One thing that leaps out at me about this ruling is that courts understand the internet a lot better nowadays. A decade or so ago Sony would have probably gotten away with the argument that Cox profited from the users’ piracy; nowadays judges themselves use the internet and are going to go “lolno, they probably would have been Cox customers anyway. It’s not like anyone pays for internet connection solely to pirate. And in most areas people don’t even have a choice of provider, so how is Cox profiting from this?”
Don’t believe that you’re always gonna be protected by some judge somewhere.
Get a proper VPN, dammit!
I just wish they would advertise the truth. VPN’s are basically useless nowadays for everything except torrenting. Most websites once they detect a VPN address will just shut down. Go ahead and give Imgur a try with it turned on to see what I mean.
I use a VPN constantly and sadly a lot of sites add know VPN ip’s to a ban list, I just reconnect my VPN and usually I get a good address but yea it sucks
Change your server to another location. ISP blocks VPN addresses that have been tagged.
don’t use public trackers is a better solution
I’ve never been able to find a private tracker to join in like 20 years of this shit. Everything is closed off to registration and you basically have to find some guy in a dingy alley to suck off for the chance they might give you an invite.
Fuck em, don’t need em. Never have, probably never will
If you’re into audiobooks, Myanonymouse is essential but easy to get into. Other than that, I’m the same. 20 years of torrenting and I’ve never needed a private tracker
It’s mostly just an elitist thing
I’d say it’s more convenience than elitism.
I’m in BTN and it’s the only indexer I use for my Sonarr instance because it has absolutely everything. I’ve never not been able to find something and almost everything I download will saturate my 1.2 Gbps connection.
For Radarr I don’t have any private trackers and it takes 35 public trackers to get coverage that is almost as good. The options I’m given are way less organized and download speeds are a gamble. It’s not really an issue because I rarely watch movies, but I definitely understand why private trackers are so sought after. I’ll eventually try to get into some smaller ones which tend to be pretty easy to do.
I’ve been using audiobookbay, does myanonymouse have more content?
About the same, but guaranteed seeders. Half the stuff on ABB will never download, MaM takes seconds
That’s great, I noticed ABB doesn’t track my ratio anywhere even though they require an account.
TorrentLeech has open registration several times per year. Keep an eye on Opentrackers.org for any of these. Note that some are open, while others are open application. The latter means you must meet certain criteria to be accepted. Typically this is proof of your stats on other trackers, but sometimes it’s exclusively for refugees from one that failed.
Keep in mind that you will not ever find open registrations on an established, reputable tracker. They don’t need more users. They only recruit from lesser, more accessible trackers. You will need to start on these to establish yourself. There are plenty of guides on this, with most starting on RED or MAM.
If you aren’t on any of these, it’s not because they’re too hard to get into- it’s because you don’t want to put in the effort. Which is exactly what private trackers want to avoid.
Also, smaller doesn’t always mean bad. TorrentDB was a rising star, with regular open invites, right up until its collapse. Even the giants like PTP started from nothing. Getting in early is a perfectly viable strategy, especially if you help grow it.
yes I guess it is a case of who you know. Most have rules against giving your invites to unknowns too
The private trackers I use have stipulations stating if one of your invited folks breaks the rules you get punished as well. Makes it a very selective process choosing whom to share with.
Precisely why I am not handing out invites to the people messaging me
Exactly. I’d love to share, but I don’t know them. Not risking my account for Mr Rando.
The select few I do share with get a brief talk from me about being good users and the impacts if they aren’t.
Getting into MAM is easy tho and you can branch from there, there are people sharing invites to others.
Yo! What exactly is different about private trackers? Like how does that help? Im lucky enough to have one but due to the seed ratio rules, I find myself downloading from my usual sites more frequently because I worry about seeding indefinitely.
A studio (or its subcontractors) is unlikely to be able to connect to and scrape the ips of seeders on trackers provided by a private group. Most studios are going to go to the top couple of trackers listed on google and go get the ips out of whoever is connected to the rarbg/piratebay whatever trackers.
If your private group is smart your torrent file will only work from your ip address too
Oh nice thanks for that. So should I not worry as much about seeding the private trackers?
Nope. Get that ratio up!
¿???
Skill issue
Just use a debrid service. 10x better.
Am I right in thinking though, if everyone used a debrib service, nobody would be seeding the torrents and it would all fall to bits?
Yup. Debrid is a superleecher service. It doesn’t actually seed anything, so it contributes nothing back to the torrents. If everyone used debrid, there would be nothing to torrent as there would be no seeders.
Please don’t follow this advice. These services don’t seed, if they get popular it will kill bittorrent.
¿???
They are on private trackers too. Just use a VPN.
Private trackers just lessen the surface area. When the companies decide to lobby enough to change the laws you’ll need to hide with private as well.
Folks need to learn how to rip. It’s a little more tedious but you can’t be tracked and the quality is almost always better. Even the most inexperienced can get started after a few hours of research and tinkering.
Rip?
You know! Like a bong!
Sorry couldn’t resist. Ripping is a term from CD/DVD days. You’d “rip” the contents off, i.e. make a digital backup. Now it’s applied to making backups of streams as well. Obviously the contents of these discs and streams are your property or otherwise legally obtained materials and are not being duplicated, sold, or in any way distributed to others if the content does not belong to you.
Hmu with that invite then please
Right? People make it seem really easy lol
Private trackers are a false sense of security. If you’re able to get an invite to a private tracker, you really think a multi-billion dollar industry won’t also be able to get one?
At most, private trackers offer more consistent content and more accurate seed/leech counts. But they absolutely won’t protect you from the lawsuits from media companies. If anything, being on a private tracker increases your chances of getting fucked in court, because enforced seed ratios means every single user is liable. Remember that leeching isn’t a crime, but seeding is. Because distribution is what the media companies care about, and that’s only accomplished through seeding. Just like how cops won’t typically be interested in busting a drug buyer, when they can bust the dealer instead.
Your nice shiny 12.0 ratio means you’re getting fucked hard when the dildo of consequences finally arrives. And the dildo of consequences rarely arrives with lube.
Yo! What’s a proper VPN these days? It seems like all the ones I used to trust went to shit.
I personally like Mullvad, their practices, and their straightforward price of 5€/month. They’re not going to try to lure you in with discounts by subscribing for multiple months or years. Now if Mullvad has gone downhill, someone chime in.
Mullvad doesn’t do port forwarding anymore, AirVPN seems like a good replacement but I forgot where they are based
Just self-host a VPN on a VPS so you can enable disk encryption and disable logging.
I’ve heard proton and mullvad are pretty good
mullvad no longer portforwards, so probably not a good option to torrent with. proton is good if you use their whole ecosystem.
Proton does port forwarding
I do miss port forwarding but could you explain why its necessary for torrenting?
I use private internet access (pia). It’s reasonably priced, really good for the number of devices, and I don’t believe they keep logs. At least it used to be that way, but I haven’t checked that since I signed up a decade ago. I have had zero issues with anything or anyone while using it for any reason. Uptime is basically 100%. Also has mobile support if that matters.
I know the feeling, I used PIA for a while but moved to Mullvad.
They got bought by an Israeli adware company a few years back
Well fuck me…
ProtonVPN…
Same, I used to use PIA for about a decade, but I could’ve sworn I heard they were one of the ones that had gone way downhill. Otherwise I never had an issue with them. I’ll have to do some digging, see if it was founded or just a reddit rumor.
PIA’s service is still decent and offers all the features that other VPNs do, but they got bought out by a company that has added spyware to programs in the past. So many users jumped ship when that buyout was finalized, because it’s hard to trust their application or their service when the owning company has a known history of intentionally infecting their users.
Okay yes that’s what I remember reading. I have Express VPN now, and while researching found it’s still surprisingly highly and doesn’t log. it’s on the more expensive side though, so I may still give proton or one of the other recs a try.
ProtonVPN
In the end, you can’t out-tech the law. We need rights.
Your so-called “rights” won’t hold to the pressure of massive media capital alone. It will erode away.
They have so far. It’s still legal to use a VPN without verifying my identity. It’s still legal, though difficult, to access the Internet anonymously. The local police department doesn’t blanket monitor everyone’s search history.
increasingly difficult tech solutions for privacy are a bandaid not a cure.
The right to pirate?
The right to privacy could help, like media company’s can’t use legal action to get IP addresses