It feels dirty to agree with an ISP on something. But even the worst corporations are on the right side of something from time to time I suppose.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      A lot of it is the sheer bureaucracy of chasing down actual pirates and weeding them from people who just happen to be on the same IP address.

      If one guy visiting an apartment block downloads a torrent from a public connection, what is ATT supposed to do? Shut down Internet to the entire building?

      This is an undue burden for ISPs, even if the content isn’t living in a gray zone of legality.

      • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Yeah IP owners really want to have all the benefits of ownership with none of the drawbacks. After lobbying for and receiving a blank check to be able to rent seek indefinitely, they are constantly acting to outsource any cost of detection and enforcement of “their” property. Disgusting how goddamn entitled they are.

        • primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world
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          this is why everyone should pirate literally anything they can, even if they don’t particularly want it.

          er, with a few very gross exceptions that shouldn’t exist.

      • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        … IP addresses are assigned to modems… They don’t assign IP addresses to… Cables going to buildings I guess lol but ok.

        And if you’re in some fucked up place that has the entire apartment complex’s internet going to one modem, then God save your soul.

    • dumbass@leminal.space
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      Ohh for sure, they know that if they get rid of the pirates, they’d lose half their customer base and will struggle to pay the CEOs bonus.

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    Why should ISP lose revenue enforcing laws for another corpos benefit?

    If media industry was serious, they should pay for it 🫢

    • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world
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      Their game is just to try to make the ISPs liable; they don’t actually want it enforced. In fact, failure to enforce is the feature. They paint the ISP as complicit in the piracy then sue the ISP for hundreds of millions in damages hoping for a no-fault settlement. That’s a much better revenue stream than suing someone for 10k who can’t pay it.

  • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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    I want to say as an employee of an ISP I literally dealt with users who essentially couldn’t get high speed internet anymore at their address because we were the only option and their grandkids downloaded movies. This put the entire household at a grave disadvantage educationally compared to other households. It shouldn’t be a thing.

    • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      That this is even legal in the first place is insane. Digital communication is at least as vital, if not more vital that postage. Image someone is just banned form getting post delivered or he gets throttled to only once every other week…

  • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    Absolutely the correct stance, nothing dirty about it. At this point, for better and for worse, the Internet is a basic necessity. Imagine having your water turned off because you threw water balloons at your neighbour.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Not water baloons, but some companies will cut off your water if you’re sharing it with a neighbor. (especially if that neighbor had their water cut off for not paying a bill)

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          I know you know this but it bears saying explicitly: it’s because pretty much all laws are out there to enforce property first. Humanity is secondary. We all know implicitly that it’s not illegal to share your water because it’s unethical. It is illegal because making it illegal protects the water company’s profits, humanity be damned.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            We all know implicitly that it’s not illegal to share your water because it’s unethical. It is illegal because making it illegal protects the water company’s profits, humanity be damned.

            it’s perfectly ethical, unless i’m stealing the water, they’re using the same water i’m using and that means i’m paying for it. It’s literally not a problem.

            It might cut flat charges but, get fucked.

            • feannag@sh.itjust.works
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              I think you misinterpreted, because you two are saying the same thing. It is ethical to share. Therefore, it has not been made illegal for being unethical (because it is ethical), it has been made illegal to protect profits.

          • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            How though? If you’re using extra water to share with your neighbor, and YOU still pay your water bill, they still get extra money for extra usage, right? It just comes from your wallet rather than your neighbors.

            • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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              Because your sharing your water with them disincentivizes their paying their bill.

              Extrapolating on this, if you could legally share your water with the neighborhood couldn’t an enterprising person with a zeriscaped yard sell their water to a thirsty lawned neighbor? That’s money the water company considers theirs

          • snooggums@midwest.social
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            For sure. Even when it isn’t a law the same outcome happens when corporations get the police to enforce their policies.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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        3 months ago

        Garbage collection services dislike when people throw their garbage in neighbor’s cans even when the neighbor is paying for the larger can (e.g. the disposal volume being used). This has led to some garbage distribution piracy alongside recycling collection crews.

        In case you wanted some cyberpunk dystopia in your cyberpunk dystopia.

          • Jessica
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            Neon lights and vaporwave when you open the lid. It’s the bees knees.

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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            3 months ago

            Two ways.

            The outer layer is the ad-hoc (often underground or criminal) system that serves to rectify a problem caused by the unjust rules of the legitimate system, in this case, refuse pirates who match overflow to underused capacity.

            The inner layer comes from service to the community becoming punk when the mainstream becomes destructive. When recycling bandits start redistributing garbage they go from being commensal with their neighborhood (causing some noise pollution and some additional mess) to mutualist (providing a service to the neighborhood they scavenge).

            • otp@sh.itjust.works
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              I appreciate the explanation, but I don’t think I follow what that has to do with cyberpunk.

              Wikipedia describes cyberpunk as “futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay”.

              I understand the relation to dystopia, and even your comparison to the punk movement, but I don’t get the cyberpunk comparison, lol

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          Wow, that’s really odd. My garbage company doesn’t care what I do with my or anyone else’s can. I can even set mine on my side of the street, and as soon as it empties, refill it and move it across the street (there’s like a 15 min gap between them), and they literally don’t care. I also overfill it fairly often, and again, they don’t care. As long as the truck can pick it up and dump it, they’re happy.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      I was thinking, imagine the media companies demand the power company turn off your power because you downloaded a pirated movie. Or gas stations stop selling gas to you because you speed.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      Imagine having your water turned off because you threw water balloons at your neighbour.

      gasp!

      I do that ALL THE TIME!!!

  • 4lan@lemmy.world
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    I had Verizon threatened to shut down my internet. I had been receiving notices for close to a decade via email, I assumed they were all toothless. And that was true in the past

    I just called the Verizon copyright office and told them that it wasn’t me and I would change my Wi-Fi password 😂

    It was suspiciously easy as if they really don’t care and are just trying to be compliant

    I got a VPN and no longer have to deal with it

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      Heh, the one time (or that series of times) I got “caught pirating” was at university, and the IT dept was super chill about it. They “didn’t know what I was doing”, but we’re concerned about my data usage (managed a couple TBs in a month in the mid 00s) and they slapped my hands for it. Was really fun going ‘I must have gotten a virus’ 5-6 times in a couple months as I dialed in the throttle speeds to a level they were chill with.

      Amazing how the tech students always struggled with viruses 🤔

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        I remember discovering that if I plugged my laptop into where an abandoned printer was at my school I would get a full 100megabit pipe. At the time that was incredible.

    • RaccoonBall@lemm.ee
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      I feel like most people don’t even check their ISP email anymore. Why use that instead of the Gmail you’ve had for 18 years.

      • 4lan@lemmy.world
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        No they sent it to my main email, I don’t even know if I have a Verizon email address

    • Majestic@lemmy.ml
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      Just FYI. Comments nearly exactly like yours on Reddit were used in copyright troll lawsuits against ISPs as evidence they didn’t do enough to enforce copyright and were negligent and legally liable.

      Further when that didn’t work the copyright agency sued Reddit to try to unmask the identities of those people to bring legal proceedings against them to coerce them into testifying against their ISP at threat of being in trouble for their activities. Reddit was big enough to fight off the lawsuit luckily but be careful.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    How about this: courts can’t order ISPs to disconnect customers.

    To me, that’s like ordering my driveway barricaded because I have too many traffic tickets. If I’m breaking the law, charge me with a crime or sue me. But don’t block my internet access, that’s just uncalled for.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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    Small ISPs have zero interest in enforcing piracy. They don’t want to lose the customers on their highest tiers. Comcast though, they suck

    • Zwiebel@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      enforcing piracy

      NOTICE

      YOU HAVE NOT MET YOUR MONTHLY PIRACY QUOTA

      YOU WILL BE TERMINATED,

      THANKS.

      • yamanii@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        This is actually how private trackers operate lol, I got banned from one because I forgot to torrent anything in over 3 months since I was playing a huge game during that time.

        • PolarisFx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          This is why I have a seedbox. A small monthly fee to maintain access to sites that are impossible to join nowadays

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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    The ISPs? doing something nice?? for the customers???
    Shit, I must have slipped into the wrong timeline or something

    • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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      It’s without a doubt motivated by their own loss of revenue but a consumer friendly take is still commendable

      • Sabata@ani.social
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        It means they can fire the one guy that sends the angry letters and get rid of a printer.

    • Oaksey@lemmy.world
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      iiNet in Australia used to fight for their users’ privacy until they eventually sold out.

      • isles@lemmy.world
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        Especially since it specifically highlights porn in a different color, it labeled my VPN IP as “Likes Porn”.

        • modus@lemmy.world
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          Weird… I looked up the IP for my church group’s forum and it said the same thing.

      • FierySpectre@lemmy.world
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        Didn’t find anything from me… Then again I’m using a private tracker, which should insulate me from that. (Random people knowing, the ISP probs does know… But I don’t think they care)

        • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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          I didn’t find anything from me either. Since I’m using Alldebrid to download torrents. It’s a torrent cache that downloads the torrents to their own server and then you can download directly from those servers at high speed. And most of the time the files are already cached so you can download immediately.

    • figaro@lemdro.id
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      I use proton VPN for torrenting. It doesn’t show I’ve downloaded anything. I think that means my VPN is working? 😅

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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    Meanwhile, VPN providers be like “come on download stuff 😉😉😉”, wouldn’t that be a much easier case for them to prove willful disregard for piracy?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      A day is going to come when the VPNs are going to be targeted for regulation.

      It’s only a matter of time before someone shoots up a school with a 3D printed gun or Epstein’s a terabyte of child porn to a Senator’s office or some other silly bullshit, and then VPNs will become the whipping boy for our litany of problems.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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        In autocratic states where VPNs are blocked, they use VPNs that are harder to detect. So by the time they decide to criminalize VPN use in the free (read slightly less un-free) world, we’ll still have a cornucopia of options.

        It’s like FBI trying to ban encryption or get it regulated when we already have encryption technology that is deniable.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          n autocratic states where VPNs are blocked, they use VPNs that are harder to detect

          Paying for the VPN that’s harder to detect with my credit card which is very easy to detect.

          It’s like FBI trying to ban encryption

          https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-fbi-is-secretly-breaking-into-encrypted-devices-were-suing

          Devices are already riddled with backdoors imposed by federal authorities. The only real way to avoid them is to obtain a device not designed or assembled within the NATO block.

          Incidentally, import of these devices has become increasingly difficult, on the grounds that these devices may have backdoors implemented by foreign governments.

          • djsoren19@yiffit.net
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            3 months ago

            In case you weren’t aware, it’s actually pretty easy to pay for a VPN in unmarked funds. Most will allow for BTC transactions, but some VPNs will even allow you to use giftcards for a place like Target.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              Most will allow for BTC transactions

              This is the dumb guy panacea for committing every financial crime. You’d never even know the block chain is a public ledger.

            • Alk@lemmy.world
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              Mullvad even lets you send them an envelope with cash in it, with no identifying info other than your account number.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            Devices are already riddled with backdoors imposed by federal authorities. The only real way to avoid them is to obtain a device not designed or assembled within the NATO block.

            this smells distinctly russian for some reason, anyway, just use open source software and hardware, the protection net while not perfect, is entirely open, and theoretically, capable of perfect safety.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              this smells distinctly russian

              Of course, disregard everything Snowden and Assange leaked. Your devices are secure, citizen. Carry on.

              • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                my brother in christ you literally referred to it as the NATO block.

                What makes you think chinese devices don’t have backdoors for example? It’s also likely russian devices do, though idk how many if any they produce. We do know that russian malware often has a russian locale kill switch because apparently they’re a little silly like that.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  What makes you think chinese devices don’t have backdoors for example?

                  Incidentally, import of these devices has become increasingly difficult, on the grounds that these devices may have backdoors implemented by foreign governments.

        • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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          Not to long ago, I think it was Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz, that proposed legislation in an attempt to curb online pornography or something, and part of it was the shutting down of Tor, to take away anonymity.

          And being attention seeking blowhards they went to the media before they dropped it in the Senate.

          That day they proposed the bill, and then like 2 days later they withdrew it, and took whiteout to the Tor part.

          In that interim they got an unannounced visit and a talking to by the CIA. Turns out that TOR is mission critical to how we communicate with overseas assets nowadays. Bitcoin was guaranteed to not fail for the same reason.

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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        Considering how many corporations rely on VPNs for their workers, I don’t think this would gain much traction.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          A number of countries are experimenting with registration of VPNs and blocking of TOR traffic.

          And there are more than a few VPN series that are explicitly or implicitly compromised by the security services in their own countries.

          I wouldn’t try planning to do the next 9/11 on a ProtonVPN, for instance. The NSA is all over that shit.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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      Well,

      a) even the labels and studios pirate stuff that isn’t theirs. They don’t really believe what they preach.

      b) All that content they produce involves unethical treatment of the actual creators and technical staff who are under-compensated, and often lose all rights to their own creative work. and

      c) regional blocks are just marketing bullshit, and is the primary thing VPNs advertise they’ll circumvent for you.

    • RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world
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      Yeah, but ISPs are rich and VPN providers are not. The most recent numbers I can find for Cox (2020) show $12.6 billion in revenue.

    • marx2k@lemmy.world
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      I’ve had VPNs email me that they’ll terminate my account if they find me pirating again after getting notified of DMCA. That was a few years ago by the same VPN I’m still with and have been pirating ever since. I haven’t gotten any more emails so either I didn’t get caught again or they’re just not notifying me any more.

      I didn’t want to lose the VPN though since it gives me a long term IP and allows incoming port for torrenting

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    I’m glad I live in Australia where this doesn’t happen thanks to previous attempts by IP copyright holders (mainly US based ones) to have similar policies forced upon ISP’s here and being told by judges here that the penalties and expectations and demands made by these said IP copyright holding companies was over the top and excessive and thrown out of court……

    • overload@sopuli.xyz
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      I think the precedent set here was that downloading a copy of a movie carried the penalty of the monetary cost of obtaining the movie lehally, so its just not worth pursuing. I might be wrong about that.

  • BossDj@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Can’t wait to find out which industry benefits the SCOTUS justices more.