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Comment by kyruzic | Hacker News Reader

Or just live somewhere where consuming copyrighted content isn't a crime

with popcorn you are simultaneously distributing, and that is the main problem

Yeah, I have had 0 copyright notices ever just downloading stuff, until literally this last week when I actually decided to stop being a leacher and seeded all the torrents I still had the files downloaded back up to 3x ratio. Got 3 copyright notices in a few days and then they actually flat out turned my internet off this morning until I called them. So finally got around to buying and setting up Mullvad and now all will be good from now on hopefully.

Where were you located?

Dallas, Texas with Spectrum for the last 3 or 4 years.

Would it be enough to slice the data between different connections when a country with restrictive laws is detected, so that no user is actually sharing working copies, not even single pages, portions of a song or single frames of a movie? That would be doable by separating data at atomic level, say odd nibbles here, even nibbles there, and transmit/receive them on different connections so that even by intercepting 100% of a transmission from point A to B there would be no chance to reconstruct the data, even in case the encryption, if present, was broken. The only way would be to tap also other connections containing the other half plus data for reconstruction, which would probably require physical access to the endpoint, or a court permit to intercept all data from to that endpoint, which is totally doable but on a whole different level, that is, if they are doing that then the user is already in trouble.

So either rent a server in some country that doesn’t recognize copyright law, or uproot your entire life and move there? Why would anyone choose the second option?

the UK would be a good example of what they're referring to. in the UK there's absolutely no enforcement of consumer internet piracy laws whatsoever

Wait. Is this true? As in they have laws they just don't enforce them?

You get fined by your ISP (cough Virgin cough)

There's more of a focus on "commercial-scale" pirates. There used to be fines handed out to individuals but I thought they had given up on that a while back, but maybe not: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/customers-of-v...

> As we said earlier, such campaigns don’t have a terribly strong history of success in the UK. The courts have also previously warned such firms to be very careful about the use of threatening language, given that those being targeted are not yet proven to be guilty of what they are accused.

> Voltage seems to require the letter recipients’ to convince the firm that they weren’t responsible, but in law, the burden of proof is normally on Voltage to prove that the recipient is the one responsible and not the other way around.

Also see:

* https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-its-a-crime-uk-govt-ignored-...

* https://www.lewissilkin.com/en/insights/shipwrecking-online-...

* https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/new-law-to-deter-...

No, it isn't. Parent poster just talked out of his arse.

evidence for this?

Digital Economy Act 2017 increased the already-existing penalties to max 10 years in prison for copyright infringement - which you technically commit every time you fire up BitTorrent without blocking upload. The same act (and its predecessor 2010 bill) compels ISPs with over 400k subscribers (i.e. all the big ones) to monitor subscribers for such activity.

Then you have stuff like this: https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2020/09/17/uk-police-take-un...

The fact that prosecuting authorities tend to go after distributors rather than consumers is simply due to a value-for-money calculation. There is no formal or informal decriminalisation of consumer piracy, if they could find a cheap way to go after everyone they would - and they likely will, sooner or later.

if we've had laws such as that since 2017, and they were being enforced, you would have heard of people getting sentences, or even fines, right?

surely you can find stronger evidence than the police taking the unprecedented step of contacting - contacting, not arresting, or fining - a few tens of thousand in one region of the country?

Well, there is. You usually get a redirect to a website that says

THIS HAS BEEN BLOCKED BY THE HIGH COURT

or some shit. and then at that point you find the other domain that isn't, or just type in the IP. It's all very shallow

Or use another DNS service (Quad9, Cloudflare, Google, etc.) and never even be aware the block exists :)

that's not enforcement of consumer piracy laws. that's enforcement of distributor piracy laws

That's not true. ISPs are supposed to monitor their networks for illegal activity and notify consumers if they detect them doing illegal things. I got threatened with disconnection about 10 years ago, because my then-wife was downloading TV series fairly regularly via BitTorrent.

Also, people using stuff like IPTV and the likes are routinely cracked down on, with jail sentences and all.

I honestly have no idea how you could come up with a sentence like that. The UK is among the most piracy-restricting countries in Western Europe, because of the massive influence of a certain media-baron over the political landscape among other things.

because everyone I know pirates and no one I know has had an issue with it. I've never read an article about anyone being prosecuted for it. respectable people do it without fear

10 years ago is a long time

Yeah or change the laws everywhere so copyright isn't a crime. Easy peasy.

I live in a country where that will never happen

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