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I grew up in the late 90ies with internet in Switzerland, and as a broke pre-teen and teenager I was used to getting EVERYTHING pirated and this habit sticked with me, even though when in later years I was working as a software developer.

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.

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Legal considerations aside, pirating can be a fun hobby. In the early days of computers, pirating was one of the best ways to meet other computer geeks!

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.

> Torrenting, sharing with friends and family is still completely legal in Switzerland.

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 by default distributes content to random strangers

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?

Yes, it's only copyright infringement if you are redistributing the content.

That’s exactly how it works in Germany.. but you can just route your traffic through more favorable jurisdictions

I think streaming of illegal content became illegal in Germany in 2017. See here: https://www.simplegermany.com/streaming-in-germany/#Is_strea...

Just to clarify, because this has always been an issue with misunderstanding, but torrenting and BitTorrent isn't illegal or unlawful, much like how ships aren't. It's how you use it and what you transport over it. I could very easily use HN to send you (and other random strangers) something illegal. BitTorrent in and of itself is simply a protocol.

For video, you can use DaVinci Resolve instead of Adobe. The base version is free for non commercial use, and it's a very capable program. I think it makes sense, Adobe has benefited a lot by having their software pirated and becoming the de facto standard, but they like to pretend that they're against piracy of all kind.

DaVinci Resolve doesn't support mp4 files which makes it a poor option from the get go.

IME it does accept MP4, just not every variation and profile.

It seems to only be a problem on Linux. The paid version supports MP4(H.264), but not AAC.

Well to be fair, Premiere Pro doesn't support MP4 on Linux either. :-)

I'm a very casual user, but I've only used it with mp4 files straight from my phone camera and Youtube downloads.

just use ffmpeg to remux the file?

every time you recompress a file you lose quality

Hence the use of the word "remux", it's lossless (no re-encoding).

It doesn't support H.264 or AAC. Just changing the container.

-vcodec copy -acodec copy

mp4 files usually contain H.264 encoded video which requires the paid version for audio it usually contains AAC encdoded audio which is not supported at all. You can't get away with just copying.

Doesn't accept my gopro videos for sure so it was useless to me when I tried it.

DaVinci resolve is free for non-commercial *and commercial* use and I would personally choose it over Premiere Pro (I switched from Premiere Pro to Resolve and later upgraded to Resolve Studio). The Studio version mostly adds stuff like realtime noise reduction—which is amazing, but it extends well beyond the functionality I expect from a professional NLE. Some codecs are not included or don't work as well with the free version so YMMV depending on source formats, OS, and hardware, but that wasn't an issue for me when I was using it.

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...

I'm very wary of any pirated software these days. A lot of crackers and keygens I obtained long ago turned out to contain viruses. I wouldn't say the majority of the demoscene is like that and maybe even the viruses came from people remaking torrents with modified files then seed-boosted them to the top of the search. A few bad apples spoil the bunch.

It is of course smart to use caution when downloading anything from an unauthenticated source, but this has become a pretty minimal problem the last few years. AV heuristics and OS security features today are miles better than 5-10 years ago, and services like VirusTotal significantly reduce the amount of time a novel repacking of an old exploit can fly under the radar. Also in the case of a pdf vulnerability, the attacker would have to guess the right version combination of OS and pdf reader (or browser), reducing the percentage of downloads that would result in successful exploitation. This combination of factors seems to have made this tactic increasingly ineffective, so people have largely stopped trying it.

If it's a keygen, just run it in a VM.

We had a saying called: "ungewöhnliche Laufzeitpacker!", 'often and originaly used to shorten the filesize' of an '.exe'-file. Hope this helps cos wayback with the iphones there was an 'official and major bug' i remember, Radio/Press/and Tv warnigs told the people: 'jailbreaked-phones users downloaded viruses on their computers'-media (-;

hint: 'shortend...'

When I was young I pirated everything but now I have paid the few proprietary programs I use. I prefer to spend some hundred on licenses, maybe a thousand in total if I sum videogames and have some hygiene on the computers I use to access my bank, private information and social networks accounts.

I would like to share that far from sticking it to big companies, piracy hurt independent creators way more than big corporate interests. Sure, software behemoths would be even happier to squeeze out more pennies from individual purchases, but they make their big bucks at governmental and institutional levels. Meanwhile, _consumers_ compare free software to "free" cracked software. If the equation was "does this software bring me 300 CURRENCY of value, or can I get this value out of a free alternative?", the results would be quite different. Which means we would also deal with better financed alternatives...

Netflix etc are legal, but if you care about proper rewarding of creators and improving the situation, well.

> I would like to share that far from sticking it to big companies, piracy hurt independent creators way more than big corporate interests.

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."

Really? It's legal? Would that mean someone running a torrent site should move their operation to switzerland to avoid getting prison time?

Leeching is. Seeding is not. Its also more of a legal grayzone rather than a blanket "this is allowed".

Only German lawyers are disgusting enough to go after seeders and downloaders who never intend to distribute "illegally" downloaded content. Sometimes they themselves seed torrents and monitor who else is seeding or leeching. If they happen to not use VPNs or proxy, and based in Germany, they get a legal notice from them.

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.)

What I did was to ignore the initial letter, and nothing happened. Over the years I’ve found that not engaging is usually the best defense.

Its a rite of passage in Germany to get a "Waldorf & Frommer" letter. I plastered mine on the wall and use it as target practice.

https://kanzlei-bennek.de/en/waldorf-frommer-warning/

Ignore these people and never reply.

Downloading isn't really a gray zone, even though some of the content industry would like to paint it as such.

But uploading content is ? hm? even when hatespeech may be seen as an expression of speech, the: "'190 visitors'(-rule)", 'viewed the content' -so it became a threat or worth to be 'investigated' is still such a thing (painting it as such) ?!

OP couldve been a bit more precise in their statement. Downloading is legal, uploading isnt.

and as a law student, it's stupid that torrent seeding is considered as releasing something to the internet. It is meant to be penal to be releaser or initial uploader - at least in polish(europe) criminal code, but non-technical judges just go with it, I hate it, but i'm not sure what polish equivalent of polish SCOTUS wrote about it to be honest

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$, how to not pirate when minimal earnings - 750$

I bought my first pirated warez in Poland as a teen. I bought Atari ST games copied onto 3½-inch floppies at a shady market stall in Szczecin. Good times! (Not sure why the 3½-inch floppy disks are called floppy, because they ain't.) I mean, what was I supposed to do? They weren't available in my country!

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!

They're called floppy because the disc inside is still floppy :) Only the plastic case is hard.

Same as Spain. So using Usenet is completely legal.

Uploading isn't legal, but neither is collecting the IPs of people who upload from torrent swarms, so enforcing that is... Uh... Difficult.

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.

Side note, but ips being pii is pretty tricky. Think about all the places an IP is logged in the clear.

I think they are probably on the right path here but I've never worked somewhere that wouldn't be breaking the rules here.

> Torrenting, sharing with friends and family is still completely legal in Switzerland.

Downloading might be legal (not sure if there are some clauses, e.g. only for own/private consumption), uploading definitely is not.

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