cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/18686776

Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn’t illegal without proof of seeding

Greece continued to expand anti-piracy efforts in 2024, issuing a record-breaking number of blocking decisions. Most blockades target live sports streams offered by illegal IPTV subscription services. To increase the deterrent effect, a new legislative amendment makes it possible to fine subscribers of these services up to 750 euros. However, this may prove challenging.

Wondering if there any forums, irc chats, etc. dedicated to pirating software on Linux, not games.

Seems difficult to find most stuff. I've beeb able to find Davinici Resolve, which was suprisingly simple, just download officially than run a terminal command. Houdini was on vfxmed. (a slightly older version, but 20) But thats about the extent of what I've found, no autodesk programs or any other expensive software with monthly fees, like boris fx, maxon, etc.

Everything I'm looking for has linux versions, but the price altogether is too high for hobby stuff I use one month out of the year sporadically and will never make money off.

In one of the AI lawsuits faced by Meta, the company stands accused of distributing pirated books. The authors who filed the class-action lawsuit allege that Meta shared books from the shadow library LibGen with third parties via BitTorrent. Meta, however, says that it took precautions to prevent 'seeding' content. In addition, the company clarifies that there is nothing 'independently illegal' about torrenting.

Got a servarr setup and just using public trackers. But I've got some specific things I'm after.

There is a sport documentary that came out last year that's still going around film festivals. Nowhere to be found, I didn't get to see it in my city as I was ill. I'd happily pay to see it, but again, nowhere to be found.

Another independent documentary about marine science in my local sea. Again, no chance of getting it anywhere. I've gone as far as emailing director asking to buy a copy, but no reply.

There is a small scale LGBT show about relationships I want to watch. Once again, nowhere to be found.

People big up private trackers and so sometimes I feel like I'm missing out staying on public ones. But I wonder if this kind of stuff is really to be found on private trackers. Or is some stuff just truly too obscure to be dug up? Does everyone else also have those few things that just remain unavailable despite everything you do?

I specifically want to watch the UEFA Champions.

Altice, parent company of Internet provider Optimum, must disclose the personal details of a hundred alleged music pirates. The request comes from a group of prominent record labels and is part of an ongoing copyright infringement liability lawsuit. Altice, meanwhile, will receive anti-piracy information, including that related to a letter the RIAA previously sent to BitTorrent Inc., the owner of popular torrent client uTorrent.

I already have the latest 'bypass paywall' clean installed , but I'm finding one of two things lately : either some previous bypassed sites are becoming subject to restrictions or some recently accessible sites are now restricted.

Case in point: Vox.

When I try to read any articles on the site now , I keep getting blocked by a popup that tells me to become a paid member.

The site use to take pride in being (mostly) free but now it appears to be (mostly) paid.

Is there anyway of getting around this?

thanks

Title. Any format is fine, ISO or XEX, I don't really have a preference. Thanks in advance, y'all.

WinterBreak is a jailbreak which was released on New Year’s Day 2025 by HackerDude

It is based on Mesquito

I'm inherently distrustful of anything that is going to be installed on my computer, especially from more shadier sources (and while z-library is great, it does exist in a grey area). Is the z-library desktop launcher good? Is it safe?

I realize this is a really silly request, but I absolutely refuse to watch YouTube videos without a proxy frontend let alone logging into a google account.

I've been wanting to watch dnsl's "Fallout RP is serious business" but it's age restricted.

Does anybody know either of a way to bypass the age restriction or can just send me the video? I've tried everything I know short of giving in and signing into YouTube.

I've been using a lot of torrents for my jellyfin server and my current process is the rename the files to something similar to whats found in the jellyfin documentation around naming and had a couple questions.

Currently, almost all the torrents i find default to something similar to this:

LinuxISO.DIRECTOR'S.CUT.1080p.10bit.BluRay.6CH.x265.HEVC-PSA

I usually change the name in the in the qBitTorrent client before downloading to something like LinuxISO.HEVC-PSA but was wondering if there was a way to avoid having to do the renamings. Its not really that tedious but its more so If im wanting to seed files again later, I would need the file names to match exactly. What I've found in my search is software like sonarr and radar could possibly create links? I'm not very familiar with what that does exactly but I was also wondering if its possible to have Jellyfin read the name via a sub folder such as Movies/LinusISO/ or from metadata.

Anyone else know the least tedious workaround for this? Can Jellyfin actually just read the original file naming?

Very sorry, but I've now decided I need to block access to https://newsgrouper.org.uk/ from the UK, starting 16th March. This is because I find it impractical to meet the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which comes into effect then. See https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety and https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/

I've done a fair bit more homework on this, reading some of the guidance, but not all the thousands of pages that Ofcom has produced, and following their online seminars. Unfortunately very many aspects remain vague, and requests to Ofcom to provide clearer guidelines get answers like "It depends on your circumstances", "We can't advise individual sites", "You have to make the judgement", etc..

I'm afraid my conclusion is that trying to comply with the OSA is just too much effort. It's not just the initial risk assessments and policy/system changes. It's also that one is then required to respond to any reports that come in and judge whether that content is really illegal. You are required to remove anything that is illegal under a long list of categories, but also to protect users' right to freedom of speech. It's easy to think of cases where this balance could be very tricky. I simply don't want to get into the business of having to police other people's speech.

Ofcom have stated unequivocally that geo-blocking the UK will put a site outside the scope of the Act. So I put up a simple survey on the newsgrouper site, this appeared for UK users only, and I let it run for two weeks. There was just one question and a space for comments. I got 11 responses, as follows:

    How would a UK block affect you?                    Answers 1: Not Concerned, I can follow Usenet by other means.      1 2: An Annoyance, but not the end of the world.             5 3: Oh No, that would be a disaster!                        5

The comments were generally disappointed, but some also expressed understanding. So blocking UK access would be a real inconvenience to 5 people. I regret that, but they may be able to use one of the other web interfaces to Usenet, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sites_and_popularity . Also UK people are only about 15% of my users now.

I have seen comments that having a .uk address is enough to bring a site into the scope of the act. I'm not convinced about that, but to be on the safe side I have reregistered my site as newsgrouper.org with a redirect from newsgrouper.org.uk .

My software is available at: https://chiselapp.com/user/cmacleod/repository/newsgrouper/home so if anyone else wants to take on the job of running an instance that would remain open to UK users, they are welcome to do so.

Well, After hundreds of GB of torrents downloaded, I slipped up. I've been changing around linux distros recently and i believe i configured my VPN wrong or forgot to turn it back on after doing something. Well, I finally got hit with a copyright warning. Just your typical "we had to send this" type of warning but none-the-less, I slipped up.

Sharing this because the day before it happened, I read a post about not only having your killswitch on but also binding your client to you vpn interface for situations like this. Needless to say I didn't take that precaution. For those who are on linux, I found a great post about how to set this up on reddit and wanted to remind people to "double wrap" because why not be safe lol.

The steps were more or less as follows (for QBitTorrent at least):

1. Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced Settings

2. Under "Network Interface", select your vpn interface. To test, check what shows with your vpn on, and then turn it off and re-navigate to this part to see what dissapeared. Thats likely your vpn interface if the name wasn't clear. (Do not be seeding/downloading torrents while doing this in case).

3. To test, download a non-copyright torrent like the Ubuntu ISO torrent. In the middle of download, disconnect or close your vpn connection. This should stop the download.

Not sure if reddit links are cool here but here is the guide source if anyones interested. Binding VPN to Torrent Client

Stay hidden!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38033968

Apparently many libraries, including the ones in my country, are moving over to a system where you're not allowed to digitally download the epub file anymore. You're only allowed to borrow the book, and read it, in a closed ecosystem: an app. This per definition then excludes the majority of e-ink readers that don't run Android. This is due to Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services (Text with EEA relevance) (source) entering into force June 28 this year.

As the Adobe DRM solution hasn't been updated for years, it isn't capable of fulfilling all the requirements that this law lays out without endangering the DRM solution. Text-to-speech is one function that isn't fully supported by Adobe for example. This means that there are apparently two directions to go for full compliance, Readium DRM which is barely supported as well or a closed app ecosystem.

This is frustrating on so many levels, especially if I would like to borrow an ebook in my native language that isn't available elsewhere on the web, which is often the situation for books in my language (and I'm guessing most languages outside of English). The alternatives left is borrowing a physical copy, or buying it.

The enshittification of everything continues...

Kinda want to keep this short. My Asus WRT router running Merlin firmware is currently handling my VPN connections & routing.

There is some part of me thinking if my providers servers go down my router may fallback to WAN, should I run an additional VPN connection on the device/server itself just in case?

It’s been about a year with this setup however this potential issue has been irking me.

Edit: Kill-switch is disabled on the router’s tunnels as it appears to be bugged in two ways. 1) any manual DNS settings get disregarded network-wide 2) it kills all network connections and not just the devices affected.

Is there any downside to leaving something seeding indefinitely? Typically I just leave all my torrents seeding whenever I'm done 24/7 (whenever the VPN is on) but is there any detrimental issues to seeding too much?

It doesn't bother me I was just curious if there was ever a such thing as too much seeding since I have like 20+ things seeding and maybe one thing downloading.

Speed isn't an issue since I have gigabit internet.

I’ve seen some digitizers on amazon that would do the trick but they’re rather clunky and don’t split songs as they are played or save any meta data. I presume this would be possible given that the song title is often displayed on various Bluetooth car stereos. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated for hardware / software.

I've been struggling to get ratios over even 1.0, most are stuck in the low 0.10 - 0.20 range. I don't seed off my gaming PC 24/7 because I don't want a VPN on all the time, plus I turn it off at night.

So mainly wondering if anyone has tips on a good setup to keep the PC seeding overnight, I'm running linux mint currently. I also have a RaspPi but I understand they are not great for torrents?

Is there any good way to compartmentalize a VPN? I.e., use the VPN for qBitTorrent only, and use my regular network adapter for other stuff (games, browsers, whatever).

I've tried a seedbox in the past and they're neat, but I'd rather avoid a subscription and just use my hardware. I'm using Private Internet Access VPN until my already paid for time is up in case that's significant.

Check the below for games:

https://pkg-zone.com/details/PKGI00001

https://youtu.be/02-XCE3thUg

https://www.mediafire.com/file/ty7h6880lot7g80