mbps. Regardless, I’m not sure why you only consider near instant downloads “sensible”. I often spent several days downloading things when I was younger.

Not so fast.

Yes, 100Mbps is ~12.5 MB/s, however when I initially tried the .mp4 link I found actual speeds to be much less, (hence the hours long wait I mentioned) so there's definitely throttling going on somewhere.

Also, don't count your chickens before they hatch. I remember downloading Flight Simulator 2002 mods over a 56K modem in my youth - anything over 10MB was a stretch - and I didn't actually have a broadband connection until I went off to college in 2005.

linux iso is code for pirated content

And here I was, still thinking Linux was "an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War".

I think you've confused it with Lunix.

Or was Lunix confused with Linux? All satire anyhow.

My ISP throttles bittorrent traffic.

They get some by way of their portion of most Americans' cable bills from BBC America.

Which vpn do you use?

Private Internet Access.

I used to use NordVPN but found it to be much slower, less stable, worse macOS integration, not as good on the privacy front.

Do you have any thoughts on PIA vs Mullvad?

PIA is owned in a weird structure I don't understand in a jurisdiction where any legal agreements with my home country are, most likely, non-existant or untested. They also seem to have enormous amounts on money to spend on marketing or paying off torrent review sites.

Everybody recommends them, but all of these things make me uneasy.

After the recent freenode drama, best to avoid them.

FWIW, Mozilla VPN is based off Mullvad, which I've enjoyed for a year to download Linux ISOs and I've never had an issue with. Also they have one of the most anonymous of setups (accept cash, crypto, no username or passwords or personal details required, you're just given a random account number you can add credit to)

NordVPN is oversubscribed crap.

PIA was founded by Andrew Lee, the big brain behind the current Freenode drama, with help of the infamous Mark Karpeles of Mt. Gox fame. I'd rather use something else.

PIA is owned by the person who owns Freenode, afaik. I would certainly look into that before trusting them.

Yeah I used them for years before they were bought so had a lot of trust then. With the recent Freenode issues I'm not sure if I'll renew, but they do seem like one of the few VPN providers that understands privacy and isn't trying to sell shady security-theatre with poorly justified arguments.

> Props to Apple for the design of this service.

I was under the assumption that it was mostly Cloudflare Warp repackaged with a different name?

That would be an incorrect assumption. It's an onion that goes to Apple first and then to a variety of external vendors -- Fastly, Cloudflare, Akamai, and likely others.

So, the difference is that they encrypt data before they send it through?

I'm not sure if my assumption is completely incorrect. While it's onion routed, the grunt of the work seems to be done by "trusted partners".