Imagine when film companies pay Google for access to pirate’s gmail registrations. I’m glad I switched to Protonmail years ago. Any of these “free” services will sell your information for the right price.
It seems strange to me how many these days openly discuss piracy, and what they are doing, how often, etc… It’s one thing to give vague instructions or point someone towards a website. But to actively say, ‘I downloaded X, from Y. It worked great.’ and/or ‘I’ve downloaded loads from X, I have over a thousand X, and they all work.’ it makes me cringe.
Possibly has to do with age. Piracy started for me by exchanging tapes of Dragon 32 games, and I guess recording the top 40 on a Sunday. You kept a low profile. I didn’t think I would get caught. My father was friends with a policeman who was our main source for pirated VHS videos and many games. So I felt whilst it was illegal, nobody gets caught unless you put your head above the parapet. That’s the point today, many seem to be a little too carefree. Helping each other out is great, and after all, piracy is about sharing. But do try and cover your tracks. Be sensible.
Been teaching my kid this. Do what you’re expected to do, follow directions from teachers and parents, so that when you do something you’re not supposed to and if you get caught, they won’t even believe you did it. Hide in plain site and cover your tracks by thinking of what you’d look for trying to catch someone.
Silly nonsense. Just cause I said I downloaded something isn’t proof I did it. If I said I murdered someone you still have to proof I did it especially if there is no god damn body. In other words: they have to link my comments to a download I did via vpn years ago. Yeah, good luck losers.
I would expect that to be true as well.
For some reason I can’t really explain anymore, I was thinking of a situation where the confession is made, and reiterated at every step in the prosecutorial process, without any other evidence (for or against) being available for the process.
Right, if you go to the police and confess to the murder of someone who vanished you are going to be in trouble. But we are talking about some reddit comments “confessing” to downloading something illegally. I could have been more specific with the example though.
I do know the law. You should try walking into a police station and saying, ‘I murdered someone.I’m just talking shit, there is no corpse or murder, just saying this for shits and giggles.’ then see what happens.
Seriously, maybe it’s just me, I prefer a quiet life. I don’t want the added stress of a corporation or lawyer threatening me, even if it is going to lead nowhere.
Bit of a leap there. I’m talking about confessing to murdering someone on reddit for instance cause that is what we are talking about: comments made years ago on reddit. Yeah, sure, maybe someone will tell the cops and they will have to investigate you based on your comment about murdering someone, but then what? Sure, it will have consequences for me, but they cannot convict me based of a single comment and nothing else. How the hell is that going to hold up in any court?
And now think back on what we are actually talking about: comments admitting to having illegally downloaded some content. I would assume they won’t even try to start investigating that. Like how on earth are you going to get proof of that?
They would never get a conviction on the statement alone though. What it probably would do, is lead to them turning over every stone in your life to find proof. They’d do that because it’s enough to arouse suspicion but not enough to get you convicted in any way.
Alright buddy, that’s a horrendous example. You’re comparing MURDER to downloading End Game…
Here’s the real comp, go into the police station with a grin and say I just littered 3 towns away in a park, I threw a candy wrapper on the floor, it even has my fingerprint! But you’ll never catch me coppers!
They’d shrug and ask you to leave. No-one is starting a manhunt.
If they have no proof prior, they will absolutely wreck you with a comment like that linked to an account you own. That’s a confession, which you made, it is idiotic as you gained nothing admitting to it.
Only because many people don’t care, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.
Also keep in mind that at least in Germany the act of just downloading something is not illegal. Only the uploading/seeding of content is. So just admitting to having downloaded something is not admitting to a crime at all.
I highly doubt there are any actual pirates on here, it’s just users being edgy. A bunch of dorks that don’t even own a boat role playing badass pirates.
I think many people just couldn’t care less about pirating and believe the companies can’t figure out who they are. For example, I discuss pirating stuff pretty openly on my reddit account. But every single comment I make, I consciously make sure to not reveal enough for people to dox me.
I also don’t have Facebook which is how most people figure out identities.
“Hmm, they’re an underwater welder from a specific small town and they have three sons. Well this is the only Facebook profile that matches that so I bet it’s this person” type of thing.
You are only truly anonymous if you always use a VPN or Tor. If not, Reddit has your IP and the ISP knows who is behind the IP. If LE knocks at Reddit’s door with a warrant, they will give them your IP, with which they go to the ISP to get your name.
they’re an underwater welder from a specific small town and they have three sons
You would be suprised of how much less info than that is needed to ID a person. There are studies about ID’ing people via their favorites and last-watched lists on netflix.
I think a lot of it is to do with the actual chance that the individual is going to get charged with it, big companies generally go after the Distributors and not the individuals regarding it. Plus staying online that you did something doesn’t prove that you actually did it so they would still have to get solid evidence that you actually did it which costs money A lot of times more money than they would have lost from the pirating activity in the first place which is why a lot of them just settle for sending a dmca to the ISP and the ISP for as it saying LOL you better not be doing this
. But to actively say, ‘I downloaded X, from Y. It worked great.’ and/or ‘I’ve downloaded loads from X, I have over a thousand X, and they all work.’ it makes me cringe.
Seems this has become standard operating procedure for much of this industry - make shitty movies, wonder why they flop at the box office, then go scorched earth against alleged “pirates” and blame them for your “losses”. When the studios make movies that are worth seeing, people will go to see them. See: Top Gun Maverick and Avatar 2, among other recent multi-billion dollar hits.
It is worth noting that many of the more egregious abuses of the legal process as of late seem to be by this one company Millennium Media and their many subsidiaries (Bodyguard Productions, HB Productions, etc.) They are basically just a bigger version of Strike 3, just professional trolls who would rather profit off of legal shakedowns than make good movies.
Funny, those are the same movies I’d point to as what’s fundamentally flawed with the film industry; chasing the lowest common denominator and avoiding interesting and artful risk.
Name 10 interesting and artful films and you’ll have also named 9 box office bombs. Hell, Fight Club didn’t even gross half it’s budget at the box office. Very few people want good films.
Now is a good time to remind users that you are placing some trust in the instance that you use. Lemmy is not anonymous. It is pseudo-anonymous. Your instance can do pretty much anything with your account up to and including turning your account into a sock puppet, and they know exactly where you’re connecting from.
With that said, it’s a lot better than most social media today that actively tries to violate your privacy at every turn.
This is part of why I signed up through FMHY. If anybody is going to try to protect my privacy it is probably going to be the very actively pro-piracy group.
To add to this: some instances require your email address, and others don’t.
Obviously there are plenty of other ways you won’t be really anonymous, but if it’s important to you, one step in mitigating issues is not to have an email associated with your account.
I’ve been partial to mailinator.com, but some services are getting wise to it (and blocking *@mailinator.com addresses). Thanks for sharing an alternative!
In a way this does make me slightpy concerned about Lemmy servers, Reddit has a team of lawyers and tonnes of funds behind it to fight pointless demands like these
A lot of server owners won’t and will be much easier to coax into giving up information about it’s users
Both IVPN and Mullvad have just removed port forwarding. I hear the options now are proton (which I hear may not have port forwarding on linux yet, but say they will) and AirVPN.
While it can be abused, it can also not be abused, surprisingly enough. I don’t want a secondary cheap vpn for DOWNLOADING, I happen to SEED, you leech, and also use slsk which means I now can’t connect to anyone who also can’t forward their ports because they also use one of your cheap VPNs with no port forwarding for DOWNLOADING.
You are condescending, have added no new info, and you’re clearly just a leech, I’m pretty done with this conversation, sorry “pal.”
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