If you are using such a service, please make sure that you are not acting as an exit node for them by running their app. You will hopefully find the info in their terms of service. I don’t know the services you are using or speaking of directly, but some residential proxies in the past simply redirected users’ traffic through other users’ internet connection without making it clear. This is a big concern for some users that might be a) accused of piracy themselves or b) a middleman to much more nefarious or objectionable traffic.

Freebooting was the first sign for me of the downfall of reddit. It used to be that the community demanded credit to the creator at the very least. Once reddit added in their own video you’d get downvoted to oblivion for asking for a source, creator or even linking to the original. Reddit video made it ok to not only freeboot, but to freeboot purely for the purpose of removing the creator’s views as reddit only pays in karma.

Long story short, I’m glad to see that lemmy is stepping up and standing up for creators.

Just checked, you’re right! When did they stop this and is there any report on why? I was seeing these up until just a few months ago.

Google searches show the DMCA takedown notices that list the sites that illegally stream content. It seems to me that if an interested party were to search for something on google and happened to see the DMCA take down notice, they might peruse that takedown request and see a number of sites that might illegally host such copyrighted content - so they know what sites to avoid of course.

😉

It’s the only way to keep “dem illegals” out and still maintain an underprivileged work force.

Enough that I don’t feel guilty seeking other ways to watch what I want when none of them have it.

As someone who works in IT Security, the captchas are a necessary evil at this point. Without captchas, sites get slammed with millions invalid or malicious requests every hour. The sites I work with will see error traffic spike 3000% or more from credential stuffing attacks alone. These attacks are so highly distributed that simple IP tracking and banning all but ineffective anymore. And about 99.99% of the malicious traffic comes from VPNs and hosting providers. Unfortunately botnets and the people that run them are getting smarter and smarter about constructing the traffic to avoid bot detection.

tldr; the most effective tool to keep a site up and running and accounts secure is unfortunately captchas for VPN users.

I’m all for titling everything “Hey Feds…” if you don’t mind being on a few lists.

I first saw Mount Hood in 2002. I knew I wanted to go back and see it again. Took me 17 years to get back there, but I’m glad I did. Sitting out that evening on the lake getting that photo is one of the best memories I have of Oregon - that and the Bird Hut on Division St.