A curated list of warez and piracy links
github.com
github.com
Torrenting, sharing with friends and family is still completely legal in Switzerland.
Only after pay services like spotify became a thing and were more convenient than managing and tagging my multi TB sized aac/mp3 library, I switched.
Same for Netflix. But since fragmentation of streaming services started to happen, I'm going back to things like stremio/torrents/DDL sites.
For software, as a hobbyist videographer I wouldn't purchase the Adobe suite and all the expensive VFX tools I use for my family videos. But whatever software I use professionally (at work and at my employer), I'm of course getting proper licenses.
Nobody ever went to jail doing this. Some paid hefty fines, though.
But a friend said that you can send them a counter notice where they have to prove that it was you at that time at that computer downloading or uploading. After doing this, someone he knows never heard back from these absolute parasites of the society.
(I am not a lawyer, and this should not be taken as legal advice.)
https://kanzlei-bennek.de/en/waldorf-frommer-warning/
Ignore these people and never reply.
as always lobbing by big companys is designed to screw over teenagers and common folk for exaple, got(HBO) in freench amazon 50$ afterdiscount, in polish stores - 250$, how to not pirate when minimal earnings - 750$
Sharing culture was strong even without the internet back then. I still fondly remember when I got hold of what was probably the first audio cassette tape to go viral in Norway. It was of a really angry North Norwegian cursing and cursing and cursing because he couldn't fix his bloody washing machine. Very colourful!
Edit: Source (german) https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmittei...
Machine translation (deepl):
> According to today's ruling by the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne, IP addresses are clearly personal data, which means they fall under the Data Protection Act. Furthermore, in a majority decision, the highest court considers it inadmissible for private companies to secretly research IP addresses. According to today's Federal Court decision, there is no sufficient justification for this. With immediate effect, the company Logistep AG is no longer allowed to collect and pass on data, i.e. it must stop all data processing in the area of copyright.
I think they are probably on the right path here but I've never worked somewhere that wouldn't be breaking the rules here.
As an aside, BMD just released a bunch of new training material for free on their website (no registration required):
* A series of books available as PDF downloads or purchase if you want a hard copy
* Videos available for streaming or download
* Project files and source media for following along
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/tra...
hint: 'shortend...'
Downloading might be legal (not sure if there are some clauses, e.g. only for own/private consumption), uploading definitely is not.
This is incorrect in regards to torrenting. Torrenting by default distributes content to random strangers, which is crossing the line. Pure downloading from random sources and sharing with friends and family however is perfectly legal.
Also, IIRC this applies to movies and music, but not software.
Torrenting distributes to whoever has the torrent file, which you can share privately. The most common usage may be to share with strangers, but calling it the default makes it seem like it’s inherit to the protocol.
> Pure downloading from random sources (…) is perfectly legal.
Does that mean uploading to share with strangers is illegal, but downloading from a stranger isn’t?
Netflix etc are legal, but if you care about proper rewarding of creators and improving the situation, well.
Does someone remember the Bill Gates line about Windows piracy in China from the 1990s? Someone said something like "There are 300 million pirated copies of Windows in China" and Bill Gates responded "I'd rather they pirate Windows than use something else."
Additionally, thanks to pirates and data hoarders (and the Internet Archive), we have a LOT of intellectual property preserved that would otherwise not exist due to fuzzy ownership and copyright complexities.
However, when studios resort to pulling tricks like [0], artificially limiting content (john wick 2 is available on netflix, but to watch the first, you have to purchase it on another service), or just being fragmented (which of the 5 apps on my PC has the content I'm looking for?) I start to get super frustrated at the services, and if this continues will either likely just stop paying for the content, or look elsewhere. The content needs to be easily accessible in high quality or it's going to lose to piracy.
[0] https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a37170236/black-widow-scar...
Absolutely ridiculous.
Thankfully I have infuse on my ATV, so if the price is too high, I pirate.
Find a few friends who think the same and have spread out tastes, and you can setup a nice Plex server that hits all the big names so you're not out of the loop. Whenever one of us wants something more specific, we attempt to find it ourselves. If we can't I'll ping the group and usually one of the others can find it through other sites. It's fun and communal!
Yeah I don't have a right to watch Friends but that was some BS. Set up Plex, fired up my old IRC client and now new TV shows and movies from a half dozen streaming services automatically appear on my TV ready to watch whenever I want.
I still subscribe to Netflix (get it free from mobile provider), Amazon Prime (use prime for delivery) and Hulu (got it for 99 cents per month for a year) but I don't really actually use any of them anymore.
So although we subscribe to D+, anything we want to watch on the TV ends up pirated into Jellyfin. Eventually I'll pick up a fire stick or set up a media PC, but I feel zero guilt about this in the meantime.
We have Disney+ in Australia but I'm pretty sure we still don't have HBO Max.
Though every service in every country has wildly different content. John Wick 1 might be on Netflix in the US but it's on another service in AU.
Honestly between piracy and a vpn piracy is a better option. You're still breaking the licensing either way, and with a vpn you run the risk of being banned from the service. Not to mention most 'watch service X in the USA' vpn services are shady as hell and I trust random torrents on the pirate bay more than them.
Though, it'd be nice if Github forks could all come together and vote on a new "primary" when the source repo gets abandoned.
sorting forks by stars would be a great feature to have built-in
There's your answer.
The reason for that is that once upon a time some virus used UPX (or some demoscene tool), and the antivirus associated that with the virus. But some antiviruses also often detect cracked stuff and report it as being virus, purely because they're killjoys.
Commercial antiviruses are a plague as bad as virus themselves, unfortunately.
But even doing simple stuff like compiling with winsock, or with the wrong(!?) compile flags will trigger most AV. We almost always have to just report the dlls as false positive and pray microsoft actually adds them to the whitelist, and I'm guessing that's not really an option for cracks.
Though tbh the best thing you can do is just pick up a game you like and just have a go at reversing it, it'll be a bit slow but the more you reverse the easier it gets. After you reverse it it's just a matter of looking up each topic (ie dll injection, hooking, etc) as you need them. None of them are that hard, they just seem overwhelming if you try doing them all at once.
1. Has TV apps 2. No ads 3. Reliable
I've been doing the Kodi route, but it's such a PIA with streams not working consistently.
Time shifted content is under threat of leaks or hacks in the pipeline to release and gets duplicated once available.
Well, at least the author is responsible and owns up to being one of the cheaf reasons sites like these die :)
Can't recall how many "r"'s but I think maybe the exclamation point was there as part of the name.
I think it was maybe associated with Mozilla somehow. Or maybe CCC. Or even the Pirate Party?
If anyone has any leads, I'd be happy to know.
Mullvad is a low-profile company based in Sweden (strong guarantees for privacy) where you can even sign up by sending cash in an envelope. It doesn't get more anonymous than that.
On the technical side, I've been using Mullvad since probably 2012 or something like that, and lately just their Wireguard implementation. Always have had good performance and never received any complaints, even though I have used it for torrenting and bunch of grey-area stuff.
Edit: I see now the author has even highlighted PIA as their "top pick", which for me compromises the integrity of this list. PIA most likely paid the author to add that for them.
Disclaimer: I don't work at Proton and I have no idea if they actually do care about privacy, they at least say it.
What do you mean? Sweden is not at all a strong guarantee of privacy by EU standards.
Did you mean Switzerland perhaps?
[1]: https://mullvad.net/
One has stellar organic reputation and accepts anonymous registrations and payments (cryptocurrency or cash-in-letter). The other spends serious bank on SEO and paid endorsements from "reviewers" and has been acquired by one of the sketchiest owners in the industry. They have a strong track-record of paying to get on top of VPN lists.
If privacy is a concern, I wouldn't touch anything under Kape Technologies with a pole and after the acquisition last year, I don't see why anyone would become a customer of PIA.
Unless you're purely interested in tunneling your warez and nothing else, in which case I guess NordVPN is a decent choice (I hold them sus and would recommend against them for general use but they do provide great bandwidth-per-buck). You could always do split-tunneling and route your torrents through one place and HTTP(S) through another, for example.
Side note: All these ads for VPN services you see now really makes it seem like you should use a VPN. Do most people need a VPN? You trade off an ISP snooping to a VPN provider snooping. Here in the UK, ISPs can't sell my browsing data, and are more regulated than private companies, so maybe that influences my opinion here.
Well, you trade off the possibility of a VPN provider snooping even though they claim not to for the 100% definite snooping that you know for a fact is happening with an ISP. And even if you get a VPN that snoops, wouldn't you rather have some random small company doing that snooping than, say, Comcast?
https://digital-lab-wp.consumerreports.org/wp-content/upload... (PDF)
> Although Mullvad, IVPN, and Mozilla VPN—in that order—rose to the top, there are still improvements that can be made.
> Of the 16 VPNs we analyzed, Mullvad, PIA, IVPN, and Mozilla VPN (which runs on Mullvad’s servers)—in that order—were among the highest ranked in both privacy and security. However, PIA has never had a public third-party security audit. Additionally, in our opinion, only IVPN, Mozilla VPN, and Mullvad—along with one other VPN (TunnelBear)—accurately represent their services and technology without any broad, sweeping, or potentially misleading statements.
I've had a subscription with them for a couple months, but I recently found out they intercept DNS requests[0] (supposedly to prevent against "DNS leaks"[1]).
For the "keeping me private while torrenting" use case, Mullvad is probably fine, but personally I'm planning to move back to a private VPS for tunneling out of my local ISP.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/invjgp/how_and_...
The current status quo is that we have two methods of obtaining a film:
- Via file sharing. You have to wait for the whole film to finish downloading before you can watch it. This is inconvenient.
- Via streaming services. You can watch a film before it's finished downloading.
So for people who say "MAFIAA" etc. What is your model for how films should get funded?
[edit] It's interesting that this is getting so many downvotes, even though it's asking a question and the premises are currently true. As other commenters have pointed out, BitTorrent downloads a file in random order and not from beginning to end, and this is less convenient than streaming.
[edit] Even if you can configure your client to download a file in a non-random order, this will still have some trade-offs. I suppose though that this might be less of an issue than I thought. ;) I still think you're a bunch of entitled nobodies and freeloaders tho. (My sympathies to the people battling streaming service fragmentation and region locks).
streaming service: If you figure out which service to use. If the service that has them is available in your region. And has that movie with your preferred language. And with your preferred subtitle language.
Only if all points are checked do streaming services become more convenient… mostly. There are then also companies like Netflix or Amazon who like making it as hard as possible to watch something compared to pirating it (hyperbole, yes. But also with quite some truth to it, at least for TV shows, I don’t watch movies)
Doesn't BitTorrent download the file in random order, instead of from beginning to end? I thought there was a good reason why it had to do that. I thought the only alternative was centralisation.
But as the other replies say, your client can request any part it wishes. A few clients doing this won't have a significant effect on the overall throughput. Even if most clients were doing this, it would mostly only result in slightly lower download speeds overall.
The exception is for torrents with very few seeders, where this can have a much worse effect, but you are unlikely to be able to stream those sequentially at a reasonable speed anyway.
Of sorts, when there's enough excess bandwidth available that fairness doesn't really matter. By design bittorrent randomizes download order to improve the ability of peers to be of mutual interest to enable tit-for-tat.
You can fund them before the fact with patronage. That is, recoup the cost beforehand, and the work is free for everyone to enjoy after it is made.
It depends on the video file format. If the file format supports opening partial files you can just open them when downloading.
>The latter costs money
There are plenty of free movie streaming sites.
>It depends on the video file format. If the file format supports opening partial files you can just open them when downloading.
I based my assumption on the fact that BitTorrent doesn't download the file from beginning to end in order. It downloads the file in a random order.
It's a bit more complicated than that as you have to ensure that your torrent client downloads data in order, from start to finish. Usually it's more or less random.
There are torrent clients that support this though, for sure.
For example it's basically impossible to legally watch anime with English subtitles in my region, so I have no alternative to piracy.
It's the same story for more mainstream content. There was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones in English when it was being aired. There's no way legal way to stream Star Trek Discovery as it's being aired. Were I in the US, the only legal options, as far as I know, are to pay ~$10/month each for streaming subscriptions that would only be used for these shows.
EU-commissioned studies like [0] show that I'm not unique.
So the solution here, in my opinion, isn't to try to outlaw piracy (it's actually legal in my country) but to make the legal options more reasonable. Eliminate regional restrictions entirely. Eliminate content silos (require studios to license on the same terms to all streaming platforms).
Plus, at least one study has shown that piracy doesn't actually hurt sales [1], save for movies still in cinemas.
[0]: https://torrentfreak.com/eu-study-more-people-consume-legall...
[1]: https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-pira...
I do this too.
But I asked whether copyright enforcement was necessary for films to get adequately funded. I'm assuming that the problems you've described with region locking aren't there. I resort to piracy when I have no other options.
I addressed that by referencing a study that concludes piracy has no measurable impact on revenue.
> I addressed that by referencing a study that concludes piracy has no measurable impact on revenue.
I'm weary of studies in general because they're capable of justifying absolute bullshit. Anyway, your study was conducted in a regime where getting films for free is illegal and therefore somewhat less convenient than it could be if it were legal. We don't have access to a world in which that isn't the case, so your study is kind of... not able to answer my question?
People who appeal to studies should look up "how to prove a counterfactual".
Then your question is moot, as no one can answer it. Perhaps it is you who should actually look up unfalsifiable statements.
[edit]
Also, to be clear, I think that if a study is being used to justify a counterfactual, a long-form argument needs to be made about why it does that. You can't just give the study results (which don't actually test the counterfactual scenario). The relevant counterfactual here is "If copyright law were to be abolished then it would not hurt producers of media like film".
This whole discussion reminds me of the 2000-2010 internet. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-o...
Finally, I've edited out some insults and comments which didn't make sense.
Do you have a proposal for an alternative process?
> Anyway, your study was conducted in a regime where getting films for free is illegal and therefore somewhat less convenient than it could be if it were legal.
In Switzerland, the country I live in, piracy is legal. You might be interested in researching the consequences.
Unsurprisingly, HN being full of people who've got rich off Web 2.0 tech that profits from the spread of piracy and its resulting products (ultra cheap streaming at the expense of artists and creators), plus enjoyed tons of cheap/free digital goods and entertainment over the years, has a hive mind that considers all this perfectly ok
- 20+MBit connections are the norm in the Western world
- there are no border checks or national firewalls to impede the flow of information worldwide (barring tyrannical regimes)
- the cost of making a copy and sending it out to anywhere around the world approximately = free
- we've had 20+ years to work on the service problem of piracy, to reach an acceptable equilibrium
It seems outrageous that we have fractured streaming services, no true digital ownership (even to match what we had for decades with VHS and optical discs), that restricting download rights is even a thing (I got my bag of bytes and paid for it, what is it to you what program or hardware I use to play it?), or that we have to wait at all for a film to be released in all geographies (I don't care that I'm in the Philippines - I already speak English and can't be bothered to wait for the official dubbing) if the bytes can come streaming down the pipe in less than a second.
I'm not entitled. I do have high expectations because we live in the goddamn future and copyright cartels are LARPing a world of digital cavemen. Like hell I'm gonna be content with that.
hint: i thought there was a finer drawn li...
> REM://youtube.com/watch?v=WpU7Hxf8iBw
Back in the day, Netflix's DVD library was close enough to complete that there was little need to look elsewhere, and their streaming selection was not terrible when it launched. Now that the whole system is fractured, the simple act of finding out who streams your movie is a chore, and in many cases getting it in the original language with proper subtitles is non-trivial.
Create a single point of entry to a high-quality library with minimal friction, and you eliminate the desire to pirate in many people.
1. Frequently movies I want to watch are simply unavailable to stream or purchase in my country (Australia). Often they are available on the streaming services I subscribe to but only for users in other countries.
2. Being hearing impaired, I need subtitles but these are often unavailable on the streaming services. I can almost always get them for pirated content. So often I will pirate a movie that I could watch through a streaming service just so I can get the subtitles.
But I have no qualms about pirating things that simply aren't purchasable without jumping through hoops (or at all as is the case for most older TV shows that are even a little bit obscure).
I'd like a full quality, DRM-free file with my BluRay purchases. And then I'd just skip the BluRay and buy the file itself...
They don't sell the DRM-free file because of piracy... But in fact, there is more piracy because they don't sell the file!
Don't bother, the narrative here is that Netflix, Disney+, IP owners and distributors are literally forcing people to pirate content not available to them through their subscriptions.
The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29835933
I say, if piracy destroys Hollywood- let it.
'Be a favour to everyone and above of all, cinema.
I've heard from a friend of mine that torrent clients have streaming mode as well. I.e. packets arrive not randomly, but in order, and as long as your DL speed exceeds 1 second per second, you are fine.
Try living outside the US :).
> What is your model for how films should get funded?
I don't see the movie industry suffering all that much. So maybe ... they can figure it out themselves since it's obviously working well enough, and it's not a life&death situation, but one of optimization. https://www.statista.com/statistics/260198/filmed-entertainm...
I’m not finding it now, but I remember a joke attributed to Tim Berners-Lee (unconfirmed). Paraphrased:
> In the past, if you wanted to see new episodes of a TV show as they came out you’d have to fly to the US every week. Today, thanks to the internet, you can find much cheaper flights.
> What is your model for how films should get funded?
The same way free-to-air TV pays for itself - adverts. Either a couple of ad breaks in the film, or rotating watermarks on screen throughout the film. And make getting it easier than me finding the equivalent torrent. Release schedule - cinema, streaming, 'free'.
When films aren't available on any of the streaming services I subscribe to, what do you expect me to do? Pay another £60 per annum to watch one film on a streaming service I'll never use again? I read somewhere there are 1000 streaming services in the UK, and over 2000 in the US.
I've said before on here, it's a shame we didn't have today's bandwidth back in the mp3 days, because that forced the hand of the music industry to back iTunes, or Spotify, and only now they're beginning to fragment a little. If the video industry was under pressure from widescale cheap piracy, we'd have an industry wide streaming site. Instead we have Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, and so on.
One day before launch Paramount pulled Star Trek Discovery off Netflix to their own streaming service. Can you guess what the most pirated TV show was over the following weeks?
To be clear, I don't agree with piracy, but I have zero sympathy for movie studios and their shitty walled gardens.
Please no. Watching La vita è Bella[1] or a Clockwork Orange[2] and being interrupted by an ad for toothpaste or a theme park would muddy the experience. That model would make most good films unpalatable. Were that the only legal way to consume movies, piracy would continue to exist for cuts without ads.
Do note that the US model of having ad breaks during an episode of a TV show isn’t in use all over the world. In Portugal, breaks happens between episodes but are longer.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Is_Beautiful
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)
Agreed, but how else would you release a "free" version of a movie that funds itself as per the parent comment? Watermarks are probably the optimal solution, but people are used to advert funded TV/movies.
Yes? Especially when you actually normally are able to use a thirty day trial, or pay £5 for a single month without a rolling contract, or just don't watch the title, or go and purchase/rent it from iTunes et al?
All of those are perfectly legitimate options.
Film "success" is still measured primarily in box office revenues, indicating - to me at least - that a successful theatrical release is where the money's at. There are certainly some people out there who would rather watch some shaky camcorder recording of a theater screen for free than actually go to a movie theater, but it doesn't seem like that's had much of an impact on the box office bottom line - even with COVID affecting theater attendance - probably because of the theater experience itself still ostensibly having some dollar value.
Haha. I remember this from... 15 years ago? The pirating industry has moved on substantially since then
https://thecinemaholic.com/movies-that-leaked-before-they-we...
I don't care is an acceptable answer here
Live off the fat of the land. Judging from how profitable movies are, there is plenty of fat
- If I pay for Netflix, I can't watch in full quality because I'm on Linux.
- If I pay for an online rental, I can't watch in full quality because I'm on Linux.
- DVDs and especially Blu-rays come with DRM that breaks in weird ways for many people.
- DVDs and Blu-rays come with unskippable warnings (often about piracy) before getting to the content.
- More and more content is becoming exclusive to specific streaming services, dramatically increasing the complexity and price for everyone.
All of these problems only apply to people who pay for the content. Everything is available for free from pirates without any of these issues (but with plenty of other issues, which are accepted because it's free). Legal, permanent digital copies of movies and TV shows don't seem to exist at all.
I have on several occasions downloaded pirated copies of movies or TV shows that I already had legal access to, just to watch them the way I want. The fact that that's even something to consider is ridiculous.
For music this is partially solved. I can pay for streaming access to anything in the Spotify library, or the Apple Music library, or one of several others. They all contain the vast majority of music most people want to listen to, and compete on other features. This is the direction Netflix and competitors should have moved in, but instead they went for exclusivity.
If I would rather maintain my own library (which I do), I can buy songs and albums on services like Bandcamp, and get high-quality, DRM free files. There is no equivalent for movies and TV shows.
I still semi-regularly run into artists who only offer their music on streaming services, in which case I will listen to their song on YouTube and then forget about them. The alternative would again be piracy, so these artists are missing out on revenue.
They are selling files. It's not that hard.
Let me pay money and download a DRM-free mp4 that I can keep forever and watch anywhere. I'd do it and so would a sizable percentage of existing pirates.
> The latter costs money, but is more convenient.
Not really. If my internet connection is fast, I can download a movie in a few minutes and watch it in VLC, which is more user-friendly than any web player. If my internet connection is slow, streaming won't work anyway. Maybe there's a medium-speed sweet spot in between for which streaming is more convenient, but I suspect only a minority of users occupy that sweet spot.
> Illegal streaming services are not viable because they're centralised and easy to crack down on
No, illegal streaming services are not viable because torrents exist and people prefer downloading movies to streaming them. People who prefer legal streaming services over illegal downloads do so because of the legal vs illegal bit, not because of the streaming vs downloads bit.
This. DRM is a major incentive for piracy. I regret every single DRMed music and video purchase I've ever made.
Show me the online service that lets me purchase any TV show or movie ever produced, in the highest resolution the media was mastered in, and allow me to play it on whatever device I choose--and I will be a paying customer for life. The service simply doesn't exist outside of piracy.
I just laughed, closed the browser, opened up tpb. In 5 minutes I was watching what I wanted in 4K. I don't need to jump through hoops, install spyware, surrender my privacy, and I have a .mkv I can play on whatever device I want. I'd gladly pay good money for this.
Not to mention: I have access to older/niche content, not just endlessly formulaic "Netflix original series", I can lend it to someone else (remember dvds?), I can archive a copy and not be dependent on the whims of my provider.
I myself grew up in the post-soviet baltics and around the time when when I got more into gaming - my monthly income was around 400 and new games were around 60. When Steam (and it's sales), Humble Bundle, GOG became more of a thing and my income increased - I just sort of stopped pirating games. It was definitely more convenient to get something on e.g. Steam than pirate it and jump through hoops to get the cracks working.
When Netflix first became available - I started using that. It seemed worth paying even for limited library. But there were lots of things that was impossible to get any other way than pirating. As I stopped watching movies/tv shows - I stopped paying for Netflix. I don't thing I'd be willing to pay for multiple streaming services.
My current (largely overpriced) media of choice is audiobooks.
The fact is, piracy is widespread and profits are growing. There doesn't seem to be a big effect of piracy on the market as a whole. People do understand the concept of paying for what they use. The right way to battle piracy is to make payment super easy for the kind of use people expect.
As a more practical matter, I see the fight against piracy resulting in the creation of totalitarian systems of control on the internet, along with systems to block people from having control over their devices and data, which I do not agree with.
I agree that people should be paid something for their work. I also postulate that letting people with lower income pirate the majority of their entertainment results in a better market in the long run, when they (hopefully) get the means to contribute back. I see the current Draconian measures as not helping anyone, except the people implementing them and the less savoury branches of government.