The MPAA really is grasping for straws aren’t they. Ever since people were able to stream movies during the pandemic and found it was a much cheaper more enjoyable experience, they have been trying to invent ways to drive people back to the theaters. Now they are suffering major block buster busts and they have to point the finger at someone so they think, “it’s those darn Reddit pirates!” Its funny that they don’t realize they caused their own demise. But really I wonder, why specifically 2011?
2011 is well outside the Statute of Limitations for infringement…
That’s three years with some wiggle room for ongoing infringement.
This is likely an intimidation/shakedown thing.
Sounds more like they’re going after Grande. Belief being the testimony would allow them to build a case that Grande incited or somehow induced privacy which would strip them from a number of legal protections that may apply to service providers.
Could be that they’re looking to block similar usernames in their streaming services?
Right? Yeah, piracy is the reason people don’t go to the movies. It has nothing to do with the overpriced, nasty concessions (cold, overly salty popcorn), dirty floors, uncomfortable “reclining” seats, gimmicks (4DX, RPX, XD), staff that can’t be bothered to turn off the lights at showtime or properly configure the sound systems. All while you’re paying $15 per ticket and $30 on snacks.
These morons live in an entirely different world.
Not to mention the comparison between watching a movie at home, where you know it will be silent, versus the risk of having at least one (but often more) groups of people who will not shut the fuck up the whole time.
Can also pause, rewind, fast forward, lie down, and more at home
Definitely gotta do more at home 😎👀
Hey babe want to movie theater and chill?
Arrr I see booty aboard me couch
It’s funny because we subscribe to the AMC A-List and go to the movies quite a bit (obviously this is in the US). But it’s because a) we have a couple of AMC theatres close by, and b) it’s just me and my spouse, no kids involved. So it’s something that to us is worthwhile (having a night out a few times a months to see a movie on the big screen). Also, we never buy concessions. I can’t imagine how an average family with a bunch of kids can just go and drop over 100 bucks on tickets and concessions on any given night.
The gap between reality and what corporate shills who probably don’t even use their own product think is reality is ever widening.
I think they are short staffed aka underpaid.
Agreed. That means that the current business model for movie theaters is unsustainable.
Yup. Where I’m at two tickets and two popcorn will be 60$…sixty fucking dollars, that’s a lot of fucking money to sit in some shitty seats listening to other people eat and slurp.
Disagree that it’s more enjoyable than going to the theaters. There is a social aspect of going to movies with friend groups that’s hard to replicate at home. People don’t have space to fit 12 friends to comfortably watch a new release.
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.
You can always use https://10minutesemail.net/ for the required email. No muss no fuss
I’ve been partial to https://mailinator.com, but some services are getting wise to it (and blocking *@mailinator.com addresses). Thanks for sharing an alternative!
What about using something like a protonmail address for all social media email?
A good strategy, but still less secure by definition than no email at all.
Iirc proton mail has a backdoor. Though they likely won’t be used outside of ‘nať-sećurity interests’.
Guys, this is fact, also downvotes aren’t private.
You may know the answer to this. If I’ve signed up with no email, and whilst on a secure VPN, how are they going to track me?
Your instance could (edit: theoretically, if they’re running custom Lemmy code) track you by your browser fingerprint (screen size, installed fonts, plugins, etc.). Others could keep a profile on you based on what you comment/post/upvote and when.
Screen size?! I’ll just buy another monitor then.
So if I’m on an app instead of a browser, that app developer would have to provide info on me too?
As for what I comment/post/upvote, that’s not really what I’m asking about as that’s a profile on what I do, not who I am from an identifiable point of view (correct me if I’m wrong)
Depending on the content you post though, it could hypothetically be traced to you. Potentially even mundane things like mentions of geographic locations, word choices, common phrases you use, common topics – all of those could be considered at least partly identifying in the right contexts (assuming someone was looking for it and already had info about some particular cue that indicates you).
The point is: you can’t really be too careful, and realistically should assume there is always a way someone (including yourself) could be jeopardizing your privacy, if not overtly (by some kind of software or network tracking) then by holes in operational security.
Scary but hey at least Reddit isn’t handing out the info so easily in this instance
Would be mad.
There are many topics people discuss that are problematic. Forget piracy. What about people from authoritarian regimes, people from countries that are in danger to fall to authoritarians, even if they haven’t yet. Anything from years ago could become problematic if the wrong government gets into power.
Making jokes about God is no deal under some regimes, it’s blasphemy in others.
Drugs are a problem in a lot of countries, and a literal death sentence in some.
Making fun of a fringe politician is nothing when they are not in power, but becomes a problem if they get into power.
I am sure Reddit gives some data in cases of actual danger, which is fair. But if they start to hand out data for something minor like piracy, it’s going to be a problem for discussion on the discussion plattform.
They will if they get a nickel for doing it.
Whatever. It’s not really admissable. People talk about tons of things that they don’t actually do. For example, I talked today on teams about deleting a problematic app from our vcenter just so we didn’t have to deal with a compatible issue. Didn’t actually do it.
I was discussing trebucheting politicians off the white cliffs of Dover earlier today on Discord. Not gonna do that either. Sadly.
But sire is the trébuchets are locked and ready! Do not make us turn back!
Oh, well if we’ve come this far let’s get on with it!
Why do you want to pollute the environment with toxic waste?
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
The thing is, chasing individual instances is a game of whack-a-mole, with a lot of downside and not a lot of upside. Established companies follow laws and regulations because they are easy targets, with local assets, offices, and public figures that are worth serving/seizing and can be compelled to comply to court orders. How TF you going to enforce a court order in a country that doesn’t recognize your jurisdiction or laws?
The other thing thing is, if you run an instance with moderation rules that skirt the law, you are incentivised not to log personal information and disseminate it because a) that makes you a target, and b) you’ll get called out by your own users for logging and leaking IPs, and people will just move to a different server.
It seems pretty obvious to me that you should assume at all times when you are online that you are basically in a public space, like in a public cafe: People can see you, even if the fact that they are not paying close attention to you creates the illusion of privacy. If you start doing something to stand out, people will start to pay attention to you, and it’s all visible to see unless you actively take precautions to hide your identity. That starts–but doesn’t end–with not browsing piracy on main.
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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.
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Alternatively, run TOR and a VPN while downloading. The speed will suck, but you should be way harder to track
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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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Wah wah wah, I called some guy out for being a leech and he is now mad at me, whatever will I do?!
Go “danger” your own colon, I’m done talking to you.
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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… don’t think that’s true.
I’d expect to get convicted if I make a (reasonable) confession of murdering someone who vanished, even if there is no single other bit of evidence.
Not if you made that confession outside of any prosecution process and then withdrew it saying you were just making shit up, I wouldn’t think.
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.
You won’t. It happens all the time. Youd be amazed how many people try to claim credit for crimes they didn’t commit.
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.
Actually no. Pretending to have committed a crime is a crime itself. At least here in Germany.
Also: saying you committed a crime is basically the same as a confession and can definitely be used against you
The lawsuit does not involve Germany in the slightest
Sure, but it could still have an Impact on Germany since the copyright law is pretty similar
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.
No, downloading is illegal too. It’s just the uploading/seeding that gets actively enforced since it’s a more serious crime
Pretending to have committed a crime is a crime itself
Gotta listen to some Götz Widmann haha.
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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.
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.
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?
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.
A comment on social media is not a confession.
Also it’s no proof that any piracy took place. It would be a different thing altogether if they already had evidence and you confessed to it, but as is, not everything said on the internet is true. Here, my “confession”
I broke into Area 51 on September 5th 1997 at 07:43 AM and I took photos of a top secret spy satellite program meant to track UFOs.
The fact I said that in a comment on Lemmy doesn’t make it true.
…Did you see any alien friends during your raid?
Depends. Are you with the US gov?
Bold statement, i can find countless cases where a confession posted on social media was used as evidence.
. 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.
Not evidence of a crime.
I came to confess. I was the 2nd gunman on the grassy knoll.
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It’s like people are forgetting that piracy is actually illegal.
They’re just lying about pirating to look cool.
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’d like to be that variety of pirate, at least in the older style. Not so much a modern nautical pirate though.
Being a pirate back in the day was also less pleasant than creative media has led us to believe, I’m afraid
Does a canoe count?
What is illegal for Americans is not illegal everywhere.
- I’m not American either.
- The vast majority of countries in the world have copyright.
Now I’m not morally against piracy, pirate away. It’s just illegal.
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.
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.
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
And why are they demanding it? Just scrape it like the rest of us.
the one positive part of the reddit api changes 🤣
Well, Reddit isn’t in my good books right now, but I hope they fight this fight hard, and I hope they win. Good Luck Reddit
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This was something I suggested for this instance, since there is even a guide for hosting an onion service: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/135234
Maybe /u/db0 will have more time after the spam settles down, but it seems he’s got a lot on his plate at the moment between being an admin and doing AI stuff.
Would federating work properly with an instance on i2p or tor?
If with properly you include insane amount of waiting for requests and timing out then yes
yes. I have a Diaspora, another Fediverse platforms, account on diasp.org that I hav only ever accessed via their hidden tor service http://diasporg5tj4xz5mxkd5qnrppo7tbb6ynk2gtmjw5lmz6mtbesj3k6id.onion and their i2p connection http://diasporg.i2p , and i have no issue federating with friends that only use normie instances like Friendica. I have heard there are some maston imstances that support tor hidden service to. Maybe kolektiva.social?
Probably if all instances were using Tor, but it would be very slow
Also, would you want it to?
@prole @ReCursing In most cases, the Tor instance wants to federate with clearnet instances. Clearnet instances might want to opt-in to federating with Tor instances - no child porn, but reading news about piracy is legal.
@prole @ReCursing and if you want a fully secret Twitter service, that’s what Nostr is supposed to be, allegedly.
Also a valid point
@ReCursing @Fonz @skullgiver see this reply I just wrote: https://social.immibis.com/notice/AXSgn5KUrJhQrsadaC
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Good to hear that’s still up! I remember when some dude got that up and running shortly after the darknetmarkets sub was closed down.
I mean you can very much onion route to a regular server, if it allows connections from Tor.
Unfortunately Tor means it’s very hard to IP ban abusers, so a lot of services automatically ban common Tor exit nodes.
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This is basically true. You need to have certain DNS configurations you cannot afford on Tor hidden services to federate, and while you still could be listening on a Tor hidden service, clearnet servers would still need to reach you to federate.
On top of that, even if you somehow manage to do that, either youre federation trafic goes through Tor (lmao how to DDoS Tor in 1 step), or It doesn’t and all servers can see your public IP, which deafeats the purpose.
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Good to hear that’s still up! I remember when some dude got that up and running shortly after the darknetmarkets sub was closed down.
@skullgiver @Fonz It is possible; you have to set it up yourself and you won’t federate with many places.
Hosting Lemmy or Mastodon on Tor or I2P isn’t hard; you just host it, and link your Tor/I2P daemon to it same as any other website. But you have to be aware you’ll be cut off from the majority of other instances. You’ll be running standalone.
I am not sure about Lemmy, but Pleroma supports feeding all your federation traffic through a proxy; you can use one called fedproxy to split out your I2P federation traffic through your I2P daemon, and likewise for Tor. I am not currently running this on my server. It should still work for other fedisoftware than Pleroma. https://docs.akkoma.dev/stable/configuration/i2p/
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@skullgiver Yes, there are many ways to make sure your server connects to Tor and I2P sites. But that’s what the guy who ISN’T running a Tor/I2P site has to do, to federate with the Tor/I2P site. If you’re running the Tor/I2P site you can’t really do much on your side to enable federation.
Cloudflare won’t help because you need inbound connections. Some VPNs support *transient* port mapping designed for BitTorrent, but good luck trying to claim a stable port number for any significant length of time, never mind port 443 (which I’m sure is outside of the allocation range anyway). You’d have more luck trying to find a VPS provider crazy enough to let you pay anonymously with cryptocurrency with just a pinky promise that you’re not hosting child porn. Or just don’t federate.
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2011?? seems like an awfully long time for them to still care.
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.
12 years ago, talking about piracy isn’t incriminating so why do the big movie companies need their info? So they can potentially intimidate them for more info they potentially don’t have?
Really no idea why that timeline. In 2010 I got an email from whatever ISP I was using at the time politely asking me to stop torrenting music. They basically said, hey we see you’re doing this, please stop or you can’t have internet through us anymore. That is when I learned what vpns and tor browser’s are for.
Seems absolutely bonkers that any corporation would be digging back that far for media pirates. Absolute waste of time.
I got a similar email once from my ISP, but it was more of a “this is your first and final warning”.
They might be looking for something specific. Like they are investigating an individual, or network of individuals, and this is just a piece of that investigation. I doubt they are asking for this to randomly look for opportunities to charge people with a crime related to piracy.
If only we had legal avenues to obtain information from private companies… Oh well.
If you have a valid reason to investigate people, then you can get a fucking warrant. If your investigation isn’t into an actual criminal act, then maybe you don’t really need that data so bad.
Agreed. Glad Reddit seems to be doing the right thing here by acknowledging this.
The time it would take to ask for these specific users and the research needed wouldnt amount to the number they would bring in if this would just be a shake down, I would guess you are right
For real. And even if they were to find the users, which is a longshot, those people could say, “no one tells the truth on the internet.”
This fishing expedition is a waste of resources.
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Thats creepy as hell.
Thank goodness I only openly supported piracy from 2019 to 2023 with 5 different accounts lmao
Dodged a bullet there
🫡 not all of us were as forward thinking as you.
Your sacrifice won’t have been in vain
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.
