this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 133 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

What, you never downloaded a game divided in 40 100MB chunks off of MegaUpload before only to find out part 27 is broken🫠

[–] almost1337@lemmy.zip 4 points 8 hours ago

This is basically how Usenet piracy works, only with backup sources in case part 27 is broken

[–] locuester@lemmy.zip 11 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

What, you’ve never downloaded a game divided into 5 1.2MB chunks via a 1200 baud dialup modem using XModem on a WWIV BBS?

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago

The best I got is 200 10 meg chunks on a 512k ): part 150 something didn't work...

I was very sad.

[–] CodingCarpenter@lemmy.ml 49 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fucking war flashbacks happening now

[–] nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 7 points 17 hours ago

When gen Z asks about this the only response we can give is "you don't know man, you werent there".

[–] turdburglar@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

oh luelinks, you are missed

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 12 points 23 hours ago (5 children)

For some reason people use torrents over usenet.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 13 hours ago

Private trackers are much better. I appreciate p2p as every user helps strengthen the tracker. And usually you pay with that support instead of with money.

[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Can you explain please ? What's the advantage of UseNet ?

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 6 points 8 hours ago

I was just making fun of OP for hating on cloud storage.

Usenet is basically cloud storage as in it's a server hosting it instead of peers. The advantage being speed. (Oversimplified)

[–] FuCensorship@lemmy.today 4 points 13 hours ago

For some reason people like to pay to pirate, go figure...

[–] RiceManatee@lemmy.ca 4 points 14 hours ago

I like boobies and Usenet 😁

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Longevity, trying to find something from 15 years ago is pain

[–] excral@feddit.org 3 points 14 hours ago

To be fair, that's an issue for both torrent and usenet. If it's popular enough, you will still find seeder or reupload 15 years later but if it's not, you may be out of luck either way

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 84 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Thats a good sign actually.

People have been sharing things in storage drives for decades. Fmhy has a list of some big ones, usually for books.

Traditionally i believe these were not advertised and more underground, a way to easily share with friends.

You didn’t really want them easily found and traceable to you though but that is what changed.

Piracy has become so normalised that people take it for granted that there are no legal risks involved. Normalising piracy is the first step for the ideals of software freedom to flourish.

After all what is a digital file if not a bunch of writing that instructs the computer to draw pixels on your screen. You wouldn’t copyright the words to ask a human to make a drawing about a copyrighted something, so why do it for a computer?

[–] moody@lemmings.world 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

After all what is a digital file if not a bunch of writing that instructs the computer to draw pixels on your screen.

A digital file is just a number, potentially a very big number, but that's all it is.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Oh come on. What's next?

"Child pornography is just a really big number, after all."

"I didn't murder anyone, I just rearranged some atoms. We're all just really big collections of atoms after all."

If you remove enough semantic layers, you can make anything sound benign.

I'm not anti-piracy, I just think these lines of argumentation are so flimsy as to be entirely worthless for the cause.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair, that's also like, all information

[–] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 7 hours ago

I think that's the point.

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[–] muhyb@programming.dev 30 points 1 day ago

This is a little different from torrent. This is torment.

[–] hayvan@piefed.world 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Any pirate born after 2000 can't torrent. All they know is...

[–] LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 day ago

Be gay, Reddit [REQUEST] and JuegosGratis.com

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Since xitter is only for whiny right wing little bitches and moderation is mostly gone and only applies to political content ego-baby doesn't like, so I guess this flies under the radar, maybe?

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 23 hours ago

Yeah, thought the same, another sign of Shitter becoming 4chan.

[–] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 42 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This has been a thing for years although it used to be sketchy blogs (and probably still is tbf in addition to this). Back in the days of rapid share, mega before Kim dotcom got busted, etc. some people just can’t figure out torrents or they live in a situation where torrents can’t be used (isp shaping, internet controlled by a 3rd party that blocks torrenting, etc) and usually http downloads are fine in those situations.

If you ever have to rely on this get jdownloader at least

[–] m4a@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wait, I thought Mega was relatively safe? What happened with Kim dotcom?

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Mega used to be called MegaUpload and it was just plain ol’ cloud storage. US media companies coordinated with the NZ government and apprehended Kim Dotcom in NZ and shut down MegaUpload. Dotcom had money and lots of lawyers, so he’s staved off being entirely destroyed and formed Mega, which is E2EE and so he cannot accept any liability because they cannot know what is being stored.

Check out this wild ass video from 2012: https://youtu.be/o0Wvn-9BXVc

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[–] flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 52 points 1 day ago (3 children)
[–] yakko@feddit.uk 50 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Let the babies have their fun. This is like their Kazaa

[–] baka@lemmy.blahaj.zone 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Nothing inefficient about adding another avenue for pirating Decentralization makes us stronger

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's less resilient, honestly with today speeds it is not that less efficient I would say.

[–] dRLY@lemmy.ml 9 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

More efficient if the file is less popular or super niche with few seeders with tiny upload speeds or no seeds (due to age of the torrent or the before mentioned). Torrents for sure are more resilient as far as being harder to just shutdown a site. It is still nice to constantly have all options possible to make getting files easy. Though I will say that torrents are more efficient the larger the file. 4k media being a very good example.

[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Back in the day, I'd prefer hosted links over torrents. Felt safer and was less hassle.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 1 points 4 hours ago

It is safer if it's an HTTPS link.

[–] Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 day ago

I'm sure I remember that movies were found in dropbox around 2010s as well - it's sketchy but it exists 🤷 not scary torrent but supersafe download

[–] misk@piefed.social 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If you live in a country that makes telecoms monitor traffic then those have a benefit of not requiring a VPN (because you’re not uploading anything and they usually go for those seeding).

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

it isn't illegal to download, only upload. Torrents get you in trouble because of seeding, not downloading

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It depends on your local laws I think. I'm pretty sure downloading free copyrighted product from an unauthorized source is still illegal in France for exemple.

[–] Mondez@lemdro.id 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How are you, the naive seeker, supposed to know if something is authorised or not?

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

By fucking obviousness.

At least that's what a court would rule, likely with more formal terminology.

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 hours ago

A website called The Pirate Bay with nothing to pay doesn't look the official way to acquire or watch the last Disney movie to me.

[–] Gust@piefed.social 12 points 1 day ago

Reminds me of the undergrad experience of someone who is not me, lol. They had "the dropbox", spoken about only in hushed tones and never openly acknowledged, which may have contained a pdf copy of every single text required by the curriculum of that person's major.

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