Copying an old comment from this thread. There isn't a direct answer, but afaik most everything that's already come up is mentioned in there: Found in the terms of use. As far as I know, this is...
Copying an old comment from this thread. There isn't a direct answer, but afaik most everything that's already come up is mentioned in there:
Do not use Tildes to break the law, including violating intellectual property rights. See the "Copyright infringement claims" section for more details.
We will act on legitimate copyright claims as described in Canada's Copyright Act. To report copyright infringement on Tildes, send a notice of claimed infringement to abuse@tildes.net with the information required by the Copyright Act § 41.25(2).
As required by the Copyright Act, properly-formed notices will be forwarded to the relevant user (if possible), and the claimant will be informed whether it was forwarded or why doing so was not possible. In addition, the relevant records for the user will be retained as required.
Tildes may choose to remove the infringing content in response to a valid claim, but we are not required to do so.
Found in the terms of use. As far as I know, this is everything that's been said on the matter.
EDIT: For what it's worth, I would like to see a place for discussing Piracy as I find it to be a huge source of good in the world. I just kinda doubt it will happen.
Literally just a scene release description. No way to turn that into a pirated movie on its own. Just a release description, but this one mentions the type of audio it has! Call the FBI! No, no it...
He's saying that while posts don't violate the letter of the rule, they violate the spirit of the rule. The first two are the exact names (sure, replace spaces with periods for the first) of...
He's saying that while posts don't violate the letter of the rule, they violate the spirit of the rule. The first two are the exact names (sure, replace spaces with periods for the first) of torrent files; there's even a comment that comes right out and says, paraphrased, "just go to site and look for submission title". The third, while not directly to a torrent file, goes to a page describing a priated file (even has the filesize), with a link to get it.
The three posts are effectively posts for pirated materials, not "discussing piracy".
You're right, I am being at least a little obtuse. I do understand what you're saying, I just disagree with the premise. I'll have a more detailed, less flippant response under your other comment...
You're right, I am being at least a little obtuse. I do understand what you're saying, I just disagree with the premise. I'll have a more detailed, less flippant response under your other comment in a few minutes.
I apologize for the attitude, it wasn't warranted and that's not the type of interaction I'd like to be on the receiving end of, so it's shitty of me to do it to you.
That is not piracy, it's up to the reader to go or not search for that. "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime" not quite the same thing, but...
That is not piracy, it's up to the reader to go or not search for that.
"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime" not quite the same thing, but sort of, you are not handling the links to do the download, you are teaching where to search for the file
What he proved is that rules are not efficient with people that just try to find loopholes. Luckily, Tildes officially stance is not to "apply the rule" but to apply common sense. I pirate content...
What he proved is that rules are not efficient with people that just try to find loopholes.
Luckily, Tildes officially stance is not to "apply the rule" but to apply common sense.
I pirate content that I don't have legal means to obtain (geographical restriction anyone?) or to play a game that I'm not sure about because of lack of reviews/not sure of my PC hardware but as for other topics, there are plenty of other websites to exchange links. Tildes doesn't need to end up in trouble for something that you can find somewhere else, with server hosted in countries that don't give a shit about piracy.
That's literally just a description of the release. I'm not sure what the miscommunication here is, but I'll try to elaborate. That title is the equivalent of a news site posting an article saying...
That is why people make post titles like "Deadpool 2 2018 1080p WEB-DL DD5 1 H264-CMRG".
That's literally just a description of the release. I'm not sure what the miscommunication here is, but I'll try to elaborate. That title is the equivalent of a news site posting an article saying "Piracy group CMRG has released Deadpool 2, with a resolution of 1080p, sourced from a web streaming service, with Dolby Digital 5 sound, encoded using H.264". Typically speaking, these posts are made hours in advance of such a release hitting P2P networks. I think it's unfair to accuse people of sharing pirated material when they're posting a description, especially considering that at the time of posting there isn't a way to download the release they're describing. That kind of ex post facto reasoning isn't valid for a reason.
Here's a rather unsubtle and exaggerated example: Incredibles 2 (2018) 1080p BDrip DD5.1 AC3-EVO
Incredibles 2, in FHD quality, ripped from a bluray, with dolby digital 5.1 sound, encoded using AC3, and released by scene group EVO. You can't do a damn thing with that right now, for obvious reasons. The movie isn't out on bluray, and EVO certainly hasn't ripped it yet. However, there's a damn good chance that what I typed out will be a valid release description in a couple months. Shortly afterwards, it will be spread around on torrent sites, almost certainly using that description verbatim as the filename. Can you honestly use this post to accuse me of sharing pirated materials when that happens?
Consider all the threads on Tildes a few days ago talking about 3D printed guns. They mentioned that these CAD models existed, and who was releasing them. Using the exact logic you're using here, those threads were sharing 3D printed firearms with each other.
sharing which specific sites are hosting that torrent file the OP is "totally not linking to"
Yes, those people should be shitcanned instantly for that. I'm interested in the technical aspect of sourcing, ripping, and initial distribution. It's hard enough to have a legitimate discussion about that without people jeopardizing the entire community in that manner. I blame the moderators of that sub for letting comments like that stay up, not the sub itself.
If you google the titles from those posts
What people search for on Google isn't, and shouldn't, be any concern of Tildes.
I believe that there is room for legitimate discussion of copy protection, circumvention of said protection, and piracy in general on Tildes, but I don't believe we're in a position to monitor and moderate such discussions closely enough to prevent people from sharing pirated materials at this time.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if they did do that, your argument against it would change accordingly. I already explained how the release process works, and you chose to willfully ignore that...
Those posts are not "just a description of the release." If that were the case, they would just say that "Deadpool 2 is now available" or "Deadpool 2 is available by CRMG" or whichever other group they are discussing.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if they did do that, your argument against it would change accordingly.
I already explained how the release process works, and you chose to willfully ignore that in your response. I'm glad I got the opportunity to explain it for the sake of other people reading, but it's obvious that your mind is made up and you're not willing to entertain any discussion on the matter.
It being a top-level group would be pretty silly, so ideally it'd end up as a sub-group of ~tech. If the tag system evolves into automated creation of subgroups as originally planned, that would...
I'd hope a better moderated and spirited ~piracy would exist on Tildes, though personally I'm neutral as to whether a ~piracy group is the way to go rather than tags.
It being a top-level group would be pretty silly, so ideally it'd end up as a sub-group of ~tech. If the tag system evolves into automated creation of subgroups as originally planned, that would be the end-state of a piracy discussion group on Tildes.
But again, I don't think we're in a position to properly moderate such a community, so going forward with it now would be a spectacularly bad idea. I just don't want to see the door closed on it permanently because of premature decisions.
To continue the argument: Torrent filenames use the release tags, not the other way around. It's not a filename until somebody leaks it onto P2P networks. There's a myriad of release/crack groups whose work NEVER makes it to P2P networks; would it be fair to paint their work with the same brush, even though their cracks aren't made public?
/r/Piracy itself is a pretty bad example of a discussion group for the reasons listed, but it's worth mentioning that these communities tend to devolve into this state when there's no new protection methods.
For example, /r/Crackwatch. When Denuvo first hit the scene, that subreddit was THE place to go for technical discussion on it. Once the first cracks for it were released, we got a tremendous amount of information about how the system worked and what its shortcomings were. This level of rich, informative conversation continued as the cat-and-mouse game between Denuvo variants and crack groups evolved.
Now that Denuvo is pretty much dead in the water, there's nothing new to discuss, so /r/Crackwatch has become a dump of daily release posts.
I'd liken it to TV series subs during the off-season. When there's something new on the scene, it's great, but when there isn't... quality nosedives pretty quickly. Only instead of shitposting,...
I don't think they'd be frequent enough to sustain a (sub)group, and so that's why I'm unsure whether just tagging posts with piracy or torrents would be better.
I'd liken it to TV series subs during the off-season. When there's something new on the scene, it's great, but when there isn't... quality nosedives pretty quickly. Only instead of shitposting, you get people trying to "subtly" trade warez. A bit more problematic.
I'd strongly recommend piracy tags over torrent tags (for this specific subject, torrents aren't inherently bad), because the latter would just encourage the negative aspects of that subculture.
Considering that all moderation on Tildes is currently done by Deimos, the site owner, that there is no other moderation system currently available, starting such an area would be a logistical...
We can discuss piracy without actually directly promoting it, I would think.
Considering that all moderation on Tildes is currently done by Deimos, the site owner, that there is no other moderation system currently available, starting such an area would be a logistical moderation nightmare.
You and I both know that actual piracy links would at the very least slip through, if not overwhelm the actual discussion. Tildes is not a unicorn site of peace and love - Its users are flawed humans, just like users of every other website.
This is irrelevant to the question, but I really wish there was not. Tildes seems like an intellectual place that should value people’s work, and not subscribe to the notion that it’s okay to...
This is irrelevant to the question, but I really wish there was not. Tildes seems like an intellectual place that should value people’s work, and not subscribe to the notion that it’s okay to steal everything. And I’m not saying that to be über-capitalist, but lots of good does come from actually financially supporting the content/software/etc we enjoy.
You should be more open-minded. I for one consider your statement "notion that it's okay to steal everything" to be semantically inaccurate, attacking a strawman, and approaching a morally grey...
You should be more open-minded.
I for one consider your statement "notion that it's okay to steal everything" to be semantically inaccurate, attacking a strawman, and approaching a morally grey issue as black and white.
A lot of people, especially those of the subset that could be classified as "pirates", do indeed have a mindset where their first thought in terms of content acquisition is "I'm not going to pay...
A lot of people, especially those of the subset that could be classified as "pirates", do indeed have a mindset where their first thought in terms of content acquisition is "I'm not going to pay for this", and there can be a number of reasons for that—some more justifiable than others.
I will say though: I don't see how telling OP that he "should be more open minded" will yield any positive or thoughtful discussion, nor will whipping out the standard array of arguments & fallacies do anything more to make @cptcobalt agree with you. If Tildes is about fostering inclusive discussion, and your opinion is different from his, then you should be approaching the situation from the perspective of being able to make an argument not of "your opinion is wrong", which won't win you any supporters, but rather by demonstrating and appealing to your opponent why they should be persuaded to think differently, and letting your justifications speak for themselves.
This thread is a sort of meta-discussion about the manner of discussions allowed - either dictated by the rules or by communal consent - on Tildes. My point is that dismissing this manner of...
This thread is a sort of meta-discussion about the manner of discussions allowed - either dictated by the rules or by communal consent - on Tildes.
My point is that dismissing this manner of discussion for reasons that others will invariably disagree with should we actually discuss this topic is wrong in a very ironic way.
The merits of piracy or the lack thereof is not the point of my comment.
I was more hoping to try and point out that I consider your approach to replying to the OP to be somewhat unconstructive, if not downright combative. I can't think of a single time when using the...
I was more hoping to try and point out that I consider your approach to replying to the OP to be somewhat unconstructive, if not downright combative. I can't think of a single time when using the age old phrase "straw man" has actually helped convince someone that they should re-evaluate their opinion.
What I would recommend though is considering to construct your commentary in a manner that is more likely going to appeal to the other person's viewpoint and be convincing, not dismissive.
This encodes a huge number of cultural assumptions that may happen to be true at this current time in your current jurisdiction. But which, even in your jurisdiction people will argue the toss on...
Piracy is theft and is illegal.
This encodes a huge number of cultural assumptions that may happen to be true at this current time in your current jurisdiction. But which, even in your jurisdiction people will argue the toss on (To IP lawyers delight). It certainly is not true for all desired users of tildes, it's not true globally, it's not true historically.
Making such blanket statements as fact without even an attempt at understanding of other users morals, culture and laws is kinda grating.
This statement is completely false and I wish people would stop using it. There's more nuance to the situation that I feel people should be aware of. Piracy isn't theft, it's copyright...
This statement is completely false and I wish people would stop using it. There's more nuance to the situation that I feel people should be aware of.
Piracy isn't theft, it's copyright infringement. Theft deprives someone of something - you remove something from someone's possession. This is an important distinction since the law doesn't care about someone getting something for free, they care about depriving someone of their property.
Copying can be done for a multitude of reasons. The MPAA and RIAA would like people to keep saying "piracy is theft", which is why they coined the slogan in the first place. They'd like people to believe every copied file is a lost sale. They've been largely successful at this, and have sued people for more than the GDP of some small countries based on this.
If something isn't available to me in a legal way, if I pirate it no one is missing out on anything. I could not have legally purchased it if I wanted to, so that's not a lost sale. If I was never going to purchase something to begin with and I download it, that's not necessarily a lost sale either. I never would have given any money for it anyway, and only would have watched it at a friends house or on TV anyway, so that's not a lost sale either. Video game publishers don't do demos anymore, so there's no real way of telling how a game will play on my PC, or whether I'll actually play the game for more than 10 minutes, so I often pirate before I buy. That's not necessarily a lost sale either, since if I like the game I'll definitely end up buying it on steam, since steam is more convenient than piracy. So, that could actually be a gained sale. I pirate TV shows that I can already watch through netflix, just so I can watch them offline. I pirate blu-rays I own because I don't feel like ripping them. It's also worth pointing out where I live, Canada, it's fully legal to download this media, just not upload it.
TL;DR: Piracy isn't theft. It's making an unauthorized copy. It's not necessarily a lost sale. It's illegal in many cases, but specifically not a crime, it's a civil infraction. And people who do it aren't necessarily depriving anyone of anything. There's more nuance to the discussion than that, and simplifying it down to "That's stealing!" is short-sighted if not disingenuous.
I can see the difference between "theft" and "copyright infringement", but aren't we being fastidious? My two-cents: When I buy a book, I'm not buying a stack of paper, I'm buying the content of...
I can see the difference between "theft" and "copyright infringement", but aren't we being fastidious?
My two-cents:
When I buy a book, I'm not buying a stack of paper, I'm buying the content of that book. And there is harm in making an unauthorized copy of it. You are denying people, in this case, at minimum the author of a sale.
Of course there are grey areas, such as donating the price of the book to the author directly and then pirating a copy, but then you're denying others, such as the editor, a cut.
Fastidious, maybe, but I don't think I'm being pedantic. Theft is a criminal offense. There's no case where it's acceptable. Even a starving mother stealing a loaf of bread for her children is...
Fastidious, maybe, but I don't think I'm being pedantic. Theft is a criminal offense. There's no case where it's acceptable. Even a starving mother stealing a loaf of bread for her children is very definitely breaking a law.
When I buy a physical book, it may or may not come with a digital copy. If I'm truly paying for the contents, then it should be morally fine to pirate the ebook since I've paid the license for the media. Ok so maybe I didn't pay for the digitizing service. So then, maybe it comes with a locked kindle version, so then it should be ethical to pirate an unlocked version of the ebook? Well, maybe, maybe not. I only bought the ebook under the terms that they imposed, so I'm explicitly not allowed to use an unlocked version. But then, how about if I had bought the physical book second-hand at a used bookstore? The author gets nothing in that situation. Should buying and selling used books be considered moral?
It's complicated, is my point. Theft is not complicated. Everyone understands it that stealing is wrong. Piracy isn't theft though, it's copyright infringement, which is much murkier, with far larger grey areas. I feel the distinction is important, and people parroting the lobbyists slogans really isn't helping the discussion.
That's fair. I can accept the difference between different levels of copyright infringement. Copying someone's unpublished works and publishing, then profiting from it is definitely different from...
That's fair. I can accept the difference between different levels of copyright infringement. Copying someone's unpublished works and publishing, then profiting from it is definitely different from downloading an ebook of a book you already physically bought.
Though, keeping in line with being a little pedantic, I would argue a mother stealing bread for her starving kids will be treated differently legally than her stealing a car.
That's not necessary wrong though, oftentimes the "person" you're "supporting" is a huge megacorporation or other faceless rightholder profiting off of someone else's work. This happens with...
That's not necessary wrong though, oftentimes the "person" you're "supporting" is a huge megacorporation or other faceless rightholder profiting off of someone else's work. This happens with scientific papers, software, movies, works of art where the original artist is deceased, etc.
Further, I take serious issue with artificially scarce goods. I understand that small artists need to be paid to continue to work and so I'm willing to work with the system to support them, but in all other cases I see it as an imperative to NOT support their production financially.
Amen to that. Piracy is a service issue after all as stated by Gabe Newell. I still pirate stuff but on the TV Shows front, I have Netflix which completely kills the need for me to go through the...
Amen to that. Piracy is a service issue after all as stated by Gabe Newell.
I still pirate stuff but on the TV Shows front, I have Netflix which completely kills the need for me to go through the hassle of using a VPN (Government's actually cracking down on piracy) to then go and sit around for at least 2-3 hours to download a whole season of a show.
...and a lot of us pirates do support content we value. Just because we have a pirated copy of something doesn't mean we will not purchase it in the future, or have not already purchased it in the...
but lots of good does come from actually financially supporting the content/software/etc we enjoy.
...and a lot of us pirates do support content we value. Just because we have a pirated copy of something doesn't mean we will not purchase it in the future, or have not already purchased it in the past.
I doubt most pirates would disagree. In a way, piracy does support actual creators, at the expense of distributors and promotors, who often slurp up the lion's share of revenue from media sales....
I doubt most pirates would disagree.
In a way, piracy does support actual creators, at the expense of distributors and promotors, who often slurp up the lion's share of revenue from media sales. The creators are supported in part by the nebulous "appreciation" of their work, but also because piracy drove us to create bandcamps and netflixes, which potentially at least will be more efficient at distribution and at getting revenue directly to creators.
And, as many studies have shown, pirates are also often the greatest purchasers of legal online content.
When I would pirate, long before the last statute of limitations expired, mind you, it was mostly about convenience and quality. I could much more easily obtain a higher quality copy of the piece, and one without annoying fbi warnings or drm. The price was only really a small part of the equation. I used the extra money on tickets anyway.
These days, hulu, netflix, and itunes make it more convenient to watch/listen, and are pretty affordable (some itunes movie purchases can be pricey).
Bottom line, and this is supported repeatedly by research: Make it easy to get, hassle free, and reasonably priced, and most folks will choose the legally sanctioned route every time.
This may help scratch some pirating itches. "Spotify Premium for Students, now with Hulu. - $4.99/month" (Total for both) https://www.spotify.com/us/student/
This may help scratch some pirating itches.
"Spotify Premium for Students, now with Hulu. - $4.99/month" (Total for both)
The audiophile in me would be screaming bloody murder if I went and bought Spotify Premium though I do like to use Spotify as a means of discovering new music (on rare occasions).
The audiophile in me would be screaming bloody murder if I went and bought Spotify Premium though I do like to use Spotify as a means of discovering new music (on rare occasions).
Please help me to understand audiophiles. I'm not saying that MP3s are the end all and be all of audio quality, but I have seen audiophiles (for all intents and practical purposes) dismiss all but...
Please help me to understand audiophiles.
I'm not saying that MP3s are the end all and be all of audio quality, but I have seen audiophiles (for all intents and practical purposes) dismiss all but the studio tapes.
I can listen to music on Amazon or Spotify or YouTube, even through a set of (gifted, ~$350) Bose QC35 active noise canceling bluetooth headphones (that I often see maligned, that have some of the best noise cancellation I've ever used), and still feel like I'm getting the full experience.
Even in my own hobbies, I'm not so exacting. If I can find something that does 90% as good for 50% of the price, I'll take it.
Now, if say, I made my living as a sound engineer, I would be very exacting. But that's just not the case, and I doubt all audiophiles have that kind of job either.
As audiophiles, we lust for and pursue perfection. Perfection which is subjective, of course. Studio tapes of the track itself are considered perfect as it is “fresh out of the oven” per-se, the...
As audiophiles, we lust for and pursue perfection.
Perfection which is subjective, of course.
Studio tapes of the track itself are considered perfect as it is “fresh out of the oven” per-se, the Patient Zero where nothing happened to it (re-encoded and all that).
Now to the laymen, if you’d play say... a MP3 320kbps and a FLAC version of the same track, 9/10 they will not hear the difference. However, for us audiophiles, the difference is very clear - the track sounds cleaner, without distortions and so, the bass and treble sounds sharper and such.
Granted, if you look at it from afar, the differences are minute however, we are all about those minute differences. I guess you could pretty much sum audiophillia as self-induced OCD when it comes to the frequencies.
Which is why you’d often see people believing that cables, SD cards, batteries etc. do make a difference in sound with psuedoscience as “evidence”.
Not that I will dismiss them entirely as I happen to believe that cables do make a difference. However, the differences is negligeable at best.
Which is why I dislike /r/headphones as there are cases where they will belive that hard data, which is considered “objective”, such as frequency response graphs are the end all and be all and it will accurately tell how X will sound like to everyone which is silly as everyone’s ears are different which is why you’d often see impressions of X being different.
So in conclusion: we only get our music from the souce as the differences are quite clear to us, which is also the reason why there’s a lot of “snakeoil” in this industry as people will claim that it makes a difference in sound and people will buy it. See The Cable Cooker as one such example.
But I will say this. If I have to choose between a FLAC version of a poorly mastered track and a 320kbps version of a well mastered track. I will always choose the latter in a heartbeat.
P.S. I may be wrong in what I’ve wrote. I’m not exactly too knowledgeable in this field.
I'm curious, have you actually done a double-blind test on yourself? And if so, how "close" to the source could you still hear a difference? Just seems to me like the whole audiophile thing is...
I'm curious, have you actually done a double-blind test on yourself? And if so, how "close" to the source could you still hear a difference? Just seems to me like the whole audiophile thing is largely placebo.
Most people can't hear the difference between high bitrate compressed files and lossless formats, so it's mostly BS. Plus even when you can hear a difference it's pretty subjective that one is...
Most people can't hear the difference between high bitrate compressed files and lossless formats, so it's mostly BS. Plus even when you can hear a difference it's pretty subjective that one is better than the other.
That said having lossless or high sampling rate can be useful for production, for example if you slow down a sample it will sound better if it had higher sampling rate (it's like raw high-res formats for photo, it's good for editing, but not so much for the end-result).
Bonus website where you can do a small blind test:
Still much better than the anecdotal reports people usually give "I can totally hear a difference!" (often without an understanding of statistics). Anyway there's plenty of videos on youtube about...
Still much better than the anecdotal reports people usually give "I can totally hear a difference!" (often without an understanding of statistics).
Anyway there's plenty of videos on youtube about it too.
A larger issue for me is that Spotify routinely loses the licenses to some of the music that I like. As a result, I either pay a fortune and suffer great inconvenience by subscribing to all of the...
A larger issue for me is that Spotify routinely loses the licenses to some of the music that I like. As a result, I either pay a fortune and suffer great inconvenience by subscribing to all of the various competing streaming services or I don't get to listen to what I want to when I want to. Both of these are unacceptable compromises to me.
I much prefer to maintain my own library of music using Beets (bonus points for lossless for archival purposes), and just use Spotify for discovering new stuff and easily playing stuff through my smart speakers.
I can understand the licensing issue, and I share that frustration for most online media. To that end, I do have offline copies of the media that I value.
I can understand the licensing issue, and I share that frustration for most online media.
To that end, I do have offline copies of the media that I value.
I think its a blessing that I can't honestly tell the difference, it's certainly a hobby I can see myself becoming engorged in, to the detriment of my wallet! I'm thinking of downsampling my...
I think its a blessing that I can't honestly tell the difference, it's certainly a hobby I can see myself becoming engorged in, to the detriment of my wallet! I'm thinking of downsampling my collection to 192-256kbps opus just so I can fit more songs on my laptop. Oooor, just insert some more space onto this thing.
How much money do you see yourself spending on the equipment?
Me? Honestly, I’ve been wanting out of this game. The community can be cut-throat, SBAF as an example, and I’m not too interested in this game. Hell, if you ask me to sound off the latest gear and...
Me? Honestly, I’ve been wanting out of this game. The community can be cut-throat, SBAF as an example, and I’m not too interested in this game.
Hell, if you ask me to sound off the latest gear and or if you quiz me on stuff like Harmon’s Curve, I’d be hardpressed to give you an answer on the spot.
Plus, I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff. For example, a cable that can easily pass as a scarf due to sheer size. I can’t find a photo of it but I’ll try.
But before I “retire”, I’d like to have a pair of Custom In Ear Monitors, a similarly priced Universal In Ear Monitors to be my “forbidden fruit” to the next Adam or Eve that I’ll meet, a Digital Audio Player - it’s a tossup between a WM1A and the Questyle QP2R and a 256 Gig SD card for my music.
While I would appreciate a sub for piracy, I think there is already well established and for the most part "good enough" places to get info from like /r/Piracy but I think it would be better...
While I would appreciate a sub for piracy, I think there is already well established and for the most part "good enough" places to get info from like /r/Piracy but I think it would be better quality content and discussion if a topic was opened here as well. It really comes down to the policy. I would love one, but I totally understand if it's not happening.
I hope that we can see a piracy sub group in the future. As others here have noted, it is a topic with a strong potential for discussion and with proper rules in place it can be run without any...
I hope that we can see a piracy sub group in the future. As others here have noted, it is a topic with a strong potential for discussion and with proper rules in place it can be run without any legal harm. Its also important to think about how we treat fringe topics as a whole so as not to discriminate or whitewash content. Not everyone has to be a fan of piracy, so if you don't like it, then don't subscribe to the community.
What may be more appropriate for tildes is a sub group about torrenting and other p2p tech like tor. There's a lot to be talked about torrenting, tor, etc, than just all the illegal things you can...
What may be more appropriate for tildes is a sub group about torrenting and other p2p tech like tor. There's a lot to be talked about torrenting, tor, etc, than just all the illegal things you can do with them and it would be neat what the Tildes community has to say.
Please don't use Tor for piracy. You're going to slow down an already stagnant network, complicating things for the people who's lives literally depend on it.
Please don't use Tor for piracy. You're going to slow down an already stagnant network, complicating things for the people who's lives literally depend on it.
Tor would only become faster and stronger if more people used it. If the tor protocol was built in to Chrome and Firefox natively it would be the best thing to ever happen to tor.
Tor would only become faster and stronger if more people used it. If the tor protocol was built in to Chrome and Firefox natively it would be the best thing to ever happen to tor.
It's all right. I was being cheeky. I know why you asked publicly - so he could have a chance to publicise his pro-piracy website in this thread about how Tildes won't accept piracy.
It's all right. I was being cheeky. I know why you asked publicly - so he could have a chance to publicise his pro-piracy website in this thread about how Tildes won't accept piracy.
Who cares though? Healthy competition is good and I see no harm with @go1dfish mentioning his platform here. It only gets brought up when its appropriate to the conversation and its important that...
Who cares though? Healthy competition is good and I see no harm with @go1dfish mentioning his platform here. It only gets brought up when its appropriate to the conversation and its important that people know they have alternatives to go to. Tildes hosts a good amount of discussion about how Reddit operates, so why not discuss other sites like Dread and notabug as well?
I never implied I was dictating what could and could not be discussed here. I'm not sure whether you think I want discussions about piracy or discussions about notabug.io to be banned, but it...
I never implied I was dictating what could and could not be discussed here. I'm not sure whether you think I want discussions about piracy or discussions about notabug.io to be banned, but it doesn't matter either way. Both topics can and will be discussed here, and I'm fine with that.
I'm just being a bit cheeky because I've playfully accused @go1dfish of promoting his site here before, by picking up the malcontents.
Copying an old comment from this thread. There isn't a direct answer, but afaik most everything that's already come up is mentioned in there:
Found in the terms of use. As far as I know, this is everything that's been said on the matter.
EDIT: For what it's worth, I would like to see a place for discussing Piracy as I find it to be a huge source of good in the world. I just kinda doubt it will happen.
Oh right. Thankyou
Just curious, why was your comment upvoted 4 times?
Discussing piracy isn't illegal, so there no reason why it couldn't happen.
To add to this, using a torrent hosting site, using a peer to peer transfer program and using a VPN are all legal as well.
There are a multitude of subreddits dedicated to discussing piracy on Reddit, and none of them link to pirated materials at all.
Literally just a scene release description. No way to turn that into a pirated movie on its own.
Just a release description, but this one mentions the type of audio it has! Call the FBI!
No, no it doesn't. It links to, get this: a release description. There is no way to turn that into an .avi file containing a pirated film.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make here, but you did a stellar job of proving mine. Thanks.
He's saying that while posts don't violate the letter of the rule, they violate the spirit of the rule. The first two are the exact names (sure, replace spaces with periods for the first) of torrent files; there's even a comment that comes right out and says, paraphrased, "just go to site and look for submission title". The third, while not directly to a torrent file, goes to a page describing a priated file (even has the filesize), with a link to get it.
The three posts are effectively posts for pirated materials, not "discussing piracy".
swap.avi
There. By that logic, I just shared a vile porn video with you.
You're right, I am being at least a little obtuse. I do understand what you're saying, I just disagree with the premise. I'll have a more detailed, less flippant response under your other comment in a few minutes.
I apologize for the attitude, it wasn't warranted and that's not the type of interaction I'd like to be on the receiving end of, so it's shitty of me to do it to you.
That is not piracy, it's up to the reader to go or not search for that.
"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime" not quite the same thing, but sort of, you are not handling the links to do the download, you are teaching where to search for the file
What he proved is that rules are not efficient with people that just try to find loopholes.
Luckily, Tildes officially stance is not to "apply the rule" but to apply common sense.
I pirate content that I don't have legal means to obtain (geographical restriction anyone?) or to play a game that I'm not sure about because of lack of reviews/not sure of my PC hardware but as for other topics, there are plenty of other websites to exchange links. Tildes doesn't need to end up in trouble for something that you can find somewhere else, with server hosted in countries that don't give a shit about piracy.
That's literally just a description of the release. I'm not sure what the miscommunication here is, but I'll try to elaborate. That title is the equivalent of a news site posting an article saying "Piracy group CMRG has released Deadpool 2, with a resolution of 1080p, sourced from a web streaming service, with Dolby Digital 5 sound, encoded using H.264". Typically speaking, these posts are made hours in advance of such a release hitting P2P networks. I think it's unfair to accuse people of sharing pirated material when they're posting a description, especially considering that at the time of posting there isn't a way to download the release they're describing. That kind of ex post facto reasoning isn't valid for a reason.
Here's a rather unsubtle and exaggerated example:
Incredibles 2 (2018) 1080p BDrip DD5.1 AC3-EVOIncredibles 2, in FHD quality, ripped from a bluray, with dolby digital 5.1 sound, encoded using AC3, and released by scene group EVO. You can't do a damn thing with that right now, for obvious reasons. The movie isn't out on bluray, and EVO certainly hasn't ripped it yet. However, there's a damn good chance that what I typed out will be a valid release description in a couple months. Shortly afterwards, it will be spread around on torrent sites, almost certainly using that description verbatim as the filename. Can you honestly use this post to accuse me of sharing pirated materials when that happens?
Consider all the threads on Tildes a few days ago talking about 3D printed guns. They mentioned that these CAD models existed, and who was releasing them. Using the exact logic you're using here, those threads were sharing 3D printed firearms with each other.
Yes, those people should be shitcanned instantly for that. I'm interested in the technical aspect of sourcing, ripping, and initial distribution. It's hard enough to have a legitimate discussion about that without people jeopardizing the entire community in that manner. I blame the moderators of that sub for letting comments like that stay up, not the sub itself.
What people search for on Google isn't, and shouldn't, be any concern of Tildes.
I believe that there is room for legitimate discussion of copy protection, circumvention of said protection, and piracy in general on Tildes, but I don't believe we're in a position to monitor and moderate such discussions closely enough to prevent people from sharing pirated materials at this time.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if they did do that, your argument against it would change accordingly.
I already explained how the release process works, and you chose to willfully ignore that in your response. I'm glad I got the opportunity to explain it for the sake of other people reading, but it's obvious that your mind is made up and you're not willing to entertain any discussion on the matter.
It being a top-level group would be pretty silly, so ideally it'd end up as a sub-group of ~tech. If the tag system evolves into automated creation of subgroups as originally planned, that would be the end-state of a piracy discussion group on Tildes.
But again, I don't think we're in a position to properly moderate such a community, so going forward with it now would be a spectacularly bad idea. I just don't want to see the door closed on it permanently because of premature decisions.
To continue the argument: Torrent filenames use the release tags, not the other way around. It's not a filename until somebody leaks it onto P2P networks. There's a myriad of release/crack groups whose work NEVER makes it to P2P networks; would it be fair to paint their work with the same brush, even though their cracks aren't made public?
/r/Piracy itself is a pretty bad example of a discussion group for the reasons listed, but it's worth mentioning that these communities tend to devolve into this state when there's no new protection methods.
For example, /r/Crackwatch. When Denuvo first hit the scene, that subreddit was THE place to go for technical discussion on it. Once the first cracks for it were released, we got a tremendous amount of information about how the system worked and what its shortcomings were. This level of rich, informative conversation continued as the cat-and-mouse game between Denuvo variants and crack groups evolved.
Now that Denuvo is pretty much dead in the water, there's nothing new to discuss, so /r/Crackwatch has become a dump of daily release posts.
I'd liken it to TV series subs during the off-season. When there's something new on the scene, it's great, but when there isn't... quality nosedives pretty quickly. Only instead of shitposting, you get people trying to "subtly" trade warez. A bit more problematic.
I'd strongly recommend
piracytags overtorrenttags (for this specific subject, torrents aren't inherently bad), because the latter would just encourage the negative aspects of that subculture.Think you meant ~Piracy not ~privacy.
I think ~tech is the proper place to talk about piracy until such time that the tag is so prevalent that it warrants a sub-tilde for it.
Considering that all moderation on Tildes is currently done by Deimos, the site owner, that there is no other moderation system currently available, starting such an area would be a logistical moderation nightmare.
You and I both know that actual piracy links would at the very least slip through, if not overwhelm the actual discussion. Tildes is not a unicorn site of peace and love - Its users are flawed humans, just like users of every other website.
Except me. I may be a bear. Maybe.
This is irrelevant to the question, but I really wish there was not. Tildes seems like an intellectual place that should value people’s work, and not subscribe to the notion that it’s okay to steal everything. And I’m not saying that to be über-capitalist, but lots of good does come from actually financially supporting the content/software/etc we enjoy.
You should be more open-minded.
I for one consider your statement "notion that it's okay to steal everything" to be semantically inaccurate, attacking a strawman, and approaching a morally grey issue as black and white.
A lot of people, especially those of the subset that could be classified as "pirates", do indeed have a mindset where their first thought in terms of content acquisition is "I'm not going to pay for this", and there can be a number of reasons for that—some more justifiable than others.
I will say though: I don't see how telling OP that he "should be more open minded" will yield any positive or thoughtful discussion, nor will whipping out the standard array of arguments & fallacies do anything more to make @cptcobalt agree with you. If Tildes is about fostering inclusive discussion, and your opinion is different from his, then you should be approaching the situation from the perspective of being able to make an argument not of "your opinion is wrong", which won't win you any supporters, but rather by demonstrating and appealing to your opponent why they should be persuaded to think differently, and letting your justifications speak for themselves.
This thread is a sort of meta-discussion about the manner of discussions allowed - either dictated by the rules or by communal consent - on Tildes.
My point is that dismissing this manner of discussion for reasons that others will invariably disagree with should we actually discuss this topic is wrong in a very ironic way.
The merits of piracy or the lack thereof is not the point of my comment.
I was more hoping to try and point out that I consider your approach to replying to the OP to be somewhat unconstructive, if not downright combative. I can't think of a single time when using the age old phrase "straw man" has actually helped convince someone that they should re-evaluate their opinion.
What I would recommend though is considering to construct your commentary in a manner that is more likely going to appeal to the other person's viewpoint and be convincing, not dismissive.
This encodes a huge number of cultural assumptions that may happen to be true at this current time in your current jurisdiction. But which, even in your jurisdiction people will argue the toss on (To IP lawyers delight). It certainly is not true for all desired users of tildes, it's not true globally, it's not true historically.
Making such blanket statements as fact without even an attempt at understanding of other users morals, culture and laws is kinda grating.
This statement is completely false and I wish people would stop using it. There's more nuance to the situation that I feel people should be aware of.
Piracy isn't theft, it's copyright infringement. Theft deprives someone of something - you remove something from someone's possession. This is an important distinction since the law doesn't care about someone getting something for free, they care about depriving someone of their property.
Copying can be done for a multitude of reasons. The MPAA and RIAA would like people to keep saying "piracy is theft", which is why they coined the slogan in the first place. They'd like people to believe every copied file is a lost sale. They've been largely successful at this, and have sued people for more than the GDP of some small countries based on this.
If something isn't available to me in a legal way, if I pirate it no one is missing out on anything. I could not have legally purchased it if I wanted to, so that's not a lost sale. If I was never going to purchase something to begin with and I download it, that's not necessarily a lost sale either. I never would have given any money for it anyway, and only would have watched it at a friends house or on TV anyway, so that's not a lost sale either. Video game publishers don't do demos anymore, so there's no real way of telling how a game will play on my PC, or whether I'll actually play the game for more than 10 minutes, so I often pirate before I buy. That's not necessarily a lost sale either, since if I like the game I'll definitely end up buying it on steam, since steam is more convenient than piracy. So, that could actually be a gained sale. I pirate TV shows that I can already watch through netflix, just so I can watch them offline. I pirate blu-rays I own because I don't feel like ripping them. It's also worth pointing out where I live, Canada, it's fully legal to download this media, just not upload it.
TL;DR: Piracy isn't theft. It's making an unauthorized copy. It's not necessarily a lost sale. It's illegal in many cases, but specifically not a crime, it's a civil infraction. And people who do it aren't necessarily depriving anyone of anything. There's more nuance to the discussion than that, and simplifying it down to "That's stealing!" is short-sighted if not disingenuous.
I can see the difference between "theft" and "copyright infringement", but aren't we being fastidious?
My two-cents:
When I buy a book, I'm not buying a stack of paper, I'm buying the content of that book. And there is harm in making an unauthorized copy of it. You are denying people, in this case, at minimum the author of a sale.
Of course there are grey areas, such as donating the price of the book to the author directly and then pirating a copy, but then you're denying others, such as the editor, a cut.
Fastidious, maybe, but I don't think I'm being pedantic. Theft is a criminal offense. There's no case where it's acceptable. Even a starving mother stealing a loaf of bread for her children is very definitely breaking a law.
When I buy a physical book, it may or may not come with a digital copy. If I'm truly paying for the contents, then it should be morally fine to pirate the ebook since I've paid the license for the media. Ok so maybe I didn't pay for the digitizing service. So then, maybe it comes with a locked kindle version, so then it should be ethical to pirate an unlocked version of the ebook? Well, maybe, maybe not. I only bought the ebook under the terms that they imposed, so I'm explicitly not allowed to use an unlocked version. But then, how about if I had bought the physical book second-hand at a used bookstore? The author gets nothing in that situation. Should buying and selling used books be considered moral?
It's complicated, is my point. Theft is not complicated. Everyone understands it that stealing is wrong. Piracy isn't theft though, it's copyright infringement, which is much murkier, with far larger grey areas. I feel the distinction is important, and people parroting the lobbyists slogans really isn't helping the discussion.
That's fair. I can accept the difference between different levels of copyright infringement. Copying someone's unpublished works and publishing, then profiting from it is definitely different from downloading an ebook of a book you already physically bought.
Though, keeping in line with being a little pedantic, I would argue a mother stealing bread for her starving kids will be treated differently legally than her stealing a car.
Well said, wish more people understood the difference.
Not always. I pirate albums I buy because people are better than me at ripping cds.
That's not necessary wrong though, oftentimes the "person" you're "supporting" is a huge megacorporation or other faceless rightholder profiting off of someone else's work. This happens with scientific papers, software, movies, works of art where the original artist is deceased, etc.
Further, I take serious issue with artificially scarce goods. I understand that small artists need to be paid to continue to work and so I'm willing to work with the system to support them, but in all other cases I see it as an imperative to NOT support their production financially.
If we can. My piracy habits died down a lot after I got a full-time job, I noticed. I love to support artists, but only if I really can.
Amen to that. Piracy is a service issue after all as stated by Gabe Newell.
I still pirate stuff but on the TV Shows front, I have Netflix which completely kills the need for me to go through the hassle of using a VPN (Government's actually cracking down on piracy) to then go and sit around for at least 2-3 hours to download a whole season of a show.
...and a lot of us pirates do support content we value. Just because we have a pirated copy of something doesn't mean we will not purchase it in the future, or have not already purchased it in the past.
I doubt most pirates would disagree.
In a way, piracy does support actual creators, at the expense of distributors and promotors, who often slurp up the lion's share of revenue from media sales. The creators are supported in part by the nebulous "appreciation" of their work, but also because piracy drove us to create bandcamps and netflixes, which potentially at least will be more efficient at distribution and at getting revenue directly to creators.
And, as many studies have shown, pirates are also often the greatest purchasers of legal online content.
When I would pirate, long before the last statute of limitations expired, mind you, it was mostly about convenience and quality. I could much more easily obtain a higher quality copy of the piece, and one without annoying fbi warnings or drm. The price was only really a small part of the equation. I used the extra money on tickets anyway.
These days, hulu, netflix, and itunes make it more convenient to watch/listen, and are pretty affordable (some itunes movie purchases can be pricey).
Bottom line, and this is supported repeatedly by research: Make it easy to get, hassle free, and reasonably priced, and most folks will choose the legally sanctioned route every time.
This may help scratch some pirating itches.
"Spotify Premium for Students, now with Hulu. - $4.99/month" (Total for both)
https://www.spotify.com/us/student/
The audiophile in me would be screaming bloody murder if I went and bought Spotify Premium though I do like to use Spotify as a means of discovering new music (on rare occasions).
Please help me to understand audiophiles.
I'm not saying that MP3s are the end all and be all of audio quality, but I have seen audiophiles (for all intents and practical purposes) dismiss all but the studio tapes.
I can listen to music on Amazon or Spotify or YouTube, even through a set of (gifted, ~$350) Bose QC35 active noise canceling bluetooth headphones (that I often see maligned, that have some of the best noise cancellation I've ever used), and still feel like I'm getting the full experience.
Even in my own hobbies, I'm not so exacting. If I can find something that does 90% as good for 50% of the price, I'll take it.
Now, if say, I made my living as a sound engineer, I would be very exacting. But that's just not the case, and I doubt all audiophiles have that kind of job either.
As audiophiles, we lust for and pursue perfection.
Perfection which is subjective, of course.
Studio tapes of the track itself are considered perfect as it is “fresh out of the oven” per-se, the Patient Zero where nothing happened to it (re-encoded and all that).
Now to the laymen, if you’d play say... a MP3 320kbps and a FLAC version of the same track, 9/10 they will not hear the difference. However, for us audiophiles, the difference is very clear - the track sounds cleaner, without distortions and so, the bass and treble sounds sharper and such.
Granted, if you look at it from afar, the differences are minute however, we are all about those minute differences. I guess you could pretty much sum audiophillia as self-induced OCD when it comes to the frequencies.
Which is why you’d often see people believing that cables, SD cards, batteries etc. do make a difference in sound with psuedoscience as “evidence”.
Not that I will dismiss them entirely as I happen to believe that cables do make a difference. However, the differences is negligeable at best.
Which is why I dislike /r/headphones as there are cases where they will belive that hard data, which is considered “objective”, such as frequency response graphs are the end all and be all and it will accurately tell how X will sound like to everyone which is silly as everyone’s ears are different which is why you’d often see impressions of X being different.
So in conclusion: we only get our music from the souce as the differences are quite clear to us, which is also the reason why there’s a lot of “snakeoil” in this industry as people will claim that it makes a difference in sound and people will buy it. See The Cable Cooker as one such example.
But I will say this. If I have to choose between a FLAC version of a poorly mastered track and a 320kbps version of a well mastered track. I will always choose the latter in a heartbeat.
P.S. I may be wrong in what I’ve wrote. I’m not exactly too knowledgeable in this field.
I'm curious, have you actually done a double-blind test on yourself? And if so, how "close" to the source could you still hear a difference? Just seems to me like the whole audiophile thing is largely placebo.
I’ve done it with DOOM’s soundtrack. The bass were a lot sharper and I can hear the cymbals’ texture clearly.
Mastering plays a large role here.
Thanks for your thorough reply.
No problem, I’m merely complying to the standard of Tildes and I hope others will follow suit, especially when Tildes finally releases.
Most people can't hear the difference between high bitrate compressed files and lossless formats, so it's mostly BS. Plus even when you can hear a difference it's pretty subjective that one is better than the other.
https://cdvsmp3.wordpress.com/cd-vs-itunes-plus-blind-test-results/
That said having lossless or high sampling rate can be useful for production, for example if you slow down a sample it will sound better if it had higher sampling rate (it's like raw high-res formats for photo, it's good for editing, but not so much for the end-result).
Bonus website where you can do a small blind test:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
Still much better than the anecdotal reports people usually give "I can totally hear a difference!" (often without an understanding of statistics).
Anyway there's plenty of videos on youtube about it too.
Thanks!
A larger issue for me is that Spotify routinely loses the licenses to some of the music that I like. As a result, I either pay a fortune and suffer great inconvenience by subscribing to all of the various competing streaming services or I don't get to listen to what I want to when I want to. Both of these are unacceptable compromises to me.
I much prefer to maintain my own library of music using Beets (bonus points for lossless for archival purposes), and just use Spotify for discovering new stuff and easily playing stuff through my smart speakers.
I can understand the licensing issue, and I share that frustration for most online media.
To that end, I do have offline copies of the media that I value.
To be fair its 320kbps Vorbis, which isn't too shabby.
Do you listen to lossless only?
Yep, the difference is quite clear for me.
I think its a blessing that I can't honestly tell the difference, it's certainly a hobby I can see myself becoming engorged in, to the detriment of my wallet! I'm thinking of downsampling my collection to 192-256kbps opus just so I can fit more songs on my laptop. Oooor, just insert some more space onto this thing.
How much money do you see yourself spending on the equipment?
Me? Honestly, I’ve been wanting out of this game. The community can be cut-throat, SBAF as an example, and I’m not too interested in this game.
Hell, if you ask me to sound off the latest gear and or if you quiz me on stuff like Harmon’s Curve, I’d be hardpressed to give you an answer on the spot.
Plus, I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff. For example, a cable that can easily pass as a scarf due to sheer size. I can’t find a photo of it but I’ll try.
But before I “retire”, I’d like to have a pair of Custom In Ear Monitors, a similarly priced Universal In Ear Monitors to be my “forbidden fruit” to the next Adam or Eve that I’ll meet, a Digital Audio Player - it’s a tossup between a WM1A and the Questyle QP2R and a 256 Gig SD card for my music.
From there, I am set.
While I would appreciate a sub for piracy, I think there is already well established and for the most part "good enough" places to get info from like /r/Piracy but I think it would be better quality content and discussion if a topic was opened here as well. It really comes down to the policy. I would love one, but I totally understand if it's not happening.
I hope that we can see a piracy sub group in the future. As others here have noted, it is a topic with a strong potential for discussion and with proper rules in place it can be run without any legal harm. Its also important to think about how we treat fringe topics as a whole so as not to discriminate or whitewash content. Not everyone has to be a fan of piracy, so if you don't like it, then don't subscribe to the community.
What may be more appropriate for tildes is a sub group about torrenting and other p2p tech like tor. There's a lot to be talked about torrenting, tor, etc, than just all the illegal things you can do with them and it would be neat what the Tildes community has to say.
Please don't use Tor for piracy. You're going to slow down an already stagnant network, complicating things for the people who's lives literally depend on it.
Tor would only become faster and stronger if more people used it. If the tor protocol was built in to Chrome and Firefox natively it would be the best thing to ever happen to tor.
Agreed. The sub could have rules like no linking to pirated content etc...
I'm curious: why didn't you send him a PM to ask this question?
It's all right. I was being cheeky. I know why you asked publicly - so he could have a chance to publicise his pro-piracy website in this thread about how Tildes won't accept piracy.
Who cares though? Healthy competition is good and I see no harm with @go1dfish mentioning his platform here. It only gets brought up when its appropriate to the conversation and its important that people know they have alternatives to go to. Tildes hosts a good amount of discussion about how Reddit operates, so why not discuss other sites like Dread and notabug as well?
So what? Just because you don't like the topic doesn't mean that it shouldn't be discussed. You are not the site's content dictator.
I never implied I was dictating what could and could not be discussed here. I'm not sure whether you think I want discussions about piracy or discussions about notabug.io to be banned, but it doesn't matter either way. Both topics can and will be discussed here, and I'm fine with that.
I'm just being a bit cheeky because I've playfully accused @go1dfish of promoting his site here before, by picking up the malcontents.
Fair enough. I misunderstood you there. Sorry about that.