Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

It's in the megathread, but FMHY isn't listing them. So, what's the site's assessment?

https://torrentfreak.com/torrentfreak-turns-20-what-a-ride/

Today marks TorrentFreak's 20th anniversary. After covering a changing piracy and copyright landscape for two decades, I'd like to take a moment to reflect and look forward. The site has accomplished more than I ever imagined, and it will remain independent indefinitely. While life and priorities may change, the two-man team aims to stay the course, writing content and adding value wherever we can.

Twenty years ago, the first post was published on TorrentFreak.

At the time, I was a young graduate student, eager to learn and research. My interest soon exceeded the academic world and was drawn to a vibrant digital playground: the Internet.

In the early 2000s, new technologies and communications channels were suddenly at everyone’s fingertips. There was a whole new world to explore. Being somewhat of a digital late bloomer, I was completely fascinated by it all.

When torrents first crossed my path, they felt like a genuine revolution. Earlier file-sharing technologies already shown what was technically possible, but the web-based nature of torrents spawned online communities everywhere. This was a time when “pirates” were still seen as digital revolutionaries, who freed information from physical shackles such as CDs and DVDs.

TorrentFreak Est. 2005

The rise of public torrent sites and private torrent trackers was fascinating to watch. In 2005, it eventually led to the launch of TorrentFreak. There wasn’t much in-depth coverage of the file-sharing space at the time, and the goal was to document the developments in this ecosystem with a strong focus on news.

In the mid-2000s, copyright industry groups were already quite vocal and their anti-piracy messaging was generally repeated in the media without question. TorrentFreak’s goal was to critically assess the information and add, in our view, more balance to the discourse.

In hindsight, the timing for TorrentFreak’s launch was perfect. The Internet had torn down the information barriers. Writing news and opinions was no longer exclusive to companies that had access to a printing machine or a TV channel; everyone could become their own news publisher.

This self-publishing power may seem obvious today, but, in 2005, it felt both empowering and liberating.

TorrentFreak in 2007

In the early years, TorrentFreak had a strong focus on the rapidly growing file-sharing landscape. We never endorsed piracy in any shape or form but did try to fill information gaps, offering a counterweight to polarized claims and unbalanced studies.

A Changing Landscape

TorrentFreak started as a solo journey, but after a year, Andy Maxwell joined. While many others have contributed to the site along the way, today the two of us work independently and are still the site’s backbone, writing all news stories for the site.

As the years passed, the file-sharing ecosystem itself changed. The name of the site still includes ‘torrent’ but most of our coverage today is on the broader piracy ecosystem and related copyright challenges, which are nothing like they were twenty years ago.

The ‘pirate’ hobbyists of the early days were increasingly replaced by individuals and groups trying to make a quick buck — or even millions. This introduced more criminal elements to the piracy scene, which continue to run rampant today, as is evidenced by the many lawsuits and criminal prosecutions we report on.

Rightsholders and anti-piracy groups have also become much more active, both on the enforcement and lobbying fronts. They point out various threats and concerns, demanding action. At the same time, their anti-piracy actions and enforcement efforts cause concerns for legitimate companies and the public at large.

As time passed, TorrentFreak has mostly adopted the role of a neutral, yet critical, observer. We don’t shy away from highlighting extremes on both ends of any issue. Because if I’ve learned anything over the past two decades, it’s that there are always multiple sides to a story, and the most extreme positions are usually the least effective.

TorrentFreak’s Next Chapter

If I look back at the past two decades, I realize how much luck played a role in getting TorrentFreak to survive. The key to building a lasting site is to keep writing, but that would not have been possible without the help and advice from the many people who crossed my path along the way. Not all would appreciate a public callout, but you know who you are.

I would like to thank all readers who followed us on our journey. The same is true for all sources, tipsters, and other friends we made along the way. You all served as a key motivator that helped TorrentFreak to get where it is today.

Today, the 20-something-year-old person who started TorrentFreak is a few years away from turning 50. That’s a scary thought, but a blessed one at the same time. The countless hours of work have taken their toll at times, but the writing spark is still there.

This brings me to the next chapter….

In a way, I feel that TorrentFreak has already accomplished its mission. That’s a reassuring thought, but I intend to keep the site online indefinitely. It’s a life’s work, not just for me but also for Andy.

Regular readers may have already noticed that our article output decreased over the past year. This helped us to cope with the regular writing pressure while focusing on the topics where we can add value. We were never fond of regurgitating press releases or rewriting mainstream news. Instead, we prefer to follow our interests and expertise.

TorrentFreak thrives in its own small niche, and we hope to keep our spot for the next few years, documenting whatever crosses our path at our own pace. We’re grateful for every reader who follows along, as you are ultimately what makes our work count. Thank you!

So I recently got my Hands on an old Panasonic Toughbook (CF 30) that has a DVD player (it is the only device that is capable of reading Dvds that i own) and now I want to digitalise some of the movies I still got laying around. I gave Handbrake a shot, but it didnt work for me, so now I want to know your recommendations for ripping from DVDs. The thing with that Laptop is, that Its about 19 Years old and still runs on 32 bits, so keep that in mind (I'm running Debian 11.7)

Archive.today page: https://archive.is/8CeY6

Where can we find comic books?

Looking mostly for indies which always turns out to be a challenge.

I know:

http://libgen.io/

http://getcomics.info/

http://allcomicbooks.us/

http://newcomic.info/

http://readcomics.website/

https://www.ysk-comics.com/en

https://comics-all.com/

Right now I'm specifically looking for stuff from Ignition Press, Silver Sprocket, Oni Press, Mad Cave etc.

Using Transmission 4.0.5 on Mint 22.2.

I've been running a seedbox for some time now but have never made a new torrent before. I've got a file I want to make publicly available but for some reason can't seed it normally.

On the seedbox, Transmission is bound to an open port, and I added the best 20 trackers from this repo to the torrent. I also have a client I'm trying to test uploading to, but it can't seem to connect to the seedbox unless I also open the port on the leech client. Once I do it works normally, but I was under the impression only the seeder needed to be on an open port in order for clients to connect. Am I wrong and it's expected that both seeder and leecher have open ports? Would really appreciate some help!

Alright so I'm both a physical media freak and a data hoarder, and I generally want to get into making my own torrents of very, very niche movies and TV shows. Trouble is, one BD is very flimsy and data can be even flimsier. I want to duplicate my BluRays and burn them onto other BluRay discs but I've heard that this generally makes the duplicate unreadable because of copy protection.

Is there any specific guide out there that does this or teaches it? I'm not really planning on becoming a bootlegger but a sneakernet of 50-100 disks in boxes is a hell of a lot less startup cost than LTO or even HDDs

I've just started using Soulseek and it's great. I want to make sure that I'm being a good neighbour on it - do I need to do anything to ensure that my files are available for others to download? And do I need to structure directories e.g Artist name > Album name or does it work off metadata?

Hey folks,

I run the site https://piratefeeds.net/. It's a free mirror for premium podcast feeds hosted on Patreon and works entirely from people donating feeds they subscribe to. I don't host the media files, just the RSS feeds. I don't make any money from it. If you wanna listen to any of the pods listed all you have to do is plug the feed URL in your podcast app of choice.

This is both self promo and a request for feed donations. If you subscribe to a podcast and are willing to collectivize your subscription, reach out! Sharing is caring... I anonymize the feeds before publishing them, so there's no risk of other users doxxing the donors. In the past there have been some issues with Patreon blocking some feeds, but I've improved the site's OpSec since then and there haven't been any issues in months now. Even then, the worst that can happen is that Patreon might block the specific link and issue the subscriber a new one.

I mainly mirror feeds hosted on Patreon because those are guaranteed to work, other hosts such as SupportingCast have better anti-piracy protections so I cannot use their feeds for now. If you want to donate a feed all you have to do is PM me your Patreon RSS audio feed URL.

So far most of the pods listed are lefty politics/media/culture commentary and comedy. I'm not picky about the donations I accept, as long as they're not actively reactionary/bigoted. A bunch of the feeds on the site are currently inactive for lack of working sources, I'd be particularly grateful for donations of those. If you have a subscription to a pod that is already listed you can absolutely still donate your link: backups are valuable.

Most of the pods listed are by independent creators who definitely deserve your money if you can afford to support them. The reason I run this is that, like most people, I cannot afford to subscribe to all creators I'd like to follow.

Do you have podcast X?

If it's not listed then nobody donated it yet, or it's hosted on a service I don't support.

NOTE: I've asked and received permission to post this in advance from db0, to make sure this didn't violate comm rules.

The first time, I watched for a good ten minutes, assuming it was supposed to be that way lol, but now I realize it has something to do with HDR tone mapping. The question is:

What do I look for in a filename to ensure a good HDR match with my setup?

Before I say anything further, yes I know how much the recommended VPNs cost. I can read. Please do not interrogate me about it.

I've been wanting to get into torrenting for a while, particularly contributing to private trackers related to music (and to a lesser extent retro games, though I don't have much original stuff to put there as it's harder to find rare games than rare music). FMHY recommends RiseUp if I must get a free VPN while I'm working on my financial situation, though I'm not sure whether it's been tested in court. What are my options, if any?

The company said it is currently testing new interactive video ad formats in the U.S. and Canada, with a goal of zeroing in on subscribers’ viewing behavior and letting advertisers rely on templates built from that behavior. Citing positive early results from testing, Netflix said it will roll out the formats globally by the second quarter of 2026.

Citing Kotatsu's recent shut down, two of Mihon's devs said that misuse of Mihon’s name and branding by a group may endanger the project.

I copied the text if you don't want to go the link. It's a bit long so I spoilered it.

This is after the action that Kotatsu manga app shutting down due to Kakao's continued war on manga piracy, and Google's future policy of limiting what Android users can install on their own devices.

From Kotatsu's github readme:

screenshot

Important

In light of recent challenges — including threating actions from Kakao Entertainment Corp and upcoming Google’s new sideloading policy — we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Kotatsu and end its support. We’re deeply grateful to everyone who contributed and to the amazing community that grew around this project.

One year ago, Tachiyomi shut down due to Kakao's efforts, as per this post here.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/56920779

https://torrentfreak.com/global-piracy-injunction-targets-vidsrc-domains-hydra-regenerates-in-russia-251029/

Hi, how to check if One-Click-Hoster download links are online/offline without jdownloader? Any tool or website?

Thanks for any help :)

Up until recently I was relying on something called Trakt but it has become increasingly unreliable or erratic - it just seems to randomly rearrange the order of its older movie releases now

https://app.trakt.tv/users/giladg/lists/latest-releases?ref=trakt-og-autoredirect

What are the best alternative new releases sites please?

Ok, so my friends and I wanna play Baldur's Gate 3 together. Now, almost all of us bought the game via Steam, and one friend acquired the game in a 'non-standard' way. How do we make multiplayer work?

Preface: I personally don't care if it's legal or not, I'm gonna do it anyway. But, I wanted to pose the question here to people who are smarter than me to get your opinions. Plus, my partner is completely anti-piracy so I can only enjoy it by myself and it makes me kind of sad to do so. So it'd be nice to give them a reason to consider it. Also also, I am not knowledgeable enough to even know if this is a stupid question, so please be kind.

I saw an old post/comment chain that the stremio + rd + torrentio combo is "technically" legal in the states due to some workaround about distributing vs consuming. You're also not downloading anything or torrenting anything. I know that on their own, Stremio and RD are perfectly legit sites. But adding Torrentio into the mix is where it gets the spicy flavor. Now that some years have passed and that post might be outdated, what are your thoughts now? Is there a case to be made in favor of this being legal?

Hello, relatively experienced pirate here. I've been trying to expand my Plex server to get my family to use it more but they seem to want a lot of reality TV shows and I have a hard time finding them on the common sites and even when I do they usually stall out. Are there any specific indexers or private trackers focused on reality TV shows I could sign-up for?

Is f2movies truly gone this time?

It's been down for the last couple of days.

I found some torrents for series, but I don't get any seeders. Please recommend torrent sites that hook me up better. Are torrents the right approach at all? What would be better?

Hello everyone, how are you? First of all, I'm new here, and I didn't see anything about this type of post in the rules, so I believe I'm not violating any rules, right? I don't know if I can mention the name of the software here, so I chose not to, unless it's allowed. That's why I censored the logo image that contains its name, and the text with its name.

It's a POS system, I think only available here in Brazil. I can't find the logo to change it. In fact, there are almost no images. I tried accessing the images with Resource Hacker, Resource Turner, and similar programs, but nothing worked. The bitmaps simply don't appear.

Searching online, I found two identical software programs. I downloaded them, and when I checked, it was exactly the same system/software. Someone pirated them and managed to change the images and some other system features, but unfortunately, they released pirated versions and also offered them for sale with a trial mode. So, yes, you can change it; I just couldn't do anything, not even with the help of AI.

I want to use it to manage my business. I've gone back to working with food delivery, and this software is very good. With it, I can control incoming and outgoing funds, manage inventory, and do many things in a much more organized way than manually. I used the trial version, and it's very good and easy to use. I want to modify it to put a different logo and system name (my store's name and a different logo on the interface). But it seems impossible; even in the pirated versions I mentioned, I couldn't find the logo or change the window texts. In their folder, there's a logo.bmp file; I changed the image and nothing changed, I removed the image and nothing changed, meaning the logo.bmp in the main folder is useless.

I'm not a programmer, but I've enjoyed tinkering with these things since I was little, and I'm always tinkering with everything to modify something. But this software is impossible; even with AI help, I couldn't find the logo that appears on the interface or change the texts. Can anyone help me?