[HN Gopher] Rarbg Is No More
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Rarbg Is No More
        
       Author : 0___0
       Score  : 1005 points
       Date   : 2023-05-31 10:56 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
        
       | hiofio wrote:
       | I found a replacement is the same as Rarbg
       | https://torrentgalaxy.to/
        
         | majkinetor wrote:
         | looks even better. thx
        
         | clsec wrote:
         | Thanks! This seems like a great replacement. Much better than
         | l337x or TPB, especially with dark mode turned on!
        
       | DoItToMe81 wrote:
       | Their host charges 250 euro a month for 100 megabits and a one
       | terabyte data cap. At the prices they're paying, I'm surprised
       | this did not happen sooner.
        
         | LordShredda wrote:
         | Do you have a source for that? Curious how you found out. But
         | yeah, that's basically a scam for hosting a static website.
        
           | DoItToMe81 wrote:
           | Site IP is owned by Netsaap.
        
       | firstSpeaker wrote:
       | Is there is any replacement with similar clean design and
       | availability?
        
       | KennyNON wrote:
       | Ouh, do you know any alternative with UHD BD remuxes?
        
         | SamuelAdams wrote:
         | There are private trackers like PTP, but good luck getting in.
        
       | pallas_athena wrote:
       | Does anyone know how to find where a certain team uploads stuff?
       | 
       | I loved VXT stuff on rarbg, and would love to find them again.
        
       | feyes wrote:
       | That's pretty devastating. This was old reliable for a long time.
       | I could never keep up with the demands from private trackers as
       | streaming made it so I didn't need to utilize them as much.
        
         | dmix wrote:
         | Are there any private torrent sites for movies/tv that you can
         | buy your way in without needing a seedbox?
        
           | holoduke wrote:
           | Checkout sonarr and radarr together with jackett. Plenty of
           | ways to find zillions of sites. Most dark streaming sites use
           | these tools to fully automate everything
        
             | paintballboi07 wrote:
             | Yep. Although, I'd recommend prowlarr instead of jackett.
             | Integrates with the other arr apps much better.
        
           | drexlspivey wrote:
           | Last I checked you can get in IPTorrents and HDTorrents with
           | a donation. Still need to maintain your ratio but you can
           | also boost your upload with donations.
        
       | sbdaman wrote:
       | It's absolutely insane how many of these incredibly important
       | torrent sites are just managed and hosted by a rag-tag group of
       | people with the site barely clinging to life.
        
         | abwizz wrote:
         | a taste of the original internet
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | q1w2 wrote:
         | While we like to romanticize these groups, they often have
         | ulterior motives in getting users to the site. Pushing ads from
         | less-than-reputable ad-sources, and having a section with
         | binaries where admins can push malware laden
         | programs/games/files to increase the size of a client's botnet.
         | 
         | The model is that as users become more comfortable on the site,
         | they eventually browse to the more dangerous categories and
         | download programs/games/cracks/etc...
         | 
         | I wrote a blog post about a deep dive I did on one site, and
         | showed that the admins were seeding malware in program
         | downloads.
         | 
         | Suffice to say, when I reported the admins, other admins banned
         | my account on the site and IP blocked me.
         | 
         | I actually ended up taking the blog post down because they
         | started attacking my domain, and even Google blacklisted my
         | domain because I had snippets of the malware code posted (I
         | guess I should have used images instead of code). I was younger
         | and just tinkering with security research anyway.
        
           | logical_person wrote:
           | sorry but this is nonsensical, one site pushed malware so
           | they all do? typical "security" person
        
           | narag wrote:
           | _I wrote a blog post about a deep dive I did on one site..._
           | 
           | But it wasn't this site, was it? The most salient feature of
           | Rarbg was that they verified uploads.
        
         | best_one_there wrote:
         | Basically all of an actual software company is bullshit jobs
         | unrelated to the core product like legal, marketing, investor
         | relations, HR, maybe even developers for R&D etc.
         | 
         | Running a website doesn't require that many people.
         | 
         | I've worked at companies with 4 developers and 30+ "other
         | stuff". The company would not be profitable and we would not
         | get paid without them, but the actual product would work just
         | fine if we wanted it to.
        
           | fknorangesite wrote:
           | > The company would not be profitable and we would not get
           | paid without them
           | 
           | Seems their jobs aren't bullshit, then, are they?
        
             | best_one_there wrote:
             | For a real company, sure!
        
             | hirako2000 wrote:
             | Referring to the developers, not the bullshit workers
             | running around them.
        
           | jahewson wrote:
           | Anecdotally, I've never met anyone who thought this way who's
           | product didn't suck.
        
             | ebiester wrote:
             | I don't understand this.
             | 
             | If you build a system for resilience, it should not take
             | significant effort to maintain. You should be able to keep
             | the lights on with 10-20% of the engineering team. The rest
             | is growth.
             | 
             | Growth may be making the product better, creating new
             | product lines, or improving the scalability - for example,
             | allowing larger numbers of users or entries. However, you
             | can make the choice to make a well constrained product that
             | serves a valuable use but doesn't need growth. Consider
             | Bingo Card Creator, for example.
        
               | lamontcg wrote:
               | > If you build a system for resilience, it should not
               | take significant effort to maintain. You should be able
               | to keep the lights on with 10-20% of the engineering
               | team. The rest is growth.
               | 
               | After 10+ years you always see the operational demand
               | increase because of all the necessary edge conditions you
               | build up (backcompat and whatever else).
        
               | ebiester wrote:
               | Does the cost of change increase, or the cost of
               | maintenance, or the cost of keeping it on?
               | 
               | Yes, the cost of change by definition increases with the
               | complexity. I don't think that is in contention. Why is
               | it changing for any other reason that you're growing (or
               | trying to stave off decline?) For internal tools, change
               | may be a function of external business pressures (like a
               | supplier going out of business, requiring changes in an
               | internal tool), but that is asking for new software.
               | 
               | As you add libraries, the cost of maintenance increases
               | because the surface area of security increases. However,
               | short of major changes (React, Rails, Etc), this feels
               | like it's not moving outside the 10-20% range.
               | 
               | Then, there's the cost of keeping it on.
        
             | best_one_there wrote:
             | It's not an opinion.
             | 
             | Legal is very useful in the general case, but if you're an
             | anonymous torrent site operator who fully intends to ignore
             | the law anyway it's a waste of time.
        
             | George83728 wrote:
             | Stack Overflow seems to still be running well.
        
           | raincole wrote:
           | > bullshit jobs unrelated to the core product like legal,
           | marketing, investor relations, HR, maybe even developers for
           | R&D etc.
           | 
           | Wow. You think legal, marketing, investor relations are all
           | bullshit jobs...?
           | 
           | Just wow.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | Zanneth wrote:
             | Try working at a big company for a little while.
        
             | kuschku wrote:
             | If you're running a community funded website, you don't
             | need any of this overhead. In the 90's, pretty much the
             | entire internet ran without these jobs.
             | 
             | Sure, they're necessary if you have an actual company, but
             | the point is that you can run a website without a company.
        
             | best_one_there wrote:
             | If you're not an official company with a legal presence,
             | yes.
             | 
             | A lot of seriously dense replies to my comment, seemingly
             | wilfully misunderstanding.
             | 
             | _Obviously_ the legal department at an actual company is
             | not bullshit.
        
             | budoso wrote:
             | Love that you excluded HR
        
               | m00dy wrote:
               | No one needs HR.
        
               | afterburner wrote:
               | C-level execs love their on-message HR.
        
             | vdnkh wrote:
             | Peak HN moment
        
         | costco wrote:
         | KickAssTorrents made millions of dollars a year in advertising
         | revenue. I doubt their decision to start Rarbg was charitable
         | or even ideologically driven. They probably just want out now.
         | Lower margins may have been a part of that.
        
           | wahnfrieden wrote:
           | Can be both. Even Marx participated in the stock market
        
             | pxc wrote:
             | Of course he did! Marx was an economist, living within and
             | studying capitalism. He wasn't some ascetic monk.
        
             | miroljub wrote:
             | Marx always preached that the way to go is for the working
             | class to become owners of the means of production. The only
             | logical way to achieve exactly this is to participate in
             | the stock market and own company shares.
             | 
             | I still don't understand how the communists managed to
             | convince people that Marx saw things exactly in the
             | opposite way.
             | 
             | Even now, you hear left leaning parties telling that
             | "stocks are evil, one can lose complete retirements on the
             | stock market" and in the same time "rich are rich because
             | they earned everything in the stock market".
        
               | mordae wrote:
               | > "stocks are evil, one can lose complete retirements on
               | the stock market"
               | 
               | Putting retirement money into "balanced portfolio" of
               | stocks also destroys competition and pits corporations
               | against their employees in a fight to get them more money
               | after they retire minus the profits of the bookkeepers or
               | how are those managers called.
               | 
               | > "rich are rich because they earned everything in the
               | stock market"
               | 
               | Insider trading. :] And also just buying index funds,
               | with the save issue as above.
        
         | princevegeta89 wrote:
         | It's quite unbelievable that the reason was they could not meet
         | the costs of running it, while not being able to collect
         | donations or help raise funds to keep the lights on.
         | Technically the ownership and administration of their servers
         | could have been distributed all across the world, which would
         | have helped with the staff availability to a good extent.
        
         | CyberDildonics wrote:
         | They are mostly serving text that can be cached and have a
         | search function. Is it really surprising that a few people can
         | run one?
        
           | sbdaman wrote:
           | >Is it really surprising that a few people can run one?
           | 
           | No, and I didn't say that.
        
             | CyberDildonics wrote:
             | What did you mean then?
        
               | shrimp_emoji wrote:
               | CyberDDDDDD takin people to TASK! |DDD
        
               | sbdaman wrote:
               | I'm not surprised that a haphazardly organized group of
               | people /can/ run a site like rarbg. It's just interesting
               | how volatile (this isn't the right word but I'm not sure
               | what is) the operations of these sites tend to be in
               | light of the fact that the sites hold a lot of cultural
               | value. RARBG was incredibly popular and was an important
               | resource for torrenting. It's rare to see sites of that
               | size and importance run in that way these days.
        
               | narag wrote:
               | I guess he meant what he wrote: that the site was
               | immensely useful, with just a handful of people behind
               | it.
               | 
               | In this case, the reason is that being it in a sensible
               | position, they must have chosen to close rather than to
               | involve more staff.
        
               | ihateyouall123 wrote:
               | [dead]
        
               | George83728 wrote:
               | > _I guess he meant what he wrote_
               | 
               | Radical notion these days. Everybody has an ulterior
               | motive, probably one you find offensive, and you have to
               | read between the lines and make uncharitable assumptions
               | about their motives to find them out.
        
           | oxygen_crisis wrote:
           | [dead]
        
           | high_priest wrote:
           | @sbdaman Pointed out how many of these projects exist which
           | seem to have been spun out by barely organised groups of
           | random interner enthusiasts.
        
           | mistercheph wrote:
           | see: google.com
        
             | CyberDildonics wrote:
             | Are you trying to say that 110k page views per day is the
             | same as google executing 8.5 billion searches of the entire
             | internet per day?
        
       | bsaul wrote:
       | i was always skeptical on people saying that torrentz are a
       | symptom of bad legal streaming services..
       | 
       | Well, i recently got myself a videoprojector with an android tv
       | included, and since i happen to have an amazon prime account, i
       | installed the app, which is quite good.
       | 
       | And yes, it's true, since i've done that, my torrentz usage has
       | dramatically dropped..
        
         | mvanbaak wrote:
         | Dont forget to subscribe to all the other 100+ streaming
         | platforms, as originals will not end up on amazon. Oh, and
         | hopefully you will never need a subtitle that is for a language
         | that's not the main one in your region.
         | 
         | legal streaming is horrible at the moment.
         | 
         | To be able to battle at least some of the reasons to pirate
         | media they need to fix a couple of things (and this is just my
         | shortlist, there's 1000+ more reasons) - allow indexing and
         | playback outside of the official app so 1 app could be used for
         | multiple platform subscriptions - allow access to content no
         | matter where the viewer is on the world. Not only the video,
         | but audio and subtitle languages as well - allow subscriptions
         | for specific content, not a 'one subscription fits all'. I dont
         | want to watch nor pay for yet another Walking Dead something,
         | but I do want to watch See - allow to buy content, and provide
         | that DRM free in high quality (not the streaming quality)
        
           | npteljes wrote:
           | >Dont forget to subscribe to all the other 100+ streaming
           | platforms
           | 
           | These are the "bad legal streaming services" that OP is
           | mentioning.
        
         | George83728 wrote:
         | Streaming is a content ghetto. 9 times out of 10, _none_ of the
         | streaming websites have the media I 'm looking for. When I
         | visit friends and family and am made to sit down with their
         | streaming services and find something to watch, it always turns
         | into a disaster of everybody sitting on the couch browsing the
         | various catalogue on their phones, discovering that no service
         | has whatever movie somebody just thought of and suggested.
         | 
         | If you treat streaming like old cable television; you turn it
         | on _then_ decide what you want to watch from what is available,
         | I guess it might seem fine to you. But if you try to decide
         | what you want to watch first, treating streaming as a means to
         | an end rather than the end itself, then streaming is
         | unmitigated trash.
        
           | rightbyte wrote:
           | Deciding a movie and then look for it on streaming sites is
           | hopeless. Just rent it on a pay to view site if they don't
           | want to download via torrents.
        
         | npteljes wrote:
         | I agree. It seems like an flippant opinion, and I'm sure many
         | use it that way, but some services, and frankly, regimes have
         | proven that convenience, comfort and ease of access is very
         | attractive to people. If a service can navigate the obstacles
         | such as copyright, they will be more popular than taking the
         | thing for free with a bit of work.
        
           | bsaul wrote:
           | As a mentionned to someone else in the thread, i've realized
           | that i was actually ok seeing less popular content straight
           | from the remote control, than search for the top content in
           | torrents.
           | 
           | Ease of use and guaranteed video & subtitles quality _can_
           | compensate to some degree to not having access to all the
           | content in the world.
        
             | npteljes wrote:
             | Absolutely they do. Streaming sites see huge traffic even
             | now, being very far from their full potential, and being
             | full of dark patterns.
        
           | superph wrote:
           | im an IT and i developed a typical download -> playback
           | workflow that works over my home network and its pretty much
           | convenient too :) ^_^
        
             | npteljes wrote:
             | No doubt! I'm in IT myself and it's second nature doing
             | stuff like this. Most people have a different set of
             | experience and knowledge though. I only experienced the
             | convenience of streaming sites when I began using other
             | devices for media, like my phone. On the phone, it was much
             | easier to use whatever streaming than to search a torrent
             | site, download on phone / seedbox, wait, navigate to the
             | file, play the file. With streaming it's just search and
             | play.
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | I got myself Amazon prime, logged in on my computer, and found
         | out I can only watch 480p video because of DRM shenanigans. The
         | app on my TV is no longer supported (TV doesn't run Android),
         | my phone is rooted (Xiaomi stopped making updates after two
         | years) so I sometimes can't even find the app in Google Play
         | let alone play decent quality video and the Chromecast app is a
         | buggy mess.
         | 
         | So yeah, I went back to torrents after that. All of my problems
         | disappeared when I just had an MP4 file I could play anywhere.
         | I'm still paying my subscription but they can take my 1080p
         | video from my cold dead hands.
        
           | bsaul wrote:
           | I get your point, and i may be in the same case as you in a
           | few years (my projector is brand new).
           | 
           | But that doesn't really disprove my point : _when_ the legal
           | streaming service is working fine, then it does have an
           | immediate effect on pirated content consumption.
           | 
           | I thought that not being able to have access to all the
           | content in the world would be a no-go, but i'm surprising
           | myself preferring to watch legal content directly in two taps
           | of the remote than having to search for the torrentz, the
           | subtitles, download it, plug the computer to my projector,
           | etc.
           | 
           | This came as a surprise to me.
        
       | kypro wrote:
       | I've been using Jackett for torrents recently. It seems to work
       | really well if anyone is looking for alternatives.
       | 
       | https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett
        
         | roesel wrote:
         | Doesn't Jackett still need trackers such as Rarbg to function?
        
           | egKYzyXeIL wrote:
           | Yes - Jackett is just a search aggregator for multiple
           | selected torrent indexers
        
           | kypro wrote:
           | Yes, but Rarbg was both a tracker and a popular torrent
           | search site.
           | 
           | Out of the box Jackett supports many popular public trackers
           | like 1337x and you can configure private trackers too.
        
         | MayeulC wrote:
         | Prowlarr is another alternative
         | 
         | https://github.com/Prowlarr/Prowlarr
        
           | reyqn wrote:
           | Interestingly (or not), I avoided prowlarr because it didn't
           | cache results, which triggered rarbg's rate limiter.
           | 
           | Well it took rarbg going down for me to see that they
           | actually started caching results for rarbg in the latest
           | release... Too bad.
        
       | dmix wrote:
       | Kinda makes sense the team was (partially) operating out of
       | Eastern Europe and then had some issues with rising costs given
       | the war and inflation.
       | 
       | Maybe it will come back in the future when things settle down or
       | a new backer comes in.
        
         | johnvanommen wrote:
         | The first time I went on vacation in Eastern Europe, almost two
         | decades ago, I noticed that basically _everyone_ pirated
         | content.
        
           | m00dy wrote:
           | Ive had best parties of my life in Eastern Europe :)
        
       | Sharply2703 wrote:
       | Any other places that do find by imdb code or similar? That was
       | the best feature here, with the TV show seasons grouped together.
        
         | dlxfoo wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/407284-imdb-scout-mod
        
       | Giorgi wrote:
       | Damn. I used to use their "popular movies" feature the most. RIP
        
       | KoftaBob wrote:
       | This is the torrent search engine I've been using lately, works
       | reliably and has a clean UI: https://bitsearch.to/
        
       | petecooper wrote:
       | Two DHT search engines that might be useful:
       | 
       | https://btdig.com
       | 
       | https://bt4g.org
        
         | qersist3nce wrote:
         | So these crawl torrent indexers and provide search
         | functionality?
         | 
         | Do they also search private indexers?
        
           | arsome wrote:
           | They crawl the peer to peer DHT, private torrents have a flag
           | so they do not get announced via DHT.
        
           | SSLy wrote:
           | You can't search private indexers without having account on
           | them.
        
             | dark-star wrote:
             | they are not searching the indexers, they are searching the
             | DHT directly.
             | 
             | Some private trackers do not set the "disallow DHT" flag,
             | so those will be indexed as well. Most do, however, and
             | it's impossible to scrape those without an account, yes
        
       | westmeal wrote:
       | Damn there goes another titan RIP to real ones
        
       | sktrdie wrote:
       | Why don't torrent site owners just release their sites as a
       | torrent file itself? Like a sqlite dump with search indexes?
       | 
       | They could either self-update the torrent [1] or just release the
       | new torrent via forums/groups/chats etc. Would bring the costs
       | down to zero.
       | 
       | 1. http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html
        
         | traverseda wrote:
         | Because they make money off of ads and people who have the
         | skills and resources to do that without profit motive also
         | probably are afraid of getting entangled in legal battles.
        
           | sktrdie wrote:
           | From the announcement doesn't seem like they were making
           | money?
        
             | traverseda wrote:
             | Pretty sure I remember there being ads.
        
         | krzyk wrote:
         | Pirate bay does that.
        
         | Lammy wrote:
         | It's not just the site. RARBG themselves were responsible for
         | many of the video encodes, hence the "RARBG_DO_NOT_MIRROR.exe"
         | included in many of them: https://torrentfreak.com/rarbg-adds-
         | exe-files-to-torrents-bu...
        
           | ferCats99 wrote:
           | They don't, many encodes were from other P2P or release
           | groups and they just stripped the names and attributed to
           | themselves
        
             | Rant423 wrote:
             | Got any proof for this wild claim?
        
               | FractalParadigm wrote:
               | I can't offer any hard proof (especially now the site is
               | down) but I've cross-seeded _many_ files to private
               | trackers after removing [rarbg] from the filename and
               | deleting the additional files they add. Looking at my
               | client now, I have two episodes of a TV show ripped by
               | NTb, the TL version of that is _just_ the video file, the
               | rarbg version appends [rarbg] to the filename (to prevent
               | cross-seeding /re-uploading) and includes RARBG.txt and
               | the infamous "do not mirror" file. Both episodes were
               | uploaded to TL ~4 hours before Sonarr grabbed the rarbg
               | release (which usually happens within 20 minutes or so of
               | uploading). If you visit any of the piracy- or torrent-
               | related subreddits you'll see a lot of
               | complaints/comments/concerns regarding "why bother with
               | private trackers when it all ends up on rarbg anyways?"
               | or "why did rarbg steal *upload* from *site* while
               | claiming it as their own?"
        
       | CoBE10 wrote:
       | I guess mirrors would stay unaffected, because they seem to be up
       | right now. Someone will probably clone their torrents. They might
       | not have been the best quality, but they were always better than
       | YIFI (YTS). I always liked that you could search Rarbg using IMDB
       | numbers. Also, their UI was really pleasing to me, plus, there
       | were many userscripts that extended the functionality of the
       | site. I wounder who will fill up their place, because TPB was
       | always the last resort for me. In the meantime Btdig could be a
       | nice transitory place to find all of their torrents.
        
         | e12e wrote:
         | > I always liked that you could search Rarbg using IMDB
         | numbers. (...) I wounder who will fill up their place, because
         | TPB was always the last resort for me.
         | 
         | https://thebay.cf/search.php?q=tt2906216&cat=207
        
         | tawayasdf wrote:
         | what is the de-facto alternative these days?
        
           | medlazik wrote:
           | 1377x
        
             | melvyn2 wrote:
             | 1377x is an ad-hijacking "clone" of the real 1337x
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | inversetelecine wrote:
             | I think this is a typo? should be 1337x.
        
           | poisonarena wrote:
           | rutracker
        
             | grishka wrote:
             | I second this but I'm not sure how much use it is outside
             | of the former USSR. Most movies and TV shows there do come
             | with original English soundtracks tho.
        
       | sampa wrote:
       | pity
       | 
       | seems like rutracker.org (ex torrents.ru) is gonna outlive
       | everybody
        
         | jamesy0ung wrote:
         | rutracker is amazing. I've had no problems with the stuff I
         | download from there (games, movies, books and software) and
         | they also have some super niche stuff as well. Rip RARGB
        
       | jackspratts wrote:
       | phenomenal site. while the content is upped by users the fact
       | that multiple rips were found on the same page; SDR, HDR, HDR10,
       | 264, 265, 720, 1080, 2160, dubbed, original, theatrical cuts,
       | director's, producer's etc. was all on the brilliant, dedicated
       | folks of rarbgtor and is what made the site the best in the
       | world. nothing else even approaches it. like OiNk wiithout the
       | drama. i'll remember the time spent there with gratitude and
       | fondness. and I just installed two more 20TB drives, less than 18
       | hours ago...
       | 
       | - js.
        
       | jumm wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | zit10 wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | rwmj wrote:
       | I notice that "anti-piracy efforts", DMCA notices, etc don't
       | figure at all.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | DMCA would be completely irrelevant as they are not in the US.
        
           | paulcole wrote:
           | Is "completely irrelevant" accurate? In reality, the
           | influence of the US extends far beyond where the jurisdiction
           | of US laws ends.
        
             | omniglottal wrote:
             | In the case of DMCA notices, yes. 100.00% of those which
             | are relevany are served within US jurisdiction.
        
               | pixxel wrote:
               | KimDotcom?
        
               | moffkalast wrote:
               | Wait, so EU businesses don't have to comply with DMCA?
               | Neat.
        
         | BossHogg wrote:
         | Given the Bulgarian heritage, I'd assume looming laws[0] were
         | in fact a factor even if not mentioned.
         | 
         | [0] https://torrentfreak.com/bulgaria-approves-draft-law-that-
         | tu...
        
       | no_time wrote:
       | 2007 - 2023 RIP
       | 
       | Is there a successful tracker founded after 2010? With all these
       | old sites and their experienced crew quitting, things are not
       | looking good for the long term of warez. The only one that comes
       | to mind is the .si reboot of nyaa.se.
        
       | jumm wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | defrost wrote:
       | Elsewhere:
       | 
       |  _Iconic Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down, All Content Releases
       | Stop_
       | 
       | https://torrentfreak.com/iconic-torrent-site-rarbg-shuts-dow...
       | RARBG, one of the world's largest torrent sites, has said
       | "farewell" to millions of users. The site, which was a prominent
       | and stable source of new movie and TV show releases, cited a
       | variety of reasons behind its decision to cease operations. The
       | surprise shutdown marks the end of an era.              Founded
       | in 2008, RARBG evolved to become a key player in the torrent
       | ecosystem.              The site didn't only attract millions of
       | monthly visitors from all over the globe, it was also a major
       | release hub, bridging the gap between the Scene and the broader
       | pirate public.              ... etc.
        
       | tejohnso wrote:
       | They just abandoned it and closed? Why no handoff? Why no appeal
       | for funding? Or even a warning?
        
       | lofaszvanitt wrote:
       | Is this the real reason or just something like Truecrypt did?
        
       | atmosx wrote:
       | Aren't torrents legal in Spain and Switzerland?
        
       | biatch wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | vachina wrote:
       | Devastating to see them go, they're like the Apple of pirated
       | content, oracle of only quality releases presented in a
       | consistent manner.
        
       | Klaster_1 wrote:
       | Any advice on where to download daily MP3 scene release from now?
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | usenet
        
         | GOATS- wrote:
         | You could always try Soulseek?
        
       | OGITH wrote:
       | There are Other Torrent Sites' Like so...
       | 
       | https://rargb.to/ https://www2.rarbggo.to/
       | https://www.rarbgproxy.to/ https://rarbgmirror.org
       | https://rarbgget.org https://rarbgaccessed.org
       | https://rargb.to/search/?search=Skinwalker
       | https://rarbg.to/torrents.php and This one. https://www.1377x.to/
        
         | pallas_athena wrote:
         | > https://rargb.to/ https://www2.rarbggo.to/
         | https://www.rarbgproxy.to/
         | 
         | these are NOT clones, they host different torrents (rarbg never
         | hosted qxr stuff from 1337x).
         | 
         | > https://rarbgmirror.org https://rarbgget.org
         | https://rarbgaccessed.org
         | 
         | these are redirects, and so they are offline too.
         | 
         | > https://www.1377x.to/
         | 
         | this is a clone of 1337x, with added shit on top - do not
         | visit.
        
         | imgabe wrote:
         | Be careful: you want https://1337x.to/ note 1337 not 1377
        
           | snickerbockers wrote:
           | what happens if you go to 1377?
        
         | sonofaragorn wrote:
         | are these safe? being clones doesn't really inspire much
         | confidence
         | 
         | rarbg was my go to for years :S
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | They're not clones. Just proxies so they are down too.
           | 
           | This is usually done to make it harder for the courts to
           | force providers to block these sites. Whack-a-mole..
           | 
           | PS: Why am I getting downvoted? Try clicking on the links,
           | you will see the same goodbye message.
           | 
           | Edit: Oh the first 2 do seem to be clones, now I understand.
           | The rest are proxies though. I do think even the clones
           | basically skived off the original's database though so I
           | doubt they will have much going forward.
        
             | fastball wrote:
             | Did you actually try any of these yourself? Some are
             | clearly clones, and are not down.
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | The first two are 'clones' but they seem to have just
               | taken a backup of the actual rarbg content from a few
               | days ago (last torrents from the 25th of May!)
        
               | pallas_athena wrote:
               | Not even, they cloned the UI but (some of) the torrents
               | are stuff that never was on rarbg
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | A lot of the ones you mention are just proxies for rarbg (for
         | countries where the main site is blocked) so they have of
         | course stopped working too.
         | 
         | Only 1337x is really a different site.
        
           | ta8903 wrote:
           | They won't get new uploads but they will still work fine as
           | indexers for the huge amount of media already uploaded.
        
         | keylo96 wrote:
         | While that is true their releases are not the same, take the
         | Attenborough doc wild isles the main rarbg top release was 44gb
         | in size those u list is 13gb, no SWTYBLZ UHD releases
        
           | qersist3nce wrote:
           | >SWTYBLZ UHD
           | 
           | I'll always be amazed by warez subculture and how they name
           | stuff :))
        
         | forgotpwd16 wrote:
         | You listed mirrors/proxies and once the submitted link that
         | says it shut downs. Only last one is distinct.
        
       | misterbishop wrote:
       | That site has been Comcast's honeypot for like 10 years.
        
         | crumpled wrote:
         | Someone already mentioned the Comcast angle, and they are
         | correct. The ISP isn't involved until they get the notification
         | from an agent of the owner of the content.
         | 
         | The honeypot isn't the torrent site. You can use any site in
         | the world or no site at all and still get busted. It's a peer
         | to peer network, and the people busting you are seeding the
         | torrents themselves. They catch you when you peer with them.
         | 
         | Use a VPN, and read more.
        
           | crumpled wrote:
           | Just to be clear, the rights holders probably aren't
           | publishing torrents, they just also download them and monitor
           | anybody that happens to connect with their seed.
           | 
           | In a way, they are helping us with better download speeds.
        
             | partiallypro wrote:
             | I'm sure they are capping their upload speeds to basically
             | nothing and just monitoring the IPs that connect to it.
        
             | 8organicbits wrote:
             | I'd be interested in the legal argument that by sharing
             | their media in this way, the rights holders are authorizing
             | the download.
        
               | boomboomsubban wrote:
               | If it's a problem at all, it seems like they could easily
               | bypass it by only offering a couple chunks rather than
               | the whole file.
        
               | rightbyte wrote:
               | You can offer 0 chunks and still see the seeders, right?
               | How would you otherwise start leeching.
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | If Comcast is your ISP in this context, it's not their
         | honeypot. They're the ones receiving the requests that
         | downloads cease from the copyright holders and Comcast acts on
         | those requests as they see fit.
        
         | boomboomsubban wrote:
         | Running a torrent site as a honeypot seems like a stupid move
         | for an ISP given how cheap it would be to run a bot that
         | automatically downloads every release and tracks the IP
         | addresses. And Comcast would only bother with that as they own
         | NBC, so probably have been running such a bot for about 14
         | years now.
        
       | omegaworks wrote:
       | >some of the people in our team died due to covid complications,
       | others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to
       | work at all.
       | 
       | Long COVID is having a real impact on technical people.
       | 
       | There's a reason Google buys COVID rapid testing kits in bulk for
       | any of their onsite events. One of my friends working behind the
       | scenes was gifted a grocery bag full of leftover tests.
       | 
       | Governments around the world have largely abandoned us to a
       | disabling virus.
        
       | biatch wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | slazaro wrote:
       | I keep wondering all the time why torrent search is based on
       | websites (centralized), which can be taken down, etc., while once
       | you have a torrent file or a magnet/hash everything is
       | distributed.
       | 
       | Is there a main reason why there isn't (AFAIK, even though I
       | haven't really researched) a distributed search that wouldn't
       | have these problems? Is it a tech problem that literally can't be
       | solved? Or it just hasn't been done? It seems like search is the
       | obvious weak link, since the websites keep disappearing or taken
       | down or blocked by governments and ISPs, etc.
        
         | rakoo wrote:
         | You can't build a decentralized search because there's no way
         | to trust whatever results you get until you actually build it.
         | If you don't want to rely on a specific community, your best
         | bet is to crawl yourself and search locally: you can do that
         | with magnetico (https://github.com/boramalper/magnetico/).
         | Don't be frightened by the fact that it is archived, it works.
         | 
         | The problem then will be, how do you make sure your content is
         | legit? There's no magic way here, the best thing you can do is
         | compare the number of seeders and aim for the highest. If a
         | torrent is fake, people will delete it and it won't be seeded.
         | I have a thingy for that: https://sr.ht/~rakoo/magneticos/
         | 
         | The problem then becomes, number of seeders naturally selects
         | towards popular content. It doesn't ensure viability of
         | content. But I don't think there's a technical answer to that.
        
           | xenago wrote:
           | Very interesting, thanks for sharing your project. Magnetico
           | is also integrated into Jackett I believe, which might be
           | helpful to some people who use that
        
         | Tuna-Fish wrote:
         | The problem is not search, it's curation. Any system that
         | accepts everything will be overrun with things you do not want
         | (fakes, *very* illegal things), and so there needs to be some
         | authority that determines what is allowed. At that point, you
         | are centralized, and hosting a website doesn't significantly
         | hurt you.
         | 
         | This is also the problem with all distributed social networks.
         | In the end, your options are formal centralization, and
         | informal centralization, because absolutely nobody wants to
         | live in true decentralization.
        
           | tracker1 wrote:
           | It's pretty much impossible to support Anonymous +
           | Distributed + Free from poison/injection attacks. Not to
           | mention, you still largely need at least _some_ known points
           | of entry into such a system.
        
           | abwizz wrote:
           | > because absolutely nobody wants to live in true
           | decentralization.
           | 
           | oh, some ppl do indeed want to.
           | 
           | thanks to encryption they can. but i agree that the likes of
           | kazaa, edk and freenet are not for most ppl.
        
           | throwawayiddqd2 wrote:
           | Most of the time when I search for something, I sort by more
           | seeders first. Some type of signature can be used too.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | > I sort by more seeders first.
             | 
             | But this couldn't be easier to game. All you have to do to
             | be a seed is to report that you are a seed. You don't even
             | have to send any data.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | Sorting by number of seeders will probably get you a file
             | that is fast to download because of the number of seeders,
             | but it will rarely get you quality. Let's go take a stroll
             | over to a popular public torrent site and search for, say,
             | a recent superhero movie.
             | 
             | I see 100 (!) results for that movie's name. 49 of them
             | have zero seeders at all. I don't know what even is the
             | point. 29 of the results have one seeder. So already, 78%
             | of the results are pure crap.
             | 
             | Let's look at the top result with 338 seeders: File is 3GB,
             | H.264 video, 1080p, but with a crappy stereo AAC audio
             | encoding... arrggh why??
             | 
             | Number 2 result with 84 seeders: 1.43GB, H.264 video, 720p,
             | no word on the quality of the audio encoding. Even more
             | worthless.
             | 
             | Number 3 result with 17 seeders: HEVC format, 2160p, audio
             | streams include TrueHD Atmos 7.1, DTS-HD, Dolby Digital
             | 5.1, stereo, and three non-English language streams. But,
             | with an eye-watering download size of 61GB. Holy shit!
             | Nice, but wow, what a download.
             | 
             | You have to go a few more down the list to find a good
             | balance of high quality video and audio encoding, but with
             | a reasonable file size. By that point you're in the single
             | digit number of seeders.
             | 
             | Don't get me wrong, it's great to have _a few choices_ and
             | quality trade-offs. I guess there 's someone out there who
             | doesn't care about the stereo audio because they watch
             | their movies with laptop speakers. But 100 results, with
             | the vast majority of them either unseeded, poorly-seeded,
             | or flawed in some way. I agree with OP: You definitely want
             | some curation, not just search!
        
               | OscarTheGrinch wrote:
               | I always assume that the movie studios themselves hired
               | some proxies to put out those 61gb files so as to waste
               | everyone's time and bandwidth.
        
               | zolland wrote:
               | This is a proven fact, do not be fooled. For decades Big
               | Movie have been propagating disks out into the public
               | with giant movie files on them.
        
               | OscarTheGrinch wrote:
               | Just like how Big Music decided to fight their pirates by
               | only releasing unlistenable music for the last 20 years.
        
               | o1y32 wrote:
               | Great example. Some private trackers have strict rules
               | about quality, e.g. at most one 720p and at most one
               | 1080p (probably 1080p and 4k nowadays), bitrate must be
               | above a certain threshold, whichever was published first
               | stays, unless there is an "official" version published by
               | the same people maintaining the website. The exact
               | opposite of decentralized torrent sites, and works really
               | well. Takes a lot of work, obviously.
        
               | fknorangesite wrote:
               | > arrggh why??
               | 
               | Because you are vastly overestimating how much most
               | people actually notice or care about this.
        
               | hirako2000 wrote:
               | I often pick the 0 seeders results if there is even a
               | slight chance of better quality, and quite often there
               | is.
               | 
               | 0 seeders now doesn't mean forever. Some seeders only
               | hook to the network once in a while, long enough for a
               | few leechers to fetch it all. If the content is in demand
               | enough then a few seeders may be left and suddenly a 0
               | seeder search result becomes an attractive one. Even
               | curating is complicated for the human eye, so good luck
               | automating that.
        
               | saiya-jin wrote:
               | Yes it sometimes works but usually for smaller stuff like
               | ebooks or music. You dont want to download gigabytes if
               | not more from 1 spotty seeder, the chances it wont take
               | days of 24h online and source being obline too are tiny.
               | 
               | Sometimes disconnect from site seeder count is bigger,
               | and say 1 seeder mentioned is actually 15. But that was
               | never rarbg's case, it was reliable and dependable like
               | no other similar service. It also had IMBD rating so I
               | could quickly weed out not so great stuff and focus on
               | well rated ones, it generated maybe 60-80 movies a day
               | with my filter applied, so quite a stream. After 2 week
               | vacation, catching up took some time.
               | 
               | I used to, including today, to just go there every day or
               | two and check whats new with my predefined filter. Often
               | great movies that I never heard about before, old and new
               | alike, took 2 mins to get 1080p x265 variant. Glad I've
               | still managed to download that highly rated turkish movie
               | this morning.
        
         | drexlspivey wrote:
         | How is it distributed? Don't you need a torrent tracker? How do
         | you know which peer has which files to share?
        
           | zolland wrote:
           | Here is a good resource
           | https://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification
        
         | maeln wrote:
         | There is many search engine that use the DHT to retrieve the
         | metadata and share torrent via the magnet. The main issue here
         | is not the tech, it's the trust and discoverability/curating
         | and also not spreading the seeding capabilities.
         | 
         | When downloading from "reputable torrent tracker XYZ" you can
         | trust the quality of the torrent, that it is virus free, etc
         | ... It is also usually make searching for particular torrent
         | easier (less like searching for a nail in a hay stack) and you
         | avoid spreading the seeding potential to hundreds of similar
         | torrents.
         | 
         | As a extreme example, BakaBT (a private torrent for anime/manga
         | related torrent) has a strict "no duplicate torrent" policy.
         | This means that if you are searching for the OST of a specific
         | show, you will have usually only one result and it's the most
         | up-to-date, highest quality version. Since it is the only
         | option, everyone seed this one. It really diminish the issue of
         | abandoned torrents. To "replace" and existing torrent, you have
         | to provide a strictly better version.
         | 
         | A decentralized torrent search engine could not do that. The
         | real value of torrent tracker are the community.
         | 
         | That is also why decentralized software like eMule/eDonkey lost
         | a lot of popularity to torrent tracker: Lots of duplication,
         | very dodgy download, no curation, virus, ....
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | Solvency wrote:
           | This makes sense but...I'm being fully serious and earnest
           | here and revealing my own naivete:
           | 
           | Couldn't some form of blockchain work here? Like couldn't
           | some form of distributed/democratized community curation and
           | moderation happen by using the blockchain to manage the
           | arbitration of new torrents (and their successors, like when
           | the community decides New Random Anime X encoding to be a
           | superior copy)? Plus you have proof of stake or whatever the
           | leading mechanism is to help combat and filter out
           | fakes/illegal activity (etc)?
           | 
           | Then you'd have blockchain managing the trackers and torrents
           | managing the file sharing.
        
             | cirelli94 wrote:
             | That would be really interesting usage of blockchain!
        
             | nopcode wrote:
             | This happened in the dutch usenet piracy community.
             | 
             | Downloading happened over usenet, but curation and
             | discussion on a centralised website. The site got seized
             | and the community moved to a new forum that runs on usenet
             | itself.
             | 
             | Blockchain is overkill here - don't need a coin or stake or
             | whatever
        
             | dmix wrote:
             | You could probably accomplish as much just indexing
             | torrents and combining it with an HN style voting system +
             | user profiles. There's always risk of bad actors but the
             | main thing is having humans in the loop to provide
             | reputation signals.
        
             | fallat wrote:
             | Cryptocurrency could be used here to both decentralize and
             | incentivize such a system. I think a major hurdle would be
             | the fact torrents have been "free" since their inception.
             | PoS is irrelevant here - it's a mechanism that lives
             | "higher up" to protect the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.
             | Then there's also the social issues and useability issues
             | that plague the space.
             | 
             | My best guess is most bittorrent enthusiasts (and myself)
             | would like to see a more natural solution to the
             | decentralization problem. "Natural" being incentives which
             | arise around sharing / not sharing and similar, vs straight
             | up money incentives.
             | 
             | A reputation system could work but again, Sybil attacks
             | could happen. So some how the network needs to figure out a
             | way to make certain actions more expensive in the large.
        
             | unixhero wrote:
             | How would they? Torrents are fairly trivial to build a web
             | site around.
             | 
             | Blockchain sounds lile experimental engineering
        
               | Solvency wrote:
               | I asked because the original question was around
               | centralization (a tracker website) being the weak link in
               | the chain. I suppose you could build a very simple
               | decentralized voting system / index of sorts... but it
               | wouldn't be a centralized hosted online "website"
               | (..right?)
        
               | TheCoelacanth wrote:
               | Tracker websites are hardly centralized. There are
               | thousands (millions?) to choose from.
        
             | Xen9 wrote:
             | Freenet works this way. I would replace all torrents with
             | Freenet(s) but the technology seems to be too obscure to be
             | comfortable for large audiences.
        
             | 6510 wrote:
             | It's therapeutic, people use whatever is available to them.
             | Having a struggle at the edge allows people to do the busy
             | work they bill for while not accomplishing anything
             | meaningful. Technical folk will find new ways to keep their
             | thing going. If to many websites are gone people will move
             | to a new formula (new to them)
             | 
             | The network of sharing software and movies is much older
             | than the internet. Eventually you just purchase a preloaded
             | data carrier from your local pot dealer. The drives are so
             | large, the formula would go dramatically faster than
             | BitTorrent. Shipping [say] 10 kg worth of data carriers is
             | amazingly cheap.
             | 
             | Looking at some random portable drive 10 kg box / 0.265 kg
             | = 37 drives and 37 * 5 TB = 185 TB ? Something like 100 000
             | to 400 000 hours of film. Good for a maximum fine in "lost
             | revenue" of $ 1 000 000 000 000 for the single box.
             | 
             | There is a lengthy therapeutic treatment program between
             | that stage and the torrent websites.
             | 
             | Eventually some bean counter will discover crowd sourcing
             | Police Academy 8 and people will just give them money
             | provided they desire to see it. Star citizen raised over
             | $569 million. On the most profitable movies list nr 191 is
             | Fifty Shades of Grey with $569 million from a budget of 40
             | million. I can see the problem, with crowd sourcing it
             | would be like normal work. That extra 500 million would be
             | unlikely. They would have to make 10 movies.
        
             | maeln wrote:
             | Bitcoin is going to be 15 years old soon and aside from
             | this original usage, no real usage has really taken off for
             | "blockchain" technologies (and no, I am not counting the
             | occasional pump and dump / virtual scarcity scheme as a
             | real usage of the tech). We really have to stop asking this
             | question. And I say this having had some involvement with
             | some web3 projects/company.
             | 
             | Even if it is theoretically possible, it create a huge
             | barrier for entry, a lot of user friction, issue with
             | governance and distribution of power, exploit, etc. And it
             | is extremely hard to put in place for something that can be
             | replaced by a generic phpBB forum in an afternoon. It is
             | like trying to make a ICBM to kill a fly.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | There are plenty of real uses for cryptocurrency that
               | exist in the real world, but most of it is boring stuff:
               | people holding their assets in stablecoins in countries
               | that have capital controls.
        
               | Valgrim wrote:
               | This is an example of a real, yet illegal use of
               | cryptocurrency (in the sense that it is used to
               | circumvent the local laws). Also said cryptocurrency has
               | to remain hidden like a treasure in a chest inside a
               | secret cave, or it can be seized, and if the owner does
               | not comply with the seizure, he can be jailed.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | Yes, illegal with respect to the laws of the country, but
               | there are many countries where most economic activity is
               | underground/casual, not tracked by the state/outside of
               | capital controls, and crypto is absolutely muscling into
               | those spaces because it allows for complex financial
               | infrastructure & also much better security compared to
               | holding it.
        
               | latchkey wrote:
               | > no real usage has really taken off for "blockchain"
               | technologies (and no, I am not counting the occasional
               | pump and dump / virtual scarcity scheme as a real usage
               | of the tech)
               | 
               | In the Bitcoin world, Ordinals have started to make waves
               | as they are a creative use of unintended consequences.
               | This will likely spur other innovations.
               | 
               | In the EVM world, DeFi is still used all the time. It
               | lost a lot of steam from the last bull run, but trading,
               | be your own bank, interest arbitrage, options, perps, all
               | of that is still going on quite a bit. New sites are
               | popping up all the time. LybraFinance LUSD/eUSD is one of
               | the more recent ones.
        
               | gobip wrote:
               | Wow. DeFi? Be your own bank? Ordinals? No dear, we are
               | here to hate and give our opinion on something we don't
               | understand!
        
         | dmos62 wrote:
         | That's a good question, but the answers are somewhat sad. I see
         | the other commenters saying it's not about the search, but
         | about the curation. Curation or identification (as in, "who's
         | the author?") is essential, but decentralized search is non-
         | existent too. Yes, there is unmaintained, resource-hungry,
         | locally-run, unscalable software out there that you can use,
         | but there really isn't a public search engine for this. Which
         | is a shame. I really hope someone will tell me I missed
         | something, but I'm not holding my breath :(
         | 
         | Edit: found mentions of https://btdig.com and https://bt4g.org.
         | I wasn't aware of the latter. A problem with the former is that
         | it doesn't track number of peers.
        
         | grishka wrote:
         | Decentralized search is a complex problem and there exist
         | different approaches to it with different degree of
         | centralization and resource requirements.
         | 
         | DC++ is a bit more decentralized than BitTorrent. There still
         | are central servers ("hubs"), but they don't even host any
         | metadata. Search works by the hub broadcasting all search
         | queries to all online peers and them replying with results if
         | they have any. The file transfers themselves are p2p.
         | 
         | I have an idea that's kind of more decentralized. Initially
         | envisioned as a missing global search feature for the
         | fediverse, but can be adapter for anything that has a similar
         | network structure. A server has a number of peers already
         | established because of the ActivityPub federation. Each server
         | would send to its peers some kind of bloom filter that
         | determines the tags or keywords that this server has results
         | for. Then, when searching, your server would find the peers who
         | are likely to have what you want, and only send your search
         | query to them. If there aren't any, then it would send your
         | query to the peers that have most users (with some random bias
         | for load balancing purposes) because they're likely to have
         | more connectivity, and _they_ would point you where to look
         | based on their own peers and their bloom filters. There would
         | also need to be some kind of reputation system (centralized
         | server lists? p2p exchange of scores /reports?) so that servers
         | that return spam or intentionally wrong results would get
         | punished.
         | 
         | This could probably be made to work in a fully-decentralized
         | p2p network, but I imagine it would be too easy to abuse.
         | Getting a new domain costs money, yet getting a new IP or
         | public key is free and easy.
        
           | boredcaveman wrote:
           | boredcaveman (at] tutanota d0t com
        
         | r3trohack3r wrote:
         | Mining the DHT for content isn't particularly difficult, just
         | time consuming and noisy.
         | 
         | For example, here is a personal DHT monitor where you can view
         | what's being announced on the DHT:
         | https://github.com/retrohacker/taboo
        
       | babuloseo wrote:
       | It's always sad news when something that is widely used by people
       | goes down.
        
       | qersist3nce wrote:
       | Sorry to see it go.
       | 
       | While we are at it, an honest question: Why should _anyone_
       | undertake the legal risk, monetary cost and development time
       | burden for maintaining a public tracker?
       | 
       | What would release teams gain from setting up encoding pipelines
       | and upholding their networking infrastructure?
        
         | a1369209993 wrote:
         | > Why should _anyone_ undertake the legal risk, monetary cost
         | and development time burden for maintaining a public tracker?
         | 
         | Try a more extreme example: why should anyone undertake the
         | legal risk, monetary cost and logistical hassle of hiding Jews
         | from the SS? It's not some psychopathic _business decision_ ;
         | it's because some people stubbornly insist on doing the right
         | thing _despite_ it being unpopular, illegal, and clearly a bad
         | idea.
         | 
         | If someone _does_ manage to turn a profit doing it that 's (all
         | else being equal) _great_ , but it's not the _point_.
        
         | Shish2k wrote:
         | Gotta have a hobby -\\_(tsu)_/-
         | 
         | I wonder if The Scene is still remotely accurate by modern
         | standards -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIs_5nfJKu4
        
       | 0___0 wrote:
       | Hello guys,
       | 
       | We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our
       | site. The past 2 years have been very difficult for us - some of
       | the people in our team died due to covid complications, others
       | still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at
       | all. Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES.
       | Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us
       | pretty hard. Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to
       | bare. Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive
       | expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket. After an
       | unanimous vote we've decided that we can no longer do it.
       | 
       | We are sorry :(
       | 
       | Bye
       | 
       | Edit: This isn't me BTW. I just copy-pasted the text from the
       | site.
       | 
       | Archived link:
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20230531105653/https://rarbg.to/...
        
         | PiranhaTO wrote:
         | Thank you for everything you've done.
         | 
         | Your efforts did not go unnoticed and you will be greatly
         | missed.
         | 
         | I hope the circumstances of your lives improve and that you can
         | find normality in these difficult times.
        
         | Nick-Adventure wrote:
         | First, a sincere thank you for all the efforts you have done.
         | My collection of TV shows is nothing but ION10 webrips. You
         | will be missed. While I can respect your decision, I have to
         | ask: Why the hell did you not choose to ask for donations or
         | monetize the website? While there are many that cannot afford
         | to purchase, there are plenty of hackers that could have /
         | would have supported you.
        
         | tokai wrote:
         | Why would anyone fight on both sides? Seems ridiculous.
        
           | schroeding wrote:
           | Some are probably Russian, some probably Ukrainian (or in the
           | international legion).
        
             | InCityDreams wrote:
             | Many 'other nations', too.
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | I take it to mean some people were on one side, some on the
           | other.
           | 
           | Not one person playing both sides (but that probably happens,
           | too).
        
           | spacesuitman2 wrote:
           | I think he means that employees/contributors exist on both
           | the Russian and Ukrainian side.
        
           | pmontra wrote:
           | Yet another example of language ambiguity.
        
           | netfortius wrote:
           | Considering the recent events in the area previously known as
           | Yugoslavia, and the fact that part of hosting is there, in
           | addition to Russia - Ukraine conflict being over a year old,
           | I'd think of other sources. ...that if we were to trust
           | what's been publicized, of course.
        
         | e12e wrote:
         | Thank you for your work so far. Out of curiosity - what kind of
         | expenses are we talking before/after ad revenue?
         | 
         | How much would it have helped to have 1% of users chip in 10
         | USD/year? (1% is probably optimistic, but still...)?
        
           | Laaas wrote:
           | I don't think this is an account owned by the rarbg people.
        
             | hosteur wrote:
             | It does give the impression of being one of the owners.
        
               | SamuelAdams wrote:
               | It's a copy of the website text in case it gets "hacker
               | news hug of death"'d
        
         | dlxfoo wrote:
         | [dead]
        
       | MagicMoonlight wrote:
       | Ugh that was the only good public site
        
       | smashah wrote:
       | Thank you for your service
        
       | voynich wrote:
       | Rest in peace, RARBG. This is a pretty surreal feeling,
       | considering I was just on the site last night. Little did I know,
       | that'd be the last.
        
       | m4r1k wrote:
       | Probably the largest blow to the torrent sharing community since
       | The Pirate Bay got shut down. The impact of content availability
       | will be noticeable for years to come
        
         | rabuse wrote:
         | RARBG was my favorite for finding HDR/4k content. Anybody got
         | an alternative?
        
           | GaggiX wrote:
           | I usually just try to find stuff on DHT using BTDigg.
        
         | unnouinceput wrote:
         | 1 - Pirate bay still exists and is very much alive.
         | 
         | 2 - Rarbg was a margin note in torrent community. There are
         | others very much alive and better.
        
           | abwizz wrote:
           | > Rarbg was a margin note in torrent community
           | 
           | really?
           | 
           | i very much preferred it over pb or kat
        
           | tejohnso wrote:
           | Please indicate which is better. Where can I click on "top
           | 100" or similar, and instantly see a page full of recent
           | releases with screenshots, synopsis, and comments one click
           | away?
        
             | imran0 wrote:
             | 1337x is a very good alternative.
        
             | holoduke wrote:
             | Rutracker is the best. You need to understand some russian.
             | But everything is there.
        
               | comprev wrote:
               | Google Translate is your friend here. RUTracker has
               | excellent quality music - often complete label
               | discographies too.
        
           | rg111 wrote:
           | > There are others very much alive and better.
           | 
           | Can you please tell me which ones or point me to a place that
           | does?
        
             | skulk wrote:
             | Yes, you just have to join a certain private tracker that
             | makes you wait for an interview. Then, once you're in, you
             | have to seed for a bunch of time or fulfill requests that
             | others have. Once you have gained enough reputation (which
             | will be tracked with some weird point system), you are
             | given access to a forum where people give out invites to
             | their cooler secret clubs. Rinse and repeat this a couple
             | of times and you can be in the cool kids club private
             | trackers.
        
             | drexlspivey wrote:
             | check the sidebar of r/trackers
        
           | throw74775 wrote:
           | Better? Which ones?
        
             | well_actulily wrote:
             | Private ones that are invite only, like PTP, BTN, RED, Bib,
             | etc.--the public tracker community really pales in
             | comparison.
        
               | autoexec wrote:
               | Public trackers have the advantage that they often don't
               | even require accounts. If a private site ever gets
               | raided, they'll have a ton of records like everything
               | you've ever seeded, every IP you've used, the email
               | address you signed up with, anything in your profile or
               | comments that could be used to identify you etc. Way more
               | risky than accessing a public website where all they ever
               | see is a random IP address that viewed a page or made a
               | search. If magnet links are available the site won't even
               | have a record of what you actually downloaded.
        
               | FalconSensei wrote:
               | so... unless you can send us invites, your suggestions
               | are not really useful to us
        
               | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
               | Let the kid flex, will ya
        
               | LeeroyWasHere wrote:
               | Unless I've known someone for a decade, they're not
               | getting an invite.
        
               | FalconSensei wrote:
               | good thing I wasn't asking you then :)
        
               | Fordec wrote:
               | Thanks for the confirmation that "you're not really
               | useful to us" remains a valid statement.
        
               | well_actulily wrote:
               | There are still pathways into these trackers, which
               | usually require luck or some amount of work on feeder
               | trackers before you get an invite. I got in through the
               | unofficial Reddit tracker BaconBits (RIP) back in the day
               | --YMMV, but it doesn't change the fact that there are
               | better trackers out there.
        
           | asfdgaidfhfnio wrote:
           | "Better" is a matter of opinion, but it certainly isn't a
           | "margin note". Rarbg was one of the most popular torrent
           | sites in the world. Torrent Freak puts it as #4 most popular
           | in the world, ahead of The Pirate Bay, though I am not sure
           | of their methodology.
           | 
           | https://torrentfreak.com/top-torrent-sites/
           | 
           | Of those most popular sites, I think it was by far the best.
           | It offered consistently good encodes, with about the best
           | achievable quality for a given file size, in a variety of
           | formats and resolutions. Its files were well-organized with a
           | user-friendly browser and a wealth of metadata. It was
           | possible to quickly find a good version of anything not too
           | obscure.
           | 
           | Compare to TPB, where searches just vomit a page of often-
           | mislabeled files the user must comb through manually. Compare
           | to YIFY/YTS, which uploads bitrate-starved "HD" schlock that
           | looks worse than rarbg's 480p.
        
             | 2h wrote:
             | > Compare to YIFY/YTS, which uploads bitrate-starved "HD"
             | schlock that looks worse than rarbg's 480p.
             | 
             | YES. I have always wondered why YTS is popular, as the
             | quality is always overstated and always garbage. sorry but
             | 1 MBPS is not "HD", no matter what codec you are using.
        
             | lasc4r wrote:
             | You could search using the IMDB ID/url suffix, which almost
             | always gave you exactly what you wanted. RIP.
        
           | xdennis wrote:
           | > Rarbg was a margin note in torrent community
           | 
           | It was the 4th largest according to TorrentFreak:
           | https://torrentfreak.com/top-torrent-sites/
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | Rarbg was also notable because it was public, you didn't
             | need an account, and it was a lot more accessible (and
             | safer) than other sites. Even TPB eventually required a
             | bunch of JS just to see anything and they'd use that JS for
             | shady things like crypto mining.
        
             | SergeAx wrote:
             | I wonder why there's no LimeTorrent on this list.
        
         | qalmakka wrote:
         | The reports of Pirate Bay's death have been grossly
         | exaggerated.
        
           | lasc4r wrote:
           | Not really, it's a steaming pile of it's former self.
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | Not really. Only very current stuff stayed seeded, because
         | there was both no obligation to seed back and significant
         | danger. Very little that wasn't available everywhere else (and
         | also highly commercially available) lasted for _years_ on
         | rarbg.
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | imagine thinking that while what.cd existed.
        
           | SamuelAdams wrote:
           | Shhhh, don't tell him about RED.
        
             | SSLy wrote:
             | i've been there since day 3.
        
             | jzb wrote:
             | OK, but tell me about RED... :-)
        
         | nikanj wrote:
         | When did TPB get shut down? I somehow missed that piece of news
        
           | Strom wrote:
           | It didn't. Even the classic .org domain still works. However
           | it is blocked by some ISPs, which may lead some people to
           | think it has been shut down.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | thiht wrote:
         | > The Pirate Bay got shut down
         | 
         | It didn't happen though
        
           | bscphil wrote:
           | Eh. It got raided, was down for two months, and for a while
           | it was unclear whether it would come back or not.
           | https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-back-online-150131/
        
       | Willish42 wrote:
       | Seeing lots of mentions here in the comments about increased
       | serving costs but the nature of the message sounds more like the
       | community itself has fallen apart / lost people due to covid and
       | war. I can't imagine the effort it must've taken to keep this
       | site running for so long given the amount of traffic, especially
       | during the hellish last few years.
       | 
       | I'm sad to see them go but I support their desire to spend time
       | and energy/resources on something else after all they've done
        
       | pantulis wrote:
       | From the released note:
       | 
       | > Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES
       | 
       | What an absurd tragedy this is. I think it bears mention between
       | all this conversation about sharing torrents.
        
       | mxmilkiib wrote:
       | A reminder that if you're using qBittorrent there is an in-client
       | torrent search tab you can enable.
        
         | oliwarner wrote:
         | This seems to use EliteTorrent (by default) which has a strong
         | bias towards Spanish language content. There might be other
         | reasons to use qBittorrent, but if you don't want to switch,
         | you could just use that.
         | 
         | https://github.com/iordic/qbittorrent-search-plugins/blob/ma...
        
       | EwanG wrote:
       | I have seen several folks on here mention Usenet subscriptions as
       | another option. What I haven't found is any good Usenet tutorial
       | on how to actually get from "I know the name of something I want"
       | to "I have downloaded it".
       | 
       | The irony that I used to run a UUCP node on the original version
       | of Usenet does not escape me :-)
        
         | nickthegreek wrote:
         | Research 'nzb'
        
         | leovander wrote:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34704654
         | 
         | I have since switched to SABnzbd from NZBget. I saw a comment
         | regarding hard to find things, I am subbed to two indexers and
         | either I am not looking for obscure things or I am letting the
         | other tools I listed do most of the heavy work. Prowlarr is
         | doing most of the heavy lifting doing the searches for me.
        
         | recursive_loops wrote:
         | It's hard to find stuff on Usenet. I subscribe to two different
         | paid (and not super cheap) indexes, and it's still routine that
         | I can't find stuff. If I look over at pirate bay, it will be
         | there about 50% of the time
        
         | JustSomeNobody wrote:
         | That's because the first rule of Usenet is you don't talk about
         | Usenet.
        
         | clsec wrote:
         | I haven't used Usenet since probably around 2002. It seems like
         | everything is still the same except for the indexer. I assume
         | that is so you don't have to sign onto a bunch of binary groups
         | into your newsreader and then search through them for what you
         | want (part of the fun in the old days for me)? Is that correct,
         | does anyone know?
         | 
         | I also wonder if Forte' Agent still works? Does Newsguy still
         | exist? /s
         | 
         | edit: found the answer to my question
        
         | jonathantf2 wrote:
         | Just googled it and found this: a quick glance and it looks
         | like you can get set up with this. https://robdix.com/usenet-
         | beginners-guide/
        
         | maronato wrote:
         | r/usenet has a great FAQ about it[1]. In a nutshell, there are
         | 3 things you need to use usenet. You need providers, indexers,
         | and a software to download stuff.
         | 
         | Providers are companies and servers where the data is actually
         | stored, as opposed to peers in torrenting. Since they are for-
         | profit, you need to purchase a subscription to have access to
         | these servers. r/usenet has some nice deals on those[2]. Frugal
         | is usually the most recommended for beginners since it's pretty
         | cheap and has most files you'll want.
         | 
         | Indexers are similar to what rarbg was. They make it easy to
         | search for files stored in the providers. They usually require
         | a subscription as well, and some require invites, but are
         | really cheap and easy to get [3]. nzbgeek doesn't require an
         | invite and is pretty complete. nzbplanet and drunkenslug have
         | more content, but require invites. You can get invites for
         | those on r/UsenetInvites
         | 
         | Finally, you need something to download the files. There are
         | many options available for that, but I find that the best one
         | is sabnzb [4]. It is pretty complete and has a lot of moving
         | parts, so I recommend following the trash-guides article on it
         | to get started[5]
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Usenet/wiki/faq/
         | 
         | [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals/
         | 
         | [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Usenet/wiki/indexers/
         | 
         | [4]: https://sabnzbd.org/
         | 
         | [5]: https://trash-guides.info/Downloaders/SABnzbd/Basic-Setup/
        
           | majkinetor wrote:
           | Too many suscriptions. Pass.
        
           | westmeal wrote:
           | thanks bro
        
         | __alexs wrote:
         | https://sonarr.tv/ https://radarr.video/ +
         | https://github.com/theotherp/nzbhydra2/ + 1 or more
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/indexers
         | 
         | Usenet is a lot of effort.
        
           | moss2 wrote:
           | Your proposed alternative to downloading movies using
           | torrents is to set up and maintain a torrent tracking
           | service?
        
             | aaomidi wrote:
             | That software uses Usenet too.
        
           | inversetelecine wrote:
           | It's only as much effort as you want to put into it. Yes it's
           | more effort than public torrent sites, but the tradeoffs are
           | worth it.
           | 
           | Plus. most of these are setup once and forget. Automation &
           | not having to seed is what makes Usenet worth it IMHO.
           | 
           | And of course, torrents still have benefits and their place
           | as well.
        
             | illegalsmile wrote:
             | I haven't used Usenet for some time but I remember probably
             | 15 years ago a lot of the files were DMCA'd or incomplete
             | (even with parity) and it was difficult to put together a
             | complete download. Does it come down to the indexer you
             | use? Have things changed these days?
        
         | simse wrote:
         | It's not too complicated. I heard from a friend, that all you
         | need is a downloader like Sabnzbd, a usenet provider like Eweka
         | or Frugal Usenet, and an index like Drunkenslug to find stuff.
        
       | k5hp wrote:
       | Let's hope the same doesn't happen to Rutracker.
        
         | chromoblob wrote:
         | Rutracker seems to have big ad revenue (just look at the ads
         | and how popular it is). Also, Rutracker administrators seem
         | quite serious to me (I compare the feeling I get from observing
         | elaborate upload post format requirements, massive forum
         | structure, important size of dedicated wiki on Rutracker and
         | the feeling I get after reading the linked announcement).
        
       | yieldcrv wrote:
       | note: this has no more information about the shut down than the
       | blurb posted on rarbg's website
        
         | cronix wrote:
         | That's because it's an archive of that blurb from the rarbg
         | site.
        
       | robertoandred wrote:
       | "Content releases" aka stolen goods
        
       | mdrzn wrote:
       | Damn RARBG was the GOAT lately, it had more stuff than TPB.
       | 
       | Guess I'll have to subscribe to a USENET after all.
        
       | cheapliquor wrote:
       | RIP RARBG
       | 
       | It was a good site.
        
       | mrtksn wrote:
       | RARBG was originally Bulgarian, like many other trackers and
       | warez stuff. Eastern Europe - inside EU or outside of the EU -
       | has always been major player in this scene. RIP.
       | 
       | I'm still curious how it's possible to run such global illegal
       | operations without being exposed or caught.
       | 
       | How is it still possible to remain anonymous on the Internet,
       | considering in this age the thing is very mature and well
       | commercialised?
        
         | Gasp0de wrote:
         | What are they doing that is illegal? I thought they were just a
         | torrent tracker?
        
           | gersg wrote:
           | Linking to pirated content is illegal in many European
           | countries.
        
             | moffkalast wrote:
             | Then Google should be prosecuted.
        
               | happymellon wrote:
               | That's not Google's primary purpose.
        
               | B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
               | Well, printing was going to be for instruction. And then
               | radio. And TV. And the internet.
               | 
               | We're so instructed we've gotta wear ad-blockers.
        
               | gersg wrote:
               | Google takes down content when they get notified, rarbg
               | doesn't.
        
               | moffkalast wrote:
               | I've yet to see Google not return a piratebay link at any
               | point in history. Is it a loophole where they take it
               | down, but their indexer then immediately puts it back in
               | the next pass, lol?
        
               | abwizz wrote:
               | > I've yet to see Google not return a piratebay link at
               | any point in history.
               | 
               | indeed. as it should, if it's relevant for the search.
        
               | tivert wrote:
               | > I've yet to see Google not return a piratebay link at
               | any point in history. Is it a loophole where they take it
               | down, but their indexer then immediately puts it back in
               | the next pass, lol?
               | 
               | No. If you pay attention there can be a message at the
               | bottom of the search results telling you how many results
               | were removed due to takedown requests. IIRC, they used to
               | even link directly to the request, but now I think you
               | have to jump through hoops to see it.
               | 
               | The "loophole" is that a takedown request has to be for a
               | specific URL, so it requires a lot of constant effort to
               | even try to get them all. Pirate Bay always had dupes and
               | a million mirrors.
        
               | malux85 wrote:
               | I'm not being nit-picky or contentious - I'm asking from
               | a genuine point of curiousity ...
               | 
               | but in the case of Google linking to the pirate bay,
               | isn't the pirate bay the one linking to the pirated
               | content? Google is 1 step removed in that node graph
               | because they are just linking to the pirate bay.
               | 
               | I guess if they directly linked to a pirate bay page that
               | had a magent link on it .... maybe (?)
        
               | judge2020 wrote:
               | A court is unlikely to care about the distinction between
               | actually linking to pirated content, and linking to a
               | page with both instructions and a link to the pirated
               | content. To add, enough TPB torrents contain screenshots.
               | 
               | Also, Google's takedown request handling in Google Search
               | is not a matter of DMCA or a legal matter at all -
               | instead, it's like Content ID, where they have their own
               | system for evaluating takedown requests separate from any
               | law. Rights-holders can still send Google legal requests,
               | but it's easier to go through the expedited processes
               | Google provides that also won't increase rights-holders'
               | liability if they happen to submit a false takedown.
        
               | whstl wrote:
               | Google seems to refuse removing because, according to
               | them, "Whole-site removal is ineffective and can easily
               | result in censorship of lawful material."
               | 
               | Instead of removing, they just remove links by request.
               | 
               | Sources: https://torrentfreak.com/google-opposes-whole-
               | site-removal-o... and
               | https://www.scribd.com/document/286275022/TorrentFreak-
               | Googl...
               | 
               | -
               | 
               | However they did ban Pirate Bay in the Netherlands after
               | a Dutch court ordered them.
               | 
               | https://www.makeuseof.com/why-google-removed-pirate-bay-
               | from...
        
               | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
               | It's been 5 or 6 years ago now, but one night I searched
               | for torrents for a particular movie, and Google returned
               | hundreds of results from a dozen sites... and the next
               | evening they returned 0. I think it was an October.
               | 
               | While I don't doubt that a torrent link shows up once in
               | awhile, Google no longer usefully searches for such
               | things. Or really anything, legal or not. It's more like
               | a purchase recommendation system pretending to be a
               | search engine.
        
               | andrepd wrote:
               | And a terrible one at that, as it points to the lowest-
               | quality blogspam sludge possible.
        
               | cykros wrote:
               | Google used to rule the net. These days they're not even
               | the best search engine for legal content, let alone
               | overall net searching.
               | 
               | Bing and Yandex will get you most everything you want.
        
               | roncesvalles wrote:
               | It seems Google's tech can't keep up with the scale of
               | the Internet anymore. It simply doesn't index a very
               | large portion of the Internet now.
        
               | kelnos wrote:
               | Google will only remove specific URLs, not entire
               | sites/domains. Even if every copyright holder with
               | content on TPB sent a DMCA notice to Google today, new
               | torrents -- at new URLs -- would pop up tomorrow.
        
               | worldsayshi wrote:
               | Hmm i guess torrent sites can also counter by just not
               | having static URLs for content?
        
               | madeofpalk wrote:
               | Google does not return links to the pirate bay for me
               | https://i.imgur.com/MkAPoFl.png.
               | 
               | At the bottom there is a message that says "In response
               | to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 4
               | result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more
               | about the request at LumenDatabase.org" and links to
               | https://lumendatabase.org/notices/27615507
        
               | tyingq wrote:
               | In the US: https://imgur.com/a/VjlpwlN
        
               | DirectorKrennic wrote:
               | Odd. Google always returns links to the pirate bay for me
               | https://i.imgur.com/tNo6tbB.png
               | 
               | I'm in Canada though. But I did use Google.com.
        
               | Reason077 wrote:
               | Canada has relatively lenient copyright laws/enforcement.
               | It's likely that Google sees no legal need to honor DMCA-
               | style takedown notices in Canada.
               | 
               | Here's a guide to the legal status of torrents here with
               | broad categories, from most lenient to most strict
               | (caution VPN spam):
               | https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/torrents-illegal-update-
               | count...
               | 
               | Interesting to note that downloading copyrighted content
               | for personal use is explicitly legal (not just
               | overlooked) in Spain, Switzerland, and Poland.
        
               | mh- wrote:
               | that's a different search query. I did get that same
               | result if I use your query instead. (I'm in the US)
               | 
               | edit: it's also for a "proxy" site. I don't really use
               | torrents or follow TPB happenings and don't know how that
               | is/isn't affiliated.
        
               | jachee wrote:
               | Linking to the site itself (especially when that's what
               | you searched for) isn't the same as linking to a torrent
               | to infringing content would be.
        
               | Thaxll wrote:
               | Google does not host it links, it's very different.
               | 
               | Google does not store files it should not.
        
               | cykros wrote:
               | Well, they do, at Youtube. But they're pretty good about
               | takedowns over there. Including of a ton of content that
               | has no reason to be taken down.
        
               | justinclift wrote:
               | Google has enough lawyers to give the EU and US the run
               | around when they want to.
               | 
               | For smaller players, they'd have to think _really_
               | carefully about whether they want to engage in multi-year
               | litigation with them.
        
               | WastingMyTime89 wrote:
               | > Google has enough lawyers to give the EU and US the run
               | around when they want to.
               | 
               | Google has paid something like 10 billions dollars of
               | fines in the EU during the last decade. I don't think
               | they are giving the run around to anyone.
        
               | justinclift wrote:
               | Yeah, lets wait a couple of decades and see how those
               | court cases actually end up.
               | 
               | Meanwhile, Google will just keep on Googling...
        
               | cykros wrote:
               | 10 billion dollars is a rounding error for the GOOG.
        
               | theturtletalks wrote:
               | Are you sure they paid it or they were ordered to do so?
               | Most times, the fine is reduced or appealed ad infinitum.
        
               | einpoklum wrote:
               | Alphabet is valued at over 1.5 Trillion dollars. If they
               | pay 1 Billion USD in fines per year, maybe their lawyers
               | are actually doing an ok job for their client.
        
             | yieldcrv wrote:
             | and just a civil issue, which doesn't come with priority or
             | the state power that a criminal case would
        
             | datadeft wrote:
             | But not in all EU countries.
        
           | mrtksn wrote:
           | [flagged]
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | supriyo-biswas wrote:
             | Amazon has provided the ability to obtain torrents of
             | objects on S3[1].
             | 
             | [1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/API_Get
             | Objec...
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | Cool, someone re-start the RARBG on Amazon then. What's
               | the fuss all about?
        
               | weinzierl wrote:
               | It's deprecated and I believe it only used to work in
               | very old AWS regions for legacy reasons. Not sure what
               | the current status is but it clearly has no future.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | Even cooler, someone start a hosting for legitimate
               | businesses like RARBG.
        
               | ulfw wrote:
               | What is it with you and your extremely aggressive and yet
               | unproductive comments?
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | >What is it with you and your extremely aggressive and
               | yet unproductive comments?
               | 
               | Entertaining hypothetical edge cases to examine an
               | argument's soundness has become extremely aggressive
               | behaviour?
               | 
               | Anyway, my apologies.
        
               | abwizz wrote:
               | beeig edgy and exploring edge cases for the sake of the
               | argument has indeed become somewhat anti-social. i guess
               | it has something to do with the width of the audience, as
               | the bigger the crowd, the more likely it is that someone
               | will take you serious and make a fuss about it.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | Who are those people who are offended when you introduce
               | an edge case against their argument? This is very weird
               | behaviour because the whole civilisation is built on
               | finding edge cases to demonstrate that a model doesn't
               | work.
               | 
               | For example, would it be offensive to say that a feather
               | and a hammer will fall at the same speed on the moon to
               | take down the Aristotle's theory of gravity? Is it OK to
               | not talk about that kind of stuff in order not to offend
               | Aristotletes?
        
               | justin_oaks wrote:
               | The problem is people don't know if you're asking
               | questions to indicate your disapproval (or to cause
               | people grief) or if you're asking to understand. In other
               | words bad faith questions vs good faith questions.
               | 
               | People get offended when you're asking bad faith
               | questions. And it can be difficult to differentiate the
               | two, especially when people discussing don't know each
               | other.
               | 
               | I know someone who is often snippy with me because I ask
               | questions where I legitimately want to understand
               | something, but she assumes I'm asking to indicate she's
               | done something wrong.
        
               | abwizz wrote:
               | this is indeed a very helpful way of putting it, thank
               | you
        
               | abwizz wrote:
               | it is very wired if you (plural) are looking for truth or
               | consensus or progress.
               | 
               | but normies are generally freaked out, because they are
               | not used to real talk. i often crash into this barrier of
               | non-sense talk for the sake of conversation as well, very
               | painful for both sides.
               | 
               | i'm sure aristotle wouldn't be offended but encouraged :)
        
               | andrepd wrote:
               | Yes, you are a special flower and people are annoyed at
               | you not because you're grating, rude, or arrogant, but
               | because they are stupid and only want to talk about the
               | Kardashians or whatever.
               | 
               | Yawn.
        
               | abwizz wrote:
               | you seem like a special flower too :)
               | 
               | realizing that most of anything isn't special does not
               | preclude every thing beeing uniqe and valuable
        
               | hippich wrote:
               | > you (plural)
               | 
               | Texans would say "y'all" :)
        
               | cykros wrote:
               | You is always plural. The singular second person pronouns
               | are thou (subject), thee (object), or thy (possessive).
        
               | masfuerte wrote:
               | See also "youse".
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | _Reporter:_ So, to end the interview I have to ask you
               | about an experiment that everyone 's talking about and
               | you must be aware of. It's been said that marbles and
               | cannonballs dropped from a tower at the same time have
               | been seen to land at the same time. If there are any
               | comments you'd like to make about that, I'm sure the
               | public would love to hear them.
               | 
               |  _Aristotle Scholar:_ You know, I 'm actually glad you
               | asked this, because these kind of "gotcha" questions show
               | everyone the unfortunate state of journalism today, its
               | disrespect for scholarship, and its willingness to peddle
               | whatever trash that people are circulating in order to
               | undermine our institutions. [wrestles wooden microphone
               | off lapel and storms off set.]
        
               | weinzierl wrote:
               | You mean like https://1984.hosting? Or more like
               | https://legittorrents.info, which shut down recently[1]?
               | 
               | I had never heard of RARBG before, so I don't know if
               | they were legitimate and you are being sarcastic or
               | serious?
               | 
               | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35639370
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | They were the website I torrented the entire Succession
               | series.
        
               | mrelectric wrote:
               | Mate, you're being obnoxious.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | I have no idea why explaining how I use the website to
               | the question on what the website is about would be
               | obnoxious but O.K.
        
               | codetrotter wrote:
               | > hosting for legitimate businesses like RARBG.
               | 
               | Not quite the same but PeerTube is P2P legitimate
               | hosting.
               | 
               | I run a PeerTube instance myself and I like it a lot.
        
           | abwizz wrote:
           | imo they were a fairly popular and long-standing tracker.
           | someone had to make a statement perhaps? (pb was downed
           | multiple times)
        
         | adql wrote:
         | The problem appears to just be "it's too expensive to run" at
         | least according to the banner
        
           | maccard wrote:
           | How expensive can a link sharing site be to run, genuinely?
           | They're not serving any of the content (unless they are, in
           | which case, yeah...) But if they're just serving up .torrent
           | files or magnet links, these sites should be pretty cheap to
           | run I would assume?
        
             | tracker1 wrote:
             | It tends to run a little more when you're using hosting in
             | a country that doesn't respect US copyright (and similarly
             | for most EU) along with keeping your information private to
             | begin with. When I had looked into it, it's been roughly 2x
             | what a typical western dedicated server provider might
             | charge.
             | 
             | This doesn't count the issues with a site that is _very_
             | popular, from bandwidth to even simple database search
             | overhead. If I were to guess, it 's that RarBG probably
             | spent in excess of $10k/month, which isn't much if you're a
             | startup with a runway of VC capital or a revenue stream,
             | it's a lot more if you're in a smaller country or don't
             | have an excess of revenue.
        
             | mpsprd wrote:
             | I believe rarbg had many "official" torrents that they
             | seeded. This must be part of their costs.
        
             | dunmalg wrote:
             | Comparatively cheap because you're just handing off magnet
             | links, but when you're serving millions of unique visitors
             | daily, it all adds up.
        
               | abwizz wrote:
               | true. but there were also some images on the site
        
         | PrimeMcFly wrote:
         | You can still buy pre-paid credit cards in many places, and
         | many places allow you to pay for anonymous servers with cards.
         | 
         | Worst case if they had enough money they could rent somewhere
         | and pay for a decent internet connection and not actually live
         | there, so only the equipment would be seized.
        
           | costco wrote:
           | I think the "new meta" is sketchy popup/popunder ad providers
           | that pay BTC/USDT, njal.la/nic.ru/some Chinese registrar paid
           | with crypto or a virtual card, DDOS-guard/Cloudflare to make
           | getting the origin IP annoying, and hosting in an ex-USSR
           | country (and sometimes even mainstream Western providers like
           | Leaseweb or OVH). But that's just the impression I got by
           | occasionally using these sites, looking at domain/IP whois
           | and using one of those Cloudflare deanonymizer sites when it
           | was still up.
        
         | themagician wrote:
         | The answer to this is easier (and harder) than you might think:
         | just don't say anything.
         | 
         | You can get away with quite a bit just by being silent, and for
         | longer than you'd think. A big way that people get away with
         | things for so long is just by not answering questions. Someone
         | says, "Is this [illegal thing] yours" and you say nothing. Now
         | you've got to burn hours and dollars trying to prove someone
         | owns something so that you can go after them.
         | 
         | You'll find domains, web hosts, countries, and employees who
         | are all onboard with the same philosophy. When everything
         | requires a subpoena at the highest level to move something
         | forward, it can easily take years for anything to happen at
         | all. Some countries are known for having slow legal systems.
         | Stack jurisdictions with slow court systems and you can start
         | with an 18 month window before _anything_ can happen.
         | 
         | You've got a domain in Tonga registered to a company in another
         | country, owned by a large company in another country owned by a
         | trust in a third country. Often small countries with limited
         | resources and archaic or corrupt bureaucracies. And where is it
         | hosted? That's probably another connect the dots. And the site
         | can change hands and then you have to start all over again. Are
         | you going to refocus on the new owner or are you going to spend
         | even _more_ resources trying to track down the former owner?
         | 
         | And any of these entities may lead to nothing more than a mule,
         | fake person, or dead person. Sure, it's someone's fault for
         | having inaccurate records--but who? How long has this been
         | going on? Did they know? Was it intentional? It shouldn't be
         | like this, but it is... what do you do now? Are you going to go
         | after the recordkeeper too?
         | 
         | You can do illegal shit for years or even decades if you just
         | say nothing and respond to no one.
        
           | Mountain_Skies wrote:
           | Law firms must love how many billable hours such quests
           | generate for them.
        
             | terminalcommand wrote:
             | In my experience law firms would not hop through these.
             | That is the job of hired ethical hackers, police and
             | prosecutor's office.
             | 
             | A law firm would be useful in (a) applying to remove
             | illegal content, (b) seize any profit generated by illegal
             | use of clents' content, (c) (if the client requests)
             | horrify users identified of such illegal services, (d)
             | pressure the authorities to crack down on the operation.
             | 
             | Most lawyers do not understand the technical details. We do
             | a hell of a good job of understanding experts' findings and
             | put them in a clear legal structure though.
             | 
             | Most of the boring but billable job I ever made was
             | searching through company registries, google searches,
             | sanctions searches, panama papers searches, reviewing
             | countless pdfs to either (i) mark them as privileged so
             | they cannot be used as evidence, (ii) scan whether there
             | are any documents that may directly implicate the client
             | and if so try to find a way to legally claim it is
             | unusable.
             | 
             | I believe law firms do provide decent service. Billables
             | are there, but no lawyer I know would willingly generate
             | busywork that does not lead anywhere to charge more. OTOH,
             | I HAVE seen instances where a work got reviewed multiple
             | times by different lawyers, because the client was willing
             | to pay more. But even in these edge cases, multiple reviews
             | did benefit the client and they received a better work
             | product.
             | 
             | My advice would be establish a good working relationship
             | with a lawyer in the firm that you trust, continuously send
             | work. Ask estimates if you are on a tight budget. But do
             | not be cheap and try to get things done with less budget.
             | Law firms provide a service you need, if you pay them
             | decently you'll receive your money's worth. Lawyers will
             | literally take a bullet for you to make things happen when
             | you need them.
             | 
             | Apologies for the long rant :).
        
           | expertentipp wrote:
           | > Someone says, "Is this yours" and you say nothing. Now
           | you've got to burn hours and dollars trying to prove someone
           | owns something so that you can go after them.
           | 
           | The opposite is the German approach. Shower the cuntiest
           | lawyers with money, lobby for laws allowing to easily pick a
           | victim, bully the victim senseless. Lobby even more and if
           | someone uses the word "corruption" in context of copyrights,
           | bully the shit out of them as well. I'm so glad Anglosphere
           | and German copyrights predators have been perfectly impotent
           | for so many years. They know how to create faceless enemies.
        
         | phkahler wrote:
         | >> How is it still possible to remain anonymous on the
         | Internet, considering in this age the thing is very mature and
         | well commercialised?
         | 
         | Because at the core, identity on the internet is not well
         | defined. Authentication is a hard problem. You might wonder why
         | it's hard, why better more secure protocols haven't emerged.
         | Answer: that makes end to end encryption easy, among other
         | things that give individuals too much power.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | samstave wrote:
           | AI produced Obits, and death certs and detailed descriptions
           | of the death, and then new documents produced via GPT6+
           | access to APIs to DMV, Embassies, etc to produce new
           | documents sent to your new PO box in [place] etc...
           | 
           | -
           | 
           | deep-fake assassinations are going to be a thing...
           | 
           | PHKahler
        
         | RektBoy wrote:
         | For example in my EU country, it's legal to download movies for
         | own use. _shrug_
        
         | _AzMoo wrote:
         | I think it's effectively just that they operate out of
         | jurisdictions that just don't care.
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | This, totally.
        
           | mrtksn wrote:
           | Well, Bulgaria used to be a jurisdiction that doesn't care
           | but this is no longer early 2000s. Are there really
           | jurisdictions that don't care and still have connections to
           | the rest of the world? I guess DPRK, Iran, Cuba and maybe a
           | few more can do that but wouldn't they be a problem to the
           | infrastructure provider to work with in first place?
        
             | wkat4242 wrote:
             | They still don't quite care though. For example in western
             | Europe it's quite common to get threatening letters as soon
             | as you start torrenting without VPN. In eastern europe this
             | is not happening.
             | 
             | Perhaps because copyright infringement is not really a
             | criminal issue but more of a civil law one. Without a
             | private party starting lawsuits on behalf of the copyright
             | owners there is nothing happening. It could be they don't
             | have one.
        
               | weinzierl wrote:
               | Threatening letters with a payment notice attached, that
               | is.
        
               | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
               | Huh, I've downloaded torrents for years with no VPN in
               | western Europe and never got so much as an email about
               | it.
               | 
               | Maybe it's changed in very recent times, I wouldn't know.
        
               | Joker_vD wrote:
               | > in western Europe it's quite common to get threatening
               | letters as soon as you start torrenting without VPN
               | 
               | What about the right of the privacy of communication? Oh,
               | right, it's the state-owned postal services that have to
               | respect that right, and only with regards to the paper
               | letters, not the privately operated ISPs that can (and
               | obliged to) wiretap at the slightest suspicion of crime.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | AFAIK they don't actually inspect your comms, instead
               | they leech from you to get your IP address and start the
               | legal procedure. The way I understand it, they don't send
               | you a letter for downloading but for sharing. Correct me
               | if I'm wrong though.
        
               | exitb wrote:
               | Depending on your jurisdiction, even just downloading
               | might be illegal. But you're right, when you torrent, you
               | publish your IP address, where parties unrelated to your
               | ISP might get it and pursue legal action.
        
               | iLoveOncall wrote:
               | You're correct on the methodology except that (in France
               | at least) they also seed, to get the IP of users that
               | download. And you do get letters for downloading.
               | 
               | Initially the plan was to ban those people from internet
               | for a period of that but it got removed since it was
               | anticonstitutional.
        
               | boosteri wrote:
               | Is it they do illegal thing and then try to extort money
               | from you for doing the same thing? Or have they received
               | a royal blessing nowadays and can do so legally?
        
               | Joker_vD wrote:
               | I imagine it's not illegal for them since they _do_ have
               | copyright, after all (unless when they don 't).
        
               | jorvi wrote:
               | It is not that clear cut for Western Europe.
               | 
               | - Germany sends letters and fines
               | 
               | - Czech Republic doesn't send letters or fines
               | 
               | - The Netherlands doesn't send letters or fines (unless
               | you share an absolutely ludicrous amount)
               | 
               | - Belgium doesn't send letters or fines
               | 
               | - UK sends letters and fines
               | 
               | - France sends letters (tiny chance of a fine)
               | 
               | - Switzerland doesn't send letters or fines
        
               | Goz3rr wrote:
               | It should be noted that (as far as I know) none of those
               | are actually fines. It's private companies that track
               | down pirates, and they cannot give out fines. They send
               | you a settlement proposal, saying either pay this or risk
               | being sued.
        
               | chikitabanana wrote:
               | in France you can be blacklisted from all ISPs
        
               | tigeroil wrote:
               | Does the UK send letters and fines? I haven't torrented
               | without a VPN for years but the worst I ever heard anyone
               | getting was a letter from the ISP saying "that was very
               | naughty, please don't do it again".
        
               | graftak wrote:
               | Note that in the Netherlands right holders can request
               | ISPs to proxy their letters but those ISPs are not
               | allowed to share the home addresses or any other personal
               | information so it's neigh impossible for a right holder
               | to get hold of a torrent user.
        
               | zirgs wrote:
               | Makes sense. If ISPs were allowed to share home addresses
               | then a lot of creeps and scammers could abuse that
               | system.
        
               | mmh0000 wrote:
               | Welcome to America!
               | 
               | ISPs do that, but it's a lot worse if you consider your
               | mobile provider to be an ISP.
               | 
               | https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-
               | brok...
               | 
               | https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-
               | hunte...
        
               | copperx wrote:
               | Imagine being doxxed by your own ISP.
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | Of course they have to obey court orders.
               | 
               | The Dutch ISPs fought this in court but they lost in some
               | cases.
        
               | rerdavies wrote:
               | The situation is the same for Canadians: we get proxied
               | letters, but rightsholders have no access to our personal
               | identification.
        
               | abwizz wrote:
               | almost like copyright enforcement goes hand in hand with
               | your country's relation to the US
        
               | jorvi wrote:
               | The Netherlands is very cozy with the US and yet
               | enforcement is pretty lax, so I don't think that's the
               | deciding factor.
        
               | rocqua wrote:
               | This isn't the ISPs detecting you torrent. It's
               | rightholders joining a torrent swarm, getting an IP-
               | address, and asking the ISP for the person behind that
               | address. It differs between jurisdictions whether the ISP
               | has to comply or not. In the Netherlands they do not,
               | (but Surfnet, a university focused ISP complies anyway).
               | In Germany they have to comply.
               | 
               | Lobbying is always happening to require ISPs to cooperate
               | though.
        
               | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
               | _> In Germany they have to comply._
               | 
               | Seriously, screw Germany here. The way they oppressively
               | Gestapo your internet traffic just to catch you
               | downloading an mp3 to treat you like criminal menace, is
               | unheard of in the rest of Europe.
               | 
               | Can't believe the so called "privacy conscious" German
               | public are okay with this invasiveness of their internet
               | privacy when they're the only EU country as hardcore on
               | this "issue".
               | 
               | If only they would invest as much resources in digital
               | innovation as they do in catching people download a DVD
               | rip, Germany would rule the tech world.
        
               | andrepd wrote:
               | Does it need that many resources though? I thought just
               | getting the list of peers in a swarm for an illegal
               | torrent is enough.
        
               | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
               | Resources not as in tech but as in lack of red tape in
               | invading people's privacy for such trivial issues. In any
               | other country this would get you laughed out of court.
        
               | cykros wrote:
               | Germany seems like they just do what involves the most
               | policing. If it's going after companies for privacy
               | invasions, they do it. If it's going after individuals
               | for infringing on copyright, they do it.
               | 
               | They got rid of the laws that targeted people by race and
               | background, but they never bothered to dispose of the
               | jack boots.
        
               | expertentipp wrote:
               | Meh that's why I stay away from German services. People
               | who go apeshit on you for sharing one 64kb chunk of movie
               | have lost their marbles. Service provider is GmbH,
               | headquarters in Germany? Maybe someone from the other
               | side of the world believes in their "privacy" lunatism.
        
               | FeistySkink wrote:
               | Never had any threatening letters in NL, so perhaps this
               | varies by country.
        
               | jeltz wrote:
               | Same in Sweden.
        
               | jagaerglad wrote:
               | There have definitely been cases with letters in sweden
               | 
               | https://www.domstol.se/patent--och-marknadsdomstolen/om-
               | pate...
        
             | abwizz wrote:
             | imo copyright is irrelevant in countries that either can
             | withstand the mpaa's pressure, maybe via good relations to
             | the state department, or in countries that have bigger
             | problems.
        
             | cykros wrote:
             | Does Iceland actually care much? I don't imagine they'd let
             | you host an actual warez site a la 2000 or so, but a site
             | just hosting magnet links seems like something they'd
             | mostly allow, and they DEFINITELY have the infrastructure
             | to handle it.
             | 
             | That all said, I'm always amazed that these sites don't
             | just move to i2p/tor. The torrents themselves have been
             | decentralized with DHT and magnet links for awhile. At the
             | end of the day it seems like they've just been hanging on
             | trying to avoid being so in the shadows that they get less
             | traffic as a result.
        
             | costco wrote:
             | Current hosting appears to be in Bosnia: 185.37.100.122
             | which is probably a server colocated with
             | https://www.netsaap.com/contacts.php.
        
             | CodeArtisan wrote:
             | Vietnam is probably the #1 place for digital piracy today.
             | 
             | https://torrentfreak.com/vietnam-could-kill-several-major-
             | pi...
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | Linked from the bottom of the post:
               | 
               |  _Potential Impact on Major Pirate Sites as Vietnam ISPs
               | Face New Responsibilities_ , May 12, 2023.
               | 
               | > "Most Voluminous" Copyright Decree Ever Issued in
               | Vietnam
               | 
               | > Global IP services firm Rouse reports that with 8
               | chapters and 116 articles, Decree 17 is the most
               | voluminous copyright decree ever issued in Vietnam.
               | 
               | > "[T]he Copyright Decree provides significantly detailed
               | guidance on copyright enforcement, especially which
               | disputes can be classified as a copyright dispute, how to
               | establish acts of copyright infringement, and how to
               | calculate damages caused by infringements," the company
               | reports.
               | 
               | > "The long, detailed section in copyright assessment is
               | also expected to pave the way for the growth of the
               | currently limited copyright assessment services in
               | Vietnam."
               | 
               | https://torrentfreak.com/potential-impact-on-major-
               | pirate-si...
        
               | drexlspivey wrote:
               | Also their close neighbor, The Republic of Kinakuta
        
         | waboremo wrote:
         | It's very possible to run such without being exposed, but it
         | involves patience and enough cash.
         | 
         | Most of the time, these services aren't done in direct exchange
         | for money or from people who have a lot of money in the first
         | place.
         | 
         | So what ends up happening is even if they can avoid the shallow
         | legal issues by remaining private, they then run into the
         | problem that nobody can pay for the service (not many options
         | for providing that transaction privately). You might think
         | "just run ads" but the problem there is multifaceted, most are
         | likely going to be using adblockers, on top of that to remain
         | private they'll be locked out of most paying ads and only get
         | the most spammy garbage incentivizing more to use adblocker to
         | visit the site.
        
           | joshspankit wrote:
           | Also: ad companies and payment processors are a weak link.
           | They can provide de-anonymizing information to officials and
           | cut off payments when their corporate values shift.
        
             | theturtletalks wrote:
             | I always wondered this. Many piracy sites have Adsense or
             | some sort of ads. Can't Google just fingerprint which
             | Adsense account is being used and find the person getting
             | paid?
        
               | hattmall wrote:
               | There's an entire industry of buying established accounts
               | set up with an unsuspecting person's identity. Idk about
               | Adsense specifically, but you can get Amazon selling and
               | the linked bank account with docs for like $1000.
        
               | elorant wrote:
               | And how do you get paid? AdSense requires a bank account
               | registered to the same name.
        
               | CryptoBanker wrote:
               | You buy the accompanying bank account
        
               | madars wrote:
               | Yes. For example, Z-Library accepted Amazon gift card
               | donations using an email linked to their identities:
               | https://torrentfreak.com/how-google-and-amazon-helped-
               | the-fb...
        
               | alwayslikethis wrote:
               | * * *
        
           | anjel wrote:
           | AFOAF belongs to the same pvt tracker now for more than a
           | dozen years. The admins amp and push the community feels and
           | have periodic fund raisers. No ads, and if you want to
           | donate, you buy a jpg of a flower on an different site. Seems
           | to work out well for all concerned and while you have to
           | maintain an u/d ratio, free leach and easy generous ratio
           | reqts contribute to that community feeling.
        
       | xorkatoss wrote:
       | noooooooo, this was my go-to torrenting website, so sad :(
        
       | ZoomerCretin wrote:
       | Ctrl+F "covid" Phrase not found
       | 
       | Seriously, a huge part of the internet is down because the team
       | was taken out by Covid (both death and complications), and no one
       | even mentions this? All the evidence points to the covid
       | complication rate _compounding_ with each infection. Rarbg is
       | only the start of where we can all expect to be in 5-10 years
       | without more serious long-term mitigations (universal indoor air
       | filtration).
       | 
       | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/opinion/last-pandemic.htm...
        
       | fsociety999 wrote:
       | Previous hn thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36136819
        
       | sph wrote:
       | o7 thank you for your service, keeping the Internet awesome and
       | anti-corporate.
       | 
       | Where one piracy site dies, a thousand spawn from its corpse.
       | 
       | Maybe the media companies will eventually pull their heads out of
       | their collective arses and quit their cartel, allowing the
       | existence of legal, paid streaming sites a-la-Spotify with access
       | to 99% of the repertoire. Until then, torrent is how we protest
       | while they create more and more insular streaming services to
       | milk people $9/mo at a time.
       | 
       | "Piracy is almost always a service problem." -- Gabe Newell
       | 
       | (If you need a semi-private tracker that's easy to get into, try
       | TorrentLeech. Also /r/opensignups)
        
         | seanalltogether wrote:
         | > "Piracy is almost always a service problem." -- Gabe Newell
         | 
         | I find this an odd argument in favor of pirating movies,
         | because everything that steam offers for games, amazon prime or
         | itunes offers for most tv shows and movies. In fact with amazon
         | prime you can buy content and watch it on pretty much any kind
         | of device out there.
        
           | muti wrote:
           | The coverage by service for tv/movies is so much worse than
           | games/audio, that's what makes it a service problem.
           | 
           | Netflix was killing pirating when it had "everything",
           | pirating is seeing a resurgence as the landscape becomes more
           | fractured.
        
         | oxygen_crisis wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | jokowueu wrote:
         | Most people have moved to Plex shares these days
        
           | JohnBooty wrote:
           | My experience is that 100% of what I see on friends' (and
           | friends' friends') Plex shares is.... movies that they
           | downloaded via TPB/RarBG/etc torrents.
           | 
           | If the supply of torrented content dries up, it seems like
           | many Plex shares will start to become very stale.
        
             | calmoo wrote:
             | Plex Shares (like ones you buy on the internet from a
             | stranger) are mostly fully automated and pull from
             | private/public trackers + usenet. I don't see the supply of
             | torrents really having any effect in this regard.
        
             | jokowueu wrote:
             | Ofcourse, I'm not saying torrents don't have a place it's
             | just that they seem less trafficked these days , online
             | piracy streaming sites , iptv(with vod) and Plexshares have
             | taken the front seat.
        
           | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
           | Nobody I personally know have ever heard of Plex at all.
           | Almost everybody uses BitTorrent to some extent.
        
         | AdamH12113 wrote:
         | > Maybe the media companies will eventually pull their heads
         | out of their collective arses and quit their cartel, allowing
         | the existence of legal, paid streaming sites a-la-Spotify with
         | access to 99% of the repertoire. Until then, torrent is how we
         | protest while they create more and more insular streaming
         | services to milk people $9/mo at a time.
         | 
         | I have been hearing people make this same basic argument since
         | the 90s. (I'm sure it's older than that.) During that time the
         | price of video and audio entertainment has decreased while
         | availability and quality have vastly improved. Despite this,
         | piracy is still going strong. The ideological goalposts used to
         | justify it keep moving, but the desire for free stuff is
         | timeless. (Not judging here -- I've certainly done my share.)
         | 
         | Adjusting for inflation: Twenty years ago, a DVD with one
         | recent movie cost ~$30, or you could rent one for $5-8. One
         | album on CD cost ~$20. Buying individual songs for the then-
         | unheard of price of $1.65 (99 cents at the time) on iTunes was
         | brand new. They had limited bit rate and DRM, and you had to
         | buy an expensive iPod if you wanted to use them conveniently.
         | If you wanted good TV shows, you paid something like
         | $60-80/month for cable TV (more if you wanted to watch The
         | Sopranos) and had to watch on a schedule, with lots of ads.
         | 
         | If you compare that to today's world of cheap streaming
         | services, high-quality DRM-free music, and even cheaper
         | physical media, it's not even a contest.
        
         | lostgame wrote:
         | >> "Piracy is almost always a service problem." -- Gabe Newell
         | 
         | Once again; the media companies are _absolutely_ doing
         | everything in their power to drive even casual media consumers
         | into piracy. I wouldn 't be surprised if piracy was already
         | more rampant than it's ever been - but it's only getting worse,
         | due to ludicrous streaming fragmentation.
         | 
         | It'll never happen, but the only thing that can save piracy is
         | an aggregate all-inclusive monthly subscription platform where
         | all the films/shows from all services are available, just like
         | Apple Music or Spotify. I pay $30-40/mo and I have access to
         | all the stuff on Netflix, Prime, Max, Disney...
         | 
         | When you stream a movie from Netflix, they get the credit.
         | Disney? The same.
         | 
         | Nobody is going to pay for all these services, and more and
         | more are ditching them altogether. The response of the
         | streaming services is to increase prices and reduce content.
         | It's hilariously embarrassing. They are _asking_ us to pirate.
        
         | chromoblob wrote:
         | > Where one piracy site dies, a thousand spawn from its corpse.
         | 
         | Maybe that's a bad thing. Having one central site rather than
         | many is better for searching and availability of uploads.
        
         | Asooka wrote:
         | A service and a pricing problem. All cases of piracy I have
         | observed stem from one of 3 reasons
         | 
         | 1. Too expensive. This encompasses several varieties, like the
         | media in question being literally priced more than the person
         | is willing to pay, or the pricing is acceptable, but the person
         | can buy only one of several choices and wants to evaluate all
         | before giving one their money.
         | 
         | 2. The product is not offered for sale. This is sometimes
         | literally that the product isn't available for sale in your
         | country, or the product is not available in a useful form, e.g.
         | it doesn't come with subtitles in your language, it won't work
         | on your device, it requires a stable internet connection, which
         | you don't have, etc.
         | 
         | 3. For political reasons, to avoid supporting DRM.
        
           | happymellon wrote:
           | For 2, it can be the silliest things.
           | 
           | Disney holding back the second half of the final season of
           | Amphibia. Released in the US but not here for unexplained
           | reasons. For 6 months piracy was the only way to get a
           | conclusion.
           | 
           | Our Flag Means Death, even though it had a large section of
           | its cast from Britain it wasn't available to watch for far
           | too long here.
           | 
           | I could go on, but you get the point. Any distribution rules
           | are a creation of their own making in the first place.
        
           | ajford wrote:
           | Exactly. I dropped out of the torrent scene for probably
           | around 5 years when Netflix had a huge back-catalog and it
           | just wasn't worth the hassle to manage torrents and a media
           | server.
           | 
           | Then the Netflix catalog shrunk to originals, there's now 6
           | different streaming services I have to juggle to watch the
           | usual content my family likes, and we're constantly using
           | third-party services just to figure out what's available
           | where. I hate having to switch from Netflix to Hulu to finish
           | out a show because the last season is only on Hulu. Or things
           | like Warner and Disney cutting shows because they don't want
           | to pay residuals or whatever dumb accounting BS they feel
           | like pulling.
           | 
           | If you make it more convenient to torrent and shove
           | everything into Plex, why would I pay to get a worse
           | experience.
        
           | bscphil wrote:
           | > For political reasons, to avoid supporting DRM.
           | 
           | This is very much a practical reason as well, though this
           | overlaps with "not available in a usable form". DRM is the
           | reason I can't watch movies at the highest bitrates and
           | resolutions on my device from Netflix or Amazon. It's the
           | reason I can't trust that things I purchase will be available
           | to me indefinitely. It's the reason I can't build a
           | collection of media (e.g. with Kodi) that is playable on my
           | TV with one click with a single unifying interface.
           | 
           | > The product is not offered for sale.
           | 
           | This extends to some other cases as well. For instance, where
           | the only available version is a crappy remaster (Terminator
           | 2), and the original is much superior. Or if you want to
           | watch the film with a director's commentary.
           | 
           | There's also, very broadly, a 4th reason - convenience. This
           | encompasses both ease of use (if I know what movie I want to
           | watch, I don't have to search to see where it's streaming),
           | and discoverability (a good torrent site will easily let you
           | see all the movies by a director or actor, and provide
           | recommendations). Or if you're looking for a particular
           | special feature, it's much more convenient to be able to
           | download it than to go looking for a physical media copy and
           | wait for it to be shipped to your door.
        
           | mvanbaak wrote:
           | With the globalisation, there is actually a 4th reason
           | rising: availability of content in specific regions. I
           | sometimes want/need content with audio and/or subtitle
           | language X, which is not available legally where I live, but
           | the exact same platform does have it available in the region
           | that speaks this language.
           | 
           | pirating is in this case the best solution as I can pick the
           | quality I want, with the audio and subtitle languages I need.
        
             | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
             | I think this is just the second reason rephrased a bit
             | differently. And it isn't at all new -- pretty much all
             | Japanese game and animation studios have refused to
             | acknowledge our region's existence for about as long as
             | these industries have themselves been around.
             | 
             | For example, Nintendo consoles have been unavailable since
             | the 90s -- which is why we've been using these clones:
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendy_(console)
             | 
             | and are still unavailable now unless you're willing to buy
             | consoles and games on ebay, overpriced and without warranty
             | (which is what some of my friends have been doing, but I
             | refuse to support publishers that consider my American
             | dollars second class to those coming from actual
             | Americans).
             | 
             | So torrents it is, then. 'Fuck you' can go both ways.
        
               | mvanbaak wrote:
               | Nintendo consoles and games are available in western
               | europe as well
        
             | loeg wrote:
             | This is covered in #2.
        
         | robertoandred wrote:
         | I love when thieves act like they're such noble saints.
        
           | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
           | Your useless copypasted comments brought nothing to this
           | discussion. You have changed nobody's mind. Have you wrote
           | all that to make yourself feel good?
        
             | robertoandred wrote:
             | I don't think you know how copy/paste works.
        
           | izacus wrote:
           | Yeah, we all love Robin Hood books. What does your comment
           | have to do with this thread though?
        
             | youreincorrect wrote:
             | Uh, because it responded to a comment that wrote a bunch of
             | 2009-era Guy Fawkes mask-wearing redditor bullshit that
             | attempts to make piracy noble.
             | 
             | > o7 thank you for your service
             | 
             | (o7 would be a salute)
             | 
             | > Where one piracy site dies, a thousand spawn from its
             | corpse.
             | 
             | False and nonsense, especially in 2023.
             | 
             | > Maybe the media companies will eventually pull their
             | heads out of their collective arses and quit their
             | cartel...
             | 
             | Okay, I'll stop here.
             | 
             | I'm fine with piracy, personally. I'd prefer we just admit
             | that you're mostly using it to download movies, music, and
             | television shows for free. This isn't some noble fight for
             | freedom. We're talking about watching mindless bullshit
             | content like Star Wars, without paying for it. Piracy
             | proponents, and comments like the one starting this thread,
             | make it seem like we're entitled to this content. We're
             | not. But I'll admit, I don't watch much in the way of tv or
             | movies any more anyway, so the whole debate is lost on me.
             | 
             | I just rolled my eyes at the ridiculous tone of that
             | comment, like they're freedom fighters. It's self-important
             | bullshit.
        
           | redundantly wrote:
           | I love when soulless corporations bribe governments to keep a
           | stranglehold on works of art that have impacted cultures
           | around the world and prevent future artists from being able
           | make more art and prevent the proper collection and
           | preservation of these works and block the access to them, all
           | so they can keep making money off of decades old IP.
           | 
           | It goes both ways. There are no Saints to be found on either
           | side.
           | 
           | I don't care one bit about the pocketbooks of our corporate
           | overlords, and neither should you.
        
             | robertoandred wrote:
             | Don't pretend you care about artists when you refuse to pay
             | them.
        
               | redundantly wrote:
               | You shouldn't assume what I do or do not do.
               | 
               | I take my kids to the movies. I subscribe to services
               | like Apple Music and TV+, and HBO Max. We watch YouTube
               | videos where there's sponsored content in them. We buy
               | officially licensed merchandise like clothing and toys.
               | We buy books, both physical and digital.
               | 
               | And, frankly, it doesn't matter what I do personally.
               | Millions, hell billions, of people around the world do as
               | well.
               | 
               | If artists are struggling it's because they're not
               | getting paid properly by the corporations they work for,
               | like Disney, Netflix, and others. It's not because of
               | individuals like you or me or the people that run piracy
               | sites.
        
             | joe463369 wrote:
             | In fairness, _somebody_ has to pay for the actors and the
             | grips and the foley artists, and I 'm not particularly
             | convinced that the pirate's stance of "I want it for 20
             | cents, in 4k, and DRM free and if I can't have that then
             | torrrenting it is my moral right" is either right or
             | sustainable.
        
               | redundantly wrote:
               | > somebody has to pay for the actors and the grips and
               | the foley artists
               | 
               | They are paid. If they're not paid enough then that's on
               | the companies behind the production of those shows and
               | movies.
               | 
               | These corporations make billions. Piracy isn't hurting
               | them. However, these corporations are causing harm to
               | society. It doesn't make sense to white knight for them.
        
               | youreincorrect wrote:
               | Many corporations make billions. That isn't an argument
               | to not pay for the goods or services they offer.
               | 
               | I'll add, since I'm not the person you were replying to,
               | I don't care about who gets paid what. I don't care if
               | the actors get paid or not. All I care about is some
               | basic consistency if we're going to have morals about
               | anything. Is it wrong to steal? Yes? Then piracy is
               | wrong. (Or, no? Then let's skip this conversation
               | entirely, you are my enemy.) Yeah, piracy is pretty easy.
               | Yeah, it feels harmless when we do it. Should individuals
               | get fined tens of thousands of dollars for infractions?
               | No. But I'd say it's about as wrong as stealing a loaf of
               | bread from a grocery store. To pretend it's a noble cause
               | is transparent garbage, and unless you can pose an
               | argument that doesn't complain about how much
               | corporations make, I'm not interested.
               | 
               | There appears to be nothing underpinning your worldview
               | for why the industry you work in ought not allow open
               | thievery, but this one should. Yes, their corporations
               | make billions of dollars, just like in every other
               | industry where theft is not tolerated. Or perhaps you
               | support open thievery everywhere at any time, in which
               | case, like I said, you are my enemy.
        
       | unicornmama wrote:
       | Someone should setup a torrent website on one of these
       | decentralized blockchain technologies.
        
       | MeltdownSpectre wrote:
       | Really sad to hear this. I basically built my entire Plex server
       | with RARBG.
       | 
       | Anyone have any solid private tracker recommendations for movies
       | and TV shows?
       | 
       | After taking advantage of public trackers like RARBG, I feel like
       | it's my time to give back.
        
         | SamuelAdams wrote:
         | The problem with private trackers isn't availability, it's
         | getting in the door. You typically need to grind for 3-6 months
         | on newer private trackers before you can get an invite to more
         | well-established trackers.
         | 
         | Unless you know someone already on the tracker and they are
         | willing to vouch for you.
         | 
         | If you want a list head over to /r/trackers and use the search
         | function.
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | They were hard to get into 20 years ago, and from what I hear
           | it seems to be nearly impossible now. Seems like they've
           | protected themselves by staying small and not inviting
           | strangers. I know some haven't distributed invites to general
           | members (in good standing) for years.
        
         | Thaxll wrote:
         | https://1337x.to/
        
         | mktk1001 wrote:
         | Torrent leech is great for movies and tv.
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | I recommend registering on some usenet indexer instead.
        
           | loeg wrote:
           | Hasn't binary Usenet been dead for something like a decade?
           | Anything on the public NZB indexers got DMCA'd very quickly
           | even many years ago.
        
             | SSLy wrote:
             | Well, there are also semi-private and private indexers. The
             | binary stream size grows every week.
        
           | blitzar wrote:
           | I download all my linux ISO's through usenet these days.
        
           | moffkalast wrote:
           | That almost costs more than actually paying for the content.
        
             | Zetaphor wrote:
             | I pay ~$100 year and it's a far better experience than I've
             | ever had with torrents
        
               | moffkalast wrote:
               | You also have to associate credit card info with illegal
               | activity that leads directly back to your physical self.
               | Pass.
        
               | cyberge99 wrote:
               | Nope. Most accept crypto.
        
               | moffkalast wrote:
               | Well unless it's Monero, it's still just as traceable and
               | you pay twice as much in various transfer fees.
        
               | luciusdomitius wrote:
               | nope, bitcoin, doge and many others are pseudonymous and
               | as long as you are not retarded enough to buy it
               | someplace which requires KYC, it is stupidly difficult to
               | trace it to your identity. Especially in court.
        
           | b215826 wrote:
           | Usenet is good for mainstream/relatively new content, but
           | it's not easy to find less popular/old stuff there.
        
             | notpushkin wrote:
             | My experience has been opposite, actually. A couple times I
             | got content from Usenet when all torrents I could find were
             | already dead. (Usually I then seed those torrents, if the
             | files from Usenet match)
        
         | inversetelecine wrote:
         | check out /r/trackers
         | 
         | also watch entry level trackers for open invites. speed,
         | iptorrents, torrentleech, etc
        
         | robertoandred wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
       | saiya-jin wrote:
       | Not only they had clean, easy-to-navigate UI, they also produced
       | tons of their own releases. As big fan of saving space, x265
       | 1080p releases from them were taking minimal space with good
       | quality, practically always bundled with subtitles.
       | 
       | That's how quality service looks like. Glad I pulled (here
       | legally) all the movies I wanted in my private collection. RIP.
        
       | zfxfr wrote:
       | Wow that came as a shock. I used to check every couple of days if
       | they had interesting movie I could watch with my wife. I wonder
       | what is the cost of running such a site and I guess they must
       | also earn some money in crypto with all the donation and also the
       | advertisements. Well, that's the end of something
        
         | yieldcrv wrote:
         | its probably not the money cost, its the effort involved with
         | more manual hosting if you can't risk being cancelled in the
         | convenient data centers or platforms
        
         | makach wrote:
         | One Man's Death Is Another Man's Bread
        
           | tawayasdf wrote:
           | >> One Man's Death Is Another Man's Bread
           | 
           | Who's bread is it? Most of the classic bt sites seem to have
           | gone away from what I could see. Sad to see rarbg go.
        
             | abwizz wrote:
             | the "younger generation" (>2k) aren't used to the open net,
             | they grew into moderated groups (fb), hence i suspect there
             | is a massive number of hidden/private trackers
        
               | starkparker wrote:
               | lots of password-protected plex/media servers shared in
               | invite-only discords, like a regression back to the days
               | of knowing the phone number and login of that one BBS you
               | knew about from a friend of a friend that posted cracked
               | software
        
               | altairprime wrote:
               | I have been very excited to see us returning to private
               | forums. This is not a harmful regression, certainly!
        
               | freedomben wrote:
               | If you don't know anybody in meat space who can invite
               | you or tell you about it, how do you get in? How do you
               | meet people?
        
               | altairprime wrote:
               | Hobbies and the social gatherings (both chat rooms and/or
               | in person) that accompany them. See also the phrase
               | Special Interest Groups, with context in both Brin's
               | "Earth" and Vinge's "Deepness".
        
               | thatguy0900 wrote:
               | I think the younger generation just uses streaming sites.
               | FMovies and 9anime work fine. I don't know anyone who
               | torrents shows or movies now.
        
               | lax4ever wrote:
               | Those who don't want to be dependent on the whims of a
               | conglomerate and would like to actually possess the data
               | files.
        
               | cykros wrote:
               | The "streaming" referred to here referred to pirate sites
               | a la Fmovies or Couchtuner. They're not quite as front
               | and center as they were before Google decided to be the
               | Internet police but there's always foreign search engines
               | to light the way.
        
               | thatguy0900 wrote:
               | That's not exactly a widely held viewpoint by the younger
               | generation. Besides, it's not like the offshore streaming
               | sites are engaging in revisionism or dropping shows to
               | subscribing reasons.
        
               | McDyver wrote:
               | Not everyone knows about alternatives to streaming. For
               | the daily 10000 (xkcd for reference), that's all they
               | know. It's up to "us" to show them there are
               | alternatives.
               | 
               | https://xkcd.com/1053/
        
               | throwawayadvsec wrote:
               | torrent is usually available a few hours before streaming
               | sites and you can get higher quality, so a bunch of
               | people are still using them
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | I looked at FMovies, it's all like VHS 320x240 quality
               | streams, with rare 720p exceptions.
        
               | thatguy0900 wrote:
               | On the Frontpage for me the only camrips are polite
               | society and guardians 3,and both of those will be updated
               | pretty soon I'd bet.
        
               | easrng wrote:
               | Yeah I do torrent sometimes (if the streaming sites have
               | too low bitrate) but mostly I just use whatever FMHY
               | links to.
        
               | Qem wrote:
               | Streaming is enshittifiying fast, with content
               | fragmentation, and crackdowns on VPN usage and account
               | sharing. People will start to migrate back to good old
               | piracy, just because it's more convenient again.
        
               | lbotos wrote:
               | GP was talking about pirate streaming, not paid legit
               | streaming services.
        
               | sparky_z wrote:
               | They're referring to pirate tube sites.
        
               | [deleted]
        
       | pengster wrote:
       | so sad to read this - I know it's probably too late but if its a
       | money question as they stated on the site, I would pay for it to
       | remain!
        
         | robertoandred wrote:
         | You'd pay for the ability to steal?
        
           | getcrunk wrote:
           | Torrenting is not stealing. Stealing implies preventing the
           | original owner use of the item
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | Simulacra wrote:
       | Until another site takes its place
        
         | dopa42365 wrote:
         | >until
         | 
         | it has always been just one of many such sites, no need to wait
        
           | vachina wrote:
           | Nothing rivals the curation of rarbg though. It's so well
           | maintained it actually felt like browsing a library.
           | 
           | Unfortunately none of the proxies copied that feature.
        
       | haunter wrote:
       | Pray for https://nyaa.si/ that's the goat tracker for anything
       | Japan
        
         | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
         | nyaa has already died once, and this replacement is nowhere
         | near the old one wrt peer counts and content availability (the
         | old one already wasn't great). I wish torrent trackers had kept
         | their databases open, maybe by regularly publishing encrypted
         | dumps with a dead man's switch on decryption keys. At least the
         | new nyaa is FOSS, although the code isn't very useful without
         | data.
        
       | taopai wrote:
       | I am not technical so maybe this questions sound stupid. But this
       | topic really interests me.
       | 
       | I read that Rarbg was like thepiratebay but safer. I guess that's
       | due to moderation to check which torrents are safe, right?
       | 
       | This people had a website that offered a nice UI to find
       | torrents. Did they had ads to make money? So they offered their
       | services to maintain healthy piracy in exchange of money and also
       | to pay servers. (I am not criticize or judging I just want to
       | understand how it worked)
       | 
       | Would It be possible to share the same website using a torrent
       | file? Like shipping and actualizing the website and sending to
       | users trough torrent so they can search it locally? Or send a sql
       | database and then create a UI for users to search trough it? Or
       | would be complications because torrenting exposes our ip?
        
         | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
         | Sites can't be offered as torrents, because generally torrents
         | are immutable once they have been created. You can't say "oops,
         | that version of the file is wrong" and start offering the new
         | version within that same torrent swarm.
         | 
         | However, there was an update to the protocol, BEP44, that did
         | allow you to update the already-in-progress torrent.
         | 
         | Furthermore, there is a protocol called WebTorrent that swaps
         | out some of the other base protocols for WebRTC, allowing a web
         | browser to participate in the torrents. You could just include
         | a link to the library via CDN. The trouble of course is that
         | bittorrent now relies on DHT more and more (you wouldn't want
         | to have to run a tracker, if you did it'd just be a target of
         | legal attacks)... and WebTorrent can't do DHT (of any variety)
         | well. There was a proposal to allow browsers to be able to do
         | native network sockets, but I think that got turned down by
         | Mozilla (maybe they were more concerned with doing VPN ads or
         | something).
         | 
         | But if you had that, then yes, it might be possible to have
         | something like a "swarmsite" that didn't need to be hosted.
        
           | beardog wrote:
           | See ZeroNet, which uses bittorrent to sync websites,
           | including support for dynamic content and accounts. (Accounts
           | are somewhat centralized last i checked)
           | https://github.com/HelloZeroNet/ZeroNet
           | 
           | The main/original author disappeared but there are somewhat
           | maintained community forks.
        
           | sktrdie wrote:
           | Torrents are immutable but they could just give us new
           | torrents (with updated indexes) via chats/forums/etc. Then
           | thanks to https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0038.html we
           | can just download the diff.
        
             | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
             | Check out https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0050.html .
        
       | monkaiju wrote:
       | Tragic
        
       | aigoochamna wrote:
       | I wonder how much it costs to run? I can't imagine it's too
       | crazy.. data can be stored/cached easily and access is random and
       | has some hot spots (recent torrents). Seems like it would be
       | fairly cheap to run?
        
       | doqq wrote:
       | oh wow, sad news
        
       | rejectfinite wrote:
       | Related documentary TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard
       | https://youtu.be/eTOKXCEwo_8
        
       | adastra22 wrote:
       | What is the best alternative? I know usually people use a seedbox
       | + private torrent server. But which private server?
       | 
       | RARBG was amazing because it had everything, but still curated
       | the releases for minimum standards of quality. Is there an
       | alternative out there?
        
         | doublerabbit wrote:
         | For educational reasons I'm going to suggest Usenet. Sure you
         | have to pay $ for a few providers to obtain most 100% but it
         | has everything that torrent has if not more.
         | 
         | Not as convenient but you do get decent download speeds and if
         | parts are broken you can normally repair with PAR2 which itself
         | is alien tech.
         | 
         | Provider backbone/list: https://svgshare.com/i/oti.svg
        
       | gjsman-1000 wrote:
       | The Motion Picture Association is probably throwing free
       | champagne around the offices and rejoicing about how that was the
       | easiest pirate website takedown ever.
       | 
       | Also, if I was the MPA, I would almost look into attrition
       | tactics now, if that were legal. Create dozens and dozens and
       | dozens of junk piracy websites with borked videos. Maybe the
       | first half the movie in 720p, then the audio switches to Spanish
       | and 240p black and white with flickering. Flood the market on
       | every pirate website with the world's worst remuxes. Overwhelm
       | them with junk so that nobody knows what tracker to trust for
       | anything. Maybe even (with permission from rights holders) run
       | some pirate websites with high-quality rips, then burn them to
       | the ground after a year or two just to demoralize.
        
       | villgax wrote:
       | The only way I was able to archive certain show after the studios
       | pulled it from any reasonable avenue of purchase....
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | Wow. Between Mullvad removing port forwarding 2 days ago ago [1]
       | and now this, easy safe fast torrenting just got a bit harder.
       | Talk about a one-two punch.
       | 
       | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36113215
        
       | revskill wrote:
       | What's this site for ? First time i know it.
        
         | tokai wrote:
         | Media piracy
        
           | revskill wrote:
           | Thanks. WHat's special about this, in comparison with other
           | similar sites ?
        
             | emptyfile wrote:
             | [dead]
        
             | dist-epoch wrote:
             | Possibly the biggest one after ThePirateBay.
        
             | SSLy wrote:
             | Compared to other public spaces, relatively high quality of
             | the content curation.
        
       | skjoldr wrote:
       | I wonder if they could host the database of magnet links
       | somewhere, since it shouldn't be too big.
        
       | abdusco wrote:
       | I guess this is a reminder to support your pirated material
       | source.
        
         | SSLy wrote:
         | Thank God PTP is back on a good track.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | expertentipp wrote:
       | Thank you RARBG team, you were the awesome part of the internet.
       | Hope the crises will end favorably in the months to come.
        
       | ArfathKhalid wrote:
       | First heart break was when Kickass was taken down.. Now this. I
       | am literally too sad over a website than my other life choices
       | lol.. Love you RARBG team, will miss you till death. Good luck in
       | your life's.
        
       | BLKNSLVR wrote:
       | I mean, it did take a pandemic, war, and rampant global inflation
       | to finally kill it. Testament to the resilience it showed
       | throughout its lifetime. I think it's somewhat poetic that it was
       | unrelated to law enforcement pressure.
        
       | hiofio wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | pdimitar wrote:
       | What a shame. They could have asked for donations but me as an
       | Eastern European, I get it -- usually if we get to the point of
       | needing donations we feel ashamed and humiliated and just close
       | shop.
       | 
       | I hope somebody picks up the flag. Illegal and copyright-
       | protected piracy aside, there were tons of royalty-free and non-
       | copyright-enforced works of art there and it would be a big hit
       | on humanity's culture at large for all that to be lost.
        
         | rationalist wrote:
         | I offered to donate money a while back, and they refused.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | There's also a problem for pirate sites specifically that if
         | they accept donations then this fact can be used later on in a
         | trial, where the plaintiff party may use this as evidence that
         | the pirate site is being run for profit, and which in turn may
         | lead to higher fines, more jail time, etc, for the defendants.
        
           | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
           | If they were to receive funds via Bitcoin or Monero, is it
           | even possible to pay for hosting with those funds directly?
           | Or would they have to deal with shady exchanges that would
           | invite money-laundering enforcement actions?
        
         | robertoandred wrote:
         | hahah paying to steal stuff
        
           | thescriptkiddie wrote:
           | more like voluntary contributing to the maintenance of an
           | invaluable archive project
        
         | dmos62 wrote:
         | They did use aggressive popup ads via click-hijacking. So they
         | were monetizing at least to some extent. Unfortunately for
         | them, most people torrenting probably use ad protection.
        
           | anticrymactic wrote:
           | To my knowledge, they didn't. There were a lot of imposter
           | sites, which were indistinguishable, where you'd be told to
           | download a VPN or similar. But the main .to site never opened
           | any ads for me
        
             | TaylorAlexander wrote:
             | It always did for me. The first time a torrent results page
             | opens, the clicks open a new tab with ads. You had to
             | refresh the results page to actually click through to the
             | torrent.
        
             | poisonarena wrote:
             | they sure did! every half a dozen clicks! immediately
             | blocked by my adblockers but i would still dig into the dev
             | tools to try and figure it out occasionally
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | computerfriend wrote:
       | The have been a lot of terrible casualties of the war, but this
       | one was very unexpected.
       | 
       | Deeply sad about this. Nothing lasts forever.
        
       | puskuruk wrote:
       | R.I.P rarbg... I'll miss you.
        
       | OGITH wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | ajsnigrutin wrote:
       | I really liked their rss feature, it made it easy to filter stuff
       | and auto-download stuff...
       | 
       | They will be missed!
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-05-31 23:00 UTC)