What happened to us Pirates? We used to sail the web and never even thought about reprecussions just sharing. Now it seems like it costs to be a pirate like a VPN and such. WTH happened?

Oh definitely. And it really depends on your ISP. Before the ISP consolidation it took enough work that sending out those letters to every small local ISP that they wouldn’t bother for Jane Rando who downloaded a few episodes here and there. Now that (in the US at least) most people use one of two or three ISPs who all have a cozy corporate relationship, it’s harder to fly under the radar. But if you have a good privacy-forward ISP it’s not a worry.

Thanks! I figure all this grey in my beard should be good for something.

That does not dissuade the keepers of the old ways who know the agony and triumph of whole series downloads spanning months, watching that extra green pixel light up as another random chunk came through day after day until finally the progress bar became whole.

... and then it's in fucking Spanish

it is a US military program, so yes, they run nodes as honeypots.

this is way to valuable to be used against pirates though.

Yeah you're right and the only secure method I know of is Tor hidden services which never exit the network itself. Both you and the server will never know where the other is. It's kind of like an anonymous dead drop in a park between a spy and their handler.

I2p is another good system to use for torrenting as well it's just slow as balls (might be better now?) but you don't need a VPN for that either since it uses garlic routing inspired by Tor's onion routing.

Very true. Different solutions with different strengths.

I haven't tried Nym but IIUC design-wise it seems like the best anonymity network for torrenting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nym_(mixnet)

1. Download Tor browser
2. Browse with Tor browser
   2a. Go to Tor "hidden services" listed at places like https://dark.fail/

https://torproject.org/

I downloaded a song for my kid 15ish years ago and Telekom tracked it to me so I got a fine.

One of my proudest moments was climbing the fence to get into a Metallica concert for free.
I pirated their live music.

Their music sucks now, but I pirate and share it anyway. I don't listen to it.

Let me know when they sue Meta or Google for training models on their music.

(this is coming from a kid who thought they were awesome until i started playing drums myself)

that and he's a fuckin glorified metronome. terrible drummer.

to be that talentless and still bitching about napster..

yeah 12 year old me got the fuck over some lame ass metallica

Its the same kind of arms race that cybersecurity is going through, one side creates defenses, the attackers (all color hats) figure out bypasses and exploits, the defenders patch out the exploits, attackers find new exploits, defenders keep reacting, attackers keep finding new exploits, and the cycle keeps continuing. In an attempt to break the arms race, the defenders are going to turn to legislation to make engaging in the arms race illegal unless you're certified.

Side note but I'm not making a value judgement on either side, there are defenders protecting bad people and attackers who are justified in their attacks and have released important information out to the public, but protecting your own information from malicious attackers is also super important, stuff like login info to critical infrastructure systems or your financial details so bad actors dont open up a dozen credit cards in your name and destroy your financial reputation needed to survive in this world (fuck credit scores but they are unfortunately part of our reality.)

Same sort of deal with copyright holders vs pirates, copyright holders are trying to protect what is legally theirs, and pirates are trying to bypass that. (Again no moral arguments here, this is just the nature of the conflict). Pirates gain access, copyright holders create more hurdles to the content, pirates gain access again, copyright does the same thing. Eventually they just keep throwing more legislation at the war to make privacy becomes increasingly expensive through the courts. At the end of the day, unlike cybersecurity, this piracy war wouldn't exist if every piece of media created was commodified for massive profit. Steam is evidence of that.

srsly? Because they both want what they want and neither side is giving up.

The weird part is, it wouldn't even have mattered if I did it or not.
I was living with roommates and the contract with the ISP for the house's internet connection was in my name.
So according to German law at the time, I was legally on the hook for copyright violations by anyone on the shared WiFi.
By the time all the legalese letters back and forth were done and the opposing law firm would have had to officially charge me in court, the law had changed.
The old law would still have technically been applicable for my case, but I guess my push-back with a lawyer, and the risk of a judge being sick of the useless workload, made it too risky to be profitable for the copyright vultures.

No problem, main character.