Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Very sorry, but I've now decided I need to block access to https://newsgrouper.org.uk/ from the UK, starting 16th March. This is because I find it impractical to meet the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which comes into effect then. See https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety and https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/

I've done a fair bit more homework on this, reading some of the guidance, but not all the thousands of pages that Ofcom has produced, and following their online seminars. Unfortunately very many aspects remain vague, and requests to Ofcom to provide clearer guidelines get answers like "It depends on your circumstances", "We can't advise individual sites", "You have to make the judgement", etc..

I'm afraid my conclusion is that trying to comply with the OSA is just too much effort. It's not just the initial risk assessments and policy/system changes. It's also that one is then required to respond to any reports that come in and judge whether that content is really illegal. You are required to remove anything that is illegal under a long list of categories, but also to protect users' right to freedom of speech. It's easy to think of cases where this balance could be very tricky. I simply don't want to get into the business of having to police other people's speech.

Ofcom have stated unequivocally that geo-blocking the UK will put a site outside the scope of the Act. So I put up a simple survey on the newsgrouper site, this appeared for UK users only, and I let it run for two weeks. There was just one question and a space for comments. I got 11 responses, as follows:

    How would a UK block affect you?                    Answers 1: Not Concerned, I can follow Usenet by other means.      1 2: An Annoyance, but not the end of the world.             5 3: Oh No, that would be a disaster!                        5

The comments were generally disappointed, but some also expressed understanding. So blocking UK access would be a real inconvenience to 5 people. I regret that, but they may be able to use one of the other web interfaces to Usenet, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sites_and_popularity . Also UK people are only about 15% of my users now.

I have seen comments that having a .uk address is enough to bring a site into the scope of the act. I'm not convinced about that, but to be on the safe side I have reregistered my site as newsgrouper.org with a redirect from newsgrouper.org.uk .

My software is available at: https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/newsgrouper/home so if anyone else wants to take on the job of running an instance that would remain open to UK users, they are welcome to do so.

Is there any downside to leaving something seeding indefinitely? Typically I just leave all my torrents seeding whenever I'm done 24/7 (whenever the VPN is on) but is there any detrimental issues to seeding too much?

It doesn't bother me I was just curious if there was ever a such thing as too much seeding since I have like 20+ things seeding and maybe one thing downloading.

Speed isn't an issue since I have gigabit internet.

Check the below for games:

https://pkg-zone.com/details/PKGI00001

https://youtu.be/02-XCE3thUg

https://www.mediafire.com/file/ty7h6880lot7g80

I've been struggling to get ratios over even 1.0, most are stuck in the low 0.10 - 0.20 range. I don't seed off my gaming PC 24/7 because I don't want a VPN on all the time, plus I turn it off at night.

So mainly wondering if anyone has tips on a good setup to keep the PC seeding overnight, I'm running linux mint currently. I also have a RaspPi but I understand they are not great for torrents?

Is there any good way to compartmentalize a VPN? I.e., use the VPN for qBitTorrent only, and use my regular network adapter for other stuff (games, browsers, whatever).

I've tried a seedbox in the past and they're neat, but I'd rather avoid a subscription and just use my hardware. I'm using Private Internet Access VPN until my already paid for time is up in case that's significant.

Kinda want to keep this short. My Asus WRT router running Merlin firmware is currently handling my VPN connections & routing.

There is some part of me thinking if my providers servers go down my router may fallback to WAN, should I run an additional VPN connection on the device/server itself just in case?

It’s been about a year with this setup however this potential issue has been irking me.

Edit: Kill-switch is disabled on the router’s tunnels as it appears to be bugged in two ways. 1) any manual DNS settings get disregarded network-wide 2) it kills all network connections and not just the devices affected.

I’ve seen some digitizers on amazon that would do the trick but they’re rather clunky and don’t split songs as they are played or save any meta data. I presume this would be possible given that the song title is often displayed on various Bluetooth car stereos. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated for hardware / software.

Even simple apps nowadays have become subscription only. Whilst I used to pirate most stuff in the past, but if the app in question is a small one time purchase, it's not bad considering you don't need to sideload updated apk's from Mobilism each time a new version is released (looks at some great cheap apps like Pano Scrobbler).

However, the trend has shifted towards the other side with everything from video recording apps(AZ Recorder), Weather apps(Today Weather) and Battery monitoring apps(Battery guru) offering subscriptions. Some have a high one time purchase option but some like the latter don't.

Battery Guru is an example of enshittification. If phones still came with removable batteries and companies supported them, then for the price of say, a 4 year subscription to the app, I could have just gotten a new replaceable battery. It's not like the app will magically stop my battery from degrading.

Whilst I have done piracy ( and still pirate stuff like films because no alternative, screw you Netflix), I tried to go the legal route for some apps since then updation and management of them becomes easier. But with the subscription scourge, I doubt devs are going in the right direction.

The Hanoi People's Procuracy in Vietnam has issued an indictment against two men said to be the operators of the massive Fmovies piracy empire shut down last year. The indictment offers detail on when the men first met, when their plans for Fmovies began to take shape, and how the site generated revenue. Last year the MPA described the shutdown as a "stunning victory." New revelations are indeed stunning, but extremely puzzling too.

Windows stopped including a codec to play DVDs a couple versions ago. what's a good way of still playing them on Windows 10 or 11?

i own DVDs but I'm looking for software options that work. VLC doesn't unless i get that missing codec, etc

edit: everyone is stopping that VLC can do it with no extra requirements. it didn't work before but I'll try again

I'm trying to setup a system in order for the webUI to automatically open a window and ask me where to save a new torrent, as soon as I finish downloading it, or, better yet, paste a magnet link on it. I need webUI and can't use the Qbittorrent client because opening it'll run two instances of qbittorrent over each other overwriting settings one unto the other.

My idea is simply that I setup the browser to open the files as soon as finished downloading, by using a shortcut to the webui (there must be a way to create the shortcut to the actual webpage), but I'd prefer it more if I had less control (ideally just the usual settings you can look at when adding a torrent) through the transgui, in order to simply hasten the management of everything through categories instead of looking at a long list of things when not needed. There could be a transgui that can achieve that, Something like https://github.com/tympanix/Electorrent perhaps?

I'm trying to download some mp4 files via qbittorrent but most of them don't play. I have no reason to assume that the source is broken, is there perhaps something I am doing wrong or some way to fix it? I'm getting the "moov atom not found" error even though the file is at 100%. The whole torrent isn't at 100% yet, but I enabled sequential downloading. It's really big and I don't want to download it all if it won't work.

I've had one thread locked and another removed for daring to suggest a free VPN.

What rules was I breaking? It looks like the mods are just censoring me without breaking any rules because they know they can get away with it.

Edit for when this post is censored:

There are proud consumers making up bullshit that "riseup doesn't want people using their VPN unless they donate, and they don't want people using it for torrenting."

That's complete malarkey pulled straight from their rectum. Here's a quote from the website that none of them read before spouting their nonsense: "This is an experiment to see if we can create a VPN service that is easy enough for everyone to use and that people will donate enough to sustain."

You guys are literally making up bullshit to justify why you're wasting money, then getting mad at and censoring anyone who tells you that you can be getting something for free.

It's an expected response, even among piracy communities unfortunately.

Consumerism runs deep.

Edit for the mod who locked this post after responding so I can't reply back (nice):

I'm not being any more abrasive than the people in my comments, which isn't breaking any rules. I'm also not off-topic, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to peddle that lie.

Can you explain why my previous posts were locked/removed? Or do the mods just get away with censorship while I get punished for calling it out?

Reply to mod here because post is locked:

I locked the previous thread, because it was kinda offtopic and far from a constructive discussion

It was not off-topic, and the only people being non-constructive were those in the comments making up bullshit to justify their consumerism.

I’m not the one who locked this thread, but I can fully understand the decision, considering that there are 4 reports for this post alone

Cool. So you admit the mods will censor posts just because of reports? It has nothing to do with actually breaking any rules?

Hi! Sorry if the format is wrong, I'm new here (in exodus from Reddit) Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has links to book piracy bots in telegram. I know there used to be a lot, but they kept being closed down and I haven't been able to find a working one. (If there is a discord equivalent, that also works for me) Thanks!!

Trouble continues for popular torrent site TorrentGalaxy. The site, which is seen as a notorious piracy market by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, has been unreachable for days. While some believe that the end has come for the site, technical troubles certainly can't be ruled out.

At least on paper, Real-Debrid's November 2024 announcement detailing new anti-piracy measures, suggested a tough time ahead for the popular platform. Under pressure from dozens of powerful rightsholders, Real-Debrid's position looked precarious to put it mildly; not precarious enough for the service to throw in the towel, however. Three months later, a 16% drop in traffic is painful but non-fatal.

as title suggests, zlib doesnt allow it, i have tried a few other libgen domains as well. preferably where i dont need to create an account.

I've been experimenting with some free VPNs, and it looks like Riseup is legit. I'm able to torrent on it without issue and the speeds are acceptable for my connection.

How come we don't recommend this more? Everyone is always saying "no free vpns," but how many of you have actually tried them? I feel like I've been wasting money on my VPN ever since I found Riseup.

Are we just being hustled by the viral marketers and their useful idiots?

I know it's probably because there's money to be made.

I just wish there was a good place to discuss IPTV providers that wasn't full of sketchy resellers over promising and under delivering. You'd think they could at least sort out their EPGs as most I have used are like 80% complete at best.

Not asking for provider recommendations, not sure if that's allowed here. Just wondering if y'all know of a place where that shit can be discussed in a neutral and honest environment?

Why is it such big deal for some people?

Torrenting my linux ISOs and public domain contenty and it seems to work fine without port forwarding?

TLDR: Is there a way I can just choose files to seed automatically instead of downloading again first?

Pretty new to using torrents and I have a bunch of files I've been able to download over time through magnet links. Some of which I was unable to seed for long periods of time so removed but would like to be able to still seed them again.

It doesn't look like I have torrent files for them and I tried copying the. Torrent file to another folder when using magnets to see if I could get it from that. I was able to get some from that but it seems to just start a Download again. Can anyone explain this process a little bit better for me so I can offer up my files at later times too?

I'm getting back into torrenting and i have a bunch of YIFY, YTS, and RARBG torrents still leftover from back in the day. As the screenshot shows, most of their trackers are not working, i assume they went offline when the relevant websites went offline.

The DHT is carrying and will keep these in circulation, especially when a lot of search engines use the DHT; but a lot of them are still getting stuck, it would be better if the trackers worked.

Are there new ones that carry the torch? Do the successors to these release groups have their trackers too? I'm looking for YTS and RARBG especially but i'd welcome any good current tracker that helps people find my shit

I've been working on a small project to remote control (via ssh mostly) my qbittorrent client. It's going well and I've already taken care of the basic functions I set out to create.

pause all
resume all
set default parameters to all torrents
sort priority to mirror dl_limit
shutdown client

Obviously I'll add more.

Thought I'd stop by and ask if anyone knows of a similar project. I'd be open to sharing the code but for now just the question.

A friend gifted me a few hellofresh boxes once and I quite liked the recipes. But I don't care about subscription services to get overpriced groceries delivered if the supermarket is a 5 minutes walk away.

Is there any collection on the recipes online? At least in Germany, recipes aren't even copyrighted, so it wouldn't even be illegal to distribute them here (AFAIK, IANAL).

Has something changed regarding soulseek? I don't seem to get any results for searching. I tried previously searched terms and even those are returning blank. If there is better place to ask question/debug help regarding soulseek, let me know.

[EDIT Solved]: as suggested in comments : some artists are unsearchable