Honestly, im scared to get into piracy because im afraid of getting in trouble or failing, basically im worried for no reason. I also have some random questions about piracy.
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should downloaded things be put on a internal or external hard drive. Because my external hard drive can be weird at times and i know some files required them to be installed internally.
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is there a way to help out the piracy community without breaking any rules or breaking the bank?
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are direct downloads safer or torrent, or something else?
that is all i have at the moment but feel free to add on to this if you wish too.
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Your local library.
No joke: Many have sizeable media libraries and it’s easy to rip optical media
ive tried that and its great but they always have some sort of block that prevents you from downloading/copying dvds, and they only have so much and what if i want something like a video game or software, what do i do?
The power of Linux
is there a Linux distro you suggest?
If your only use case is to rip CDs or whatever, any USB with more than a couple GB can act as a live disk, which basically lets you boot directly into linux from the USB. Installed packages don’t persist so maybe you can do some research to find a distro that has what you need built in. I’m 99% one exists that suits exactly your needs. I’ve literally just spent the last week installing and trying out different distros and Linux Mint is the best for set it and forget style linux.
Mint Linux, Ubuntu based, but works with flatpack instead of snapd, and doesn’t have tracking blah blahs by default. Extremely popular as well, so well supported.
The one everyone says is best for gaming is Arch, but if you have trouble assembling an IKEA desk, stay away for now.
Don’t know jack about Linux, but people here often mention Ubuntu, apparently it’s easy for peeps new to linux, though not the best for gaming. Forget what distro specializes in that one.
It’s trivial to get around these blocks. Handbrake will do most of the work for you. Start there.
Video game piracy is a lot harder. Even with older systems, you need to be comfortable with command line apps and a lot of trial and error. Start with the physical discs and go from there.
Jeff Geerling has a great video on Blu-Ray ripping using MakeMKV.
I’ve never been blocked using Handbreak.
Don’t use DVD decrypter because it might infringe on copyright.
~$5/mo VPN and torrents
For free and safe, i2p, for <10$ and safe, there are plenty of good vpn recommendations here.
- Shouldn’t matter unless you’ve looking to be really paranoid about it. The aim should be not to raise the suspicion of the authorities, not to prevent them from catching you if you do manage to give them reason to suspect something.
- This might be controversial, but I’d say just participating by getting stuff is good in itself.
- HTTP(s) over Tor (use Tor Browser) is free and safe.
People may complain if you tell them you’re downloading big files over Tor, though
I’ve heard you shouldn’t torrent over Tor because it creates and destroys circuits rapidly which bogs down the Tor network, but I’ve never heard that HTTP over Tor for large files (which would create only one long-lived circuit at a time (per file)) would cause any issues for the Tor network. I thought that kind of scenario was exactly what the Tor network was designed for. Do you have any good sources saying one shouldn’t download large files over Tor?
I believe you are correct, I was thinking about torrents when I wrote my comment.
My only source is this website -I’ve heard arguments for torrenting here as well, so I don’t think there is a hard set rule (although it does sound like everyone agrees download speeds are terrible).
It’s true that download speeds tend to be slow over Tor. That doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother others. And OP was asking specifically about “safe” options. For the concessions one makes using Tor, I don’t think there’s a “safer” option out there.
I suppose if France and the EU start criminalizing encryption, Tor could start being “unsafe”. (Not to be U.S.-centric, but the U.S. could totally follow suit.)
Seedr.cc has a free account 2gb but totally usable
There is also a free 10gb account for windscribe vpn
Stick to reputable sites and use magnets
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Doesn’t really matter imo. Internally maybe slightly faster, maybe some games require internal, but i run games on my external, loading may go slower unless you have a nice chunk of ram.
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Seed
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What do you mean by safer? Both can be dangerous if it executes code. If you mean getting caught torrenting leaks your ip address (hence why people use vpn)
If you dont want to spend money there is i2p, set up an i2p router, configure a browser to use it, http://2.postman.i2p is a tracker there, just paste the magnet into i2psnark, no vpn required.
Note it will be much slower download
You can get started here: https://geti2p.net/en/
So I installed the i2p Android application but can’t figure out how to access i2psnark. Is it accessible from within the Android i2p app?
Did you install i2p or i2pd?
If it is the java version (not i2pd) you would access in browser like this http://localhost:7657/i2psnark
But idk if it works on android
Hmm, thank you for the suggestion. I’m wondering if I’m having issues because my i2p shows ipv4 as firewalled.
Hmm, i think you can work with firewalled. Mine shows as firewalled. Have you configured your browser to use the http://localhost:4444 as http proxy?
If you have try to browse to the following addresses:
http://localhost:7657 (this is the i2p router webui and if it doesnt load then either i2p is not running or is in a broken state)
http://localhost:7657/i2psnark (i2psnark is built into java i2p and if the previous link loaded and this one doesnt then you dont have snark, which may simply be a limitation of androidl
http://notbob.i2p (i just picked an i2p site, this one is an index of multiple i2p sites. If it doesnt load but the first one does, then your router is not working properly or your browser is not configured properly)
http://localhost:7070 (if this loads then you have i2pd installed instead of the java version, i2pd is not built with snark)
I suggest you install i2p on a computer as all this stuff works out of the box
Thanks for all the help! I think you’re right; this is probably much easier on a computer.
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Everyone here talking about VPNs, how about tor?
Tor is going to be way too slow in most cases to download anything sizeable. Most of Tor’s benefits are when browsing onion sites and used in conjunction with other tools.
Tor typically discourages torrenting. But i2p has torrenting capability built in and has there own trackers
telegram bots ftw
Care to enlighten us?
just search for keywords of what your after, there is a bot that I’m aware of (join channel), you search for the media you want, and it gets it ready and downloadable for you. 🤫
Actually most public ones are not that good. At least the ones I found. Can you maybe send me some good ones? I have also been looking for a private group for really long.
- The location of your downloads, generally, does not matter. It can matter where you install your media after download however (e.g., video games, operating systems). There are a few considerations you should make regarding download location:
- Reliability - is the device going to fail and lose your data? For this you should research backups and redundancy.
- Size - is the storage device able to store large files? Obviously a 2GB USB drive is not going to fit a 100GB game. You should also research drive formats as, for example, FAT32 cannot store files over 4GB in size.
- Speed - transferring large files can take significantly longer on slower drives. You may also run into issues, for example, playing UHD HDR media from a slower/portable drive.
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By “breaking any rules” I’m assuming you mean laws. Short answer: no. Longer answer: outside of advocacy and lobbying engaging in piracy is generally illegal.
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Both have pitfalls to look out for. A lot of sites are scams designed to take your money, serve as many ads as possible, and infect you with malware. If you stick to reputable sites and make efforts to protect yourself (e.g., install uBlock Origin) you should be mostly fine. Torrents are generally better as they aren’t easily taken down but may not download if nobody is seeding the files. Direct downloads can link to dead links but may be useful if the file is not popular enough to seed.
In general:
- stick to reputable sites
- install and use a VPN
- install and use an adblocker
If you use a free service you are the product.
Get a 2 year VPN subscription it will cost you next to nothing.
Seed torrents if you want to be a good boy.
Your ISP can see torrent packets unless you are using a VPN. The other alternative is to setup a VPS and a torrent client on it. Then you download the completed files.
