Now is a good time to remind users that you are placing some trust in the instance that you use. Lemmy is not anonymous. It is pseudo-anonymous. Your instance can do pretty much anything with your account up to and including turning your account into a sock puppet, and they know exactly where you’re connecting from.
With that said, it’s a lot better than most social media today that actively tries to violate your privacy at every turn.
This is part of why I signed up through FMHY. If anybody is going to try to protect my privacy it is probably going to be the very actively pro-piracy group.
To add to this: some instances require your email address, and others don’t.
Obviously there are plenty of other ways you won’t be really anonymous, but if it’s important to you, one step in mitigating issues is not to have an email associated with your account.
You can always use https://10minutesemail.net/ for the required email. No muss no fuss
I’ve been partial to https://mailinator.com, but some services are getting wise to it (and blocking *@mailinator.com addresses). Thanks for sharing an alternative!
You may know the answer to this. If I’ve signed up with no email, and whilst on a secure VPN, how are they going to track me?
Your instance could (edit: theoretically, if they’re running custom Lemmy code) track you by your browser fingerprint (screen size, installed fonts, plugins, etc.). Others could keep a profile on you based on what you comment/post/upvote and when.
What about using something like a protonmail address for all social media email?
A good strategy, but still less secure by definition than no email at all.
Iirc proton mail has a backdoor. Though they likely won’t be used outside of ‘nať-sećurity interests’.
Guys, this is fact, also downvotes aren’t private.
The MPAA really is grasping for straws aren’t they. Ever since people were able to stream movies during the pandemic and found it was a much cheaper more enjoyable experience, they have been trying to invent ways to drive people back to the theaters. Now they are suffering major block buster busts and they have to point the finger at someone so they think, “it’s those darn Reddit pirates!” Its funny that they don’t realize they caused their own demise. But really I wonder, why specifically 2011?
2011 is well outside the Statute of Limitations for infringement…
That’s three years with some wiggle room for ongoing infringement.
This is likely an intimidation/shakedown thing.
Right? Yeah, piracy is the reason people don’t go to the movies. It has nothing to do with the overpriced, nasty concessions (cold, overly salty popcorn), dirty floors, uncomfortable “reclining” seats, gimmicks (4DX, RPX, XD), staff that can’t be bothered to turn off the lights at showtime or properly configure the sound systems. All while you’re paying $15 per ticket and $30 on snacks.
These morons live in an entirely different world.
Not to mention the comparison between watching a movie at home, where you know it will be silent, versus the risk of having at least one (but often more) groups of people who will not shut the fuck up the whole time.
Can also pause, rewind, fast forward, lie down, and more at home
The gap between reality and what corporate shills who probably don’t even use their own product think is reality is ever widening.
It’s funny because we subscribe to the AMC A-List and go to the movies quite a bit (obviously this is in the US). But it’s because a) we have a couple of AMC theatres close by, and b) it’s just me and my spouse, no kids involved. So it’s something that to us is worthwhile (having a night out a few times a months to see a movie on the big screen). Also, we never buy concessions. I can’t imagine how an average family with a bunch of kids can just go and drop over 100 bucks on tickets and concessions on any given night.
I think they are short staffed aka underpaid.
Agreed. That means that the current business model for movie theaters is unsustainable.
Yup. Where I’m at two tickets and two popcorn will be 60$…sixty fucking dollars, that’s a lot of fucking money to sit in some shitty seats listening to other people eat and slurp.
Disagree that it’s more enjoyable than going to the theaters. There is a social aspect of going to movies with friend groups that’s hard to replicate at home. People don’t have space to fit 12 friends to comfortably watch a new release.
2011?? seems like an awfully long time for them to still care.
Thank goodness I only openly supported piracy from 2019 to 2023 with 5 different accounts lmao
Dodged a bullet there
🫡 not all of us were as forward thinking as you.
Your sacrifice won’t have been in vain
Imagine when film companies pay Google for access to pirate’s gmail registrations. I’m glad I switched to Protonmail years ago. Any of these “free” services will sell your information for the right price.
Well, Reddit isn’t in my good books right now, but I hope they fight this fight hard, and I hope they win. Good Luck Reddit
Thats creepy as hell.
Makes me want to screen record DRM protected stuff and redistribute it right now :)
Yeah this is the kind of crap that encourages people to pirate simply to spite them.
Piracy is part and parcel of the global economic system, and since that system hasn’t changed since time immemorial, well it always has been too.
Scary but hey at least Reddit isn’t handing out the info so easily in this instance
Whatever. It’s not really admissable. People talk about tons of things that they don’t actually do. For example, I talked today on teams about deleting a problematic app from our vcenter just so we didn’t have to deal with a compatible issue. Didn’t actually do it.
I was discussing trebucheting politicians off the white cliffs of Dover earlier today on Discord. Not gonna do that either. Sadly.
Would be mad.
There are many topics people discuss that are problematic. Forget piracy. What about people from authoritarian regimes, people from countries that are in danger to fall to authoritarians, even if they haven’t yet. Anything from years ago could become problematic if the wrong government gets into power.
Making jokes about God is no deal under some regimes, it’s blasphemy in others.
Drugs are a problem in a lot of countries, and a literal death sentence in some.
Making fun of a fringe politician is nothing when they are not in power, but becomes a problem if they get into power.
I am sure Reddit gives some data in cases of actual danger, which is fair. But if they start to hand out data for something minor like piracy, it’s going to be a problem for discussion on the discussion plattform.
It seems strange to me how many these days openly discuss piracy, and what they are doing, how often, etc… It’s one thing to give vague instructions or point someone towards a website. But to actively say, ‘I downloaded X, from Y. It worked great.’ and/or ‘I’ve downloaded loads from X, I have over a thousand X, and they all work.’ it makes me cringe.
Possibly has to do with age. Piracy started for me by exchanging tapes of Dragon 32 games, and I guess recording the top 40 on a Sunday. You kept a low profile. I didn’t think I would get caught. My father was friends with a policeman who was our main source for pirated VHS videos and many games. So I felt whilst it was illegal, nobody gets caught unless you put your head above the parapet. That’s the point today, many seem to be a little too carefree. Helping each other out is great, and after all, piracy is about sharing. But do try and cover your tracks. Be sensible.
Silly nonsense. Just cause I said I downloaded something isn’t proof I did it. If I said I murdered someone you still have to proof I did it especially if there is no god damn body. In other words: they have to link my comments to a download I did via vpn years ago. Yeah, good luck losers.
I… don’t think that’s true.
I’d expect to get convicted if I make a (reasonable) confession of murdering someone who vanished, even if there is no single other bit of evidence.
Right, if you go to the police and confess to the murder of someone who vanished you are going to be in trouble. But we are talking about some reddit comments “confessing” to downloading something illegally. I could have been more specific with the example though.
You won’t. It happens all the time. Youd be amazed how many people try to claim credit for crimes they didn’t commit.
Not if you made that confession outside of any prosecution process and then withdrew it saying you were just making shit up, I wouldn’t think.
Actually no. Pretending to have committed a crime is a crime itself. At least here in Germany.
Also: saying you committed a crime is basically the same as a confession and can definitely be used against you
Also keep in mind that at least in Germany the act of just downloading something is not illegal. Only the uploading/seeding of content is. So just admitting to having downloaded something is not admitting to a crime at all.
No, downloading is illegal too. It’s just the uploading/seeding that gets actively enforced since it’s a more serious crime
I do know the law. You should try walking into a police station and saying, ‘I murdered someone.I’m just talking shit, there is no corpse or murder, just saying this for shits and giggles.’ then see what happens.
Seriously, maybe it’s just me, I prefer a quiet life. I don’t want the added stress of a corporation or lawyer threatening me, even if it is going to lead nowhere.
Alright buddy, that’s a horrendous example. You’re comparing MURDER to downloading End Game…
Here’s the real comp, go into the police station with a grin and say I just littered 3 towns away in a park, I threw a candy wrapper on the floor, it even has my fingerprint! But you’ll never catch me coppers!
They’d shrug and ask you to leave. No-one is starting a manhunt.
Bit of a leap there. I’m talking about confessing to murdering someone on reddit for instance cause that is what we are talking about: comments made years ago on reddit. Yeah, sure, maybe someone will tell the cops and they will have to investigate you based on your comment about murdering someone, but then what? Sure, it will have consequences for me, but they cannot convict me based of a single comment and nothing else. How the hell is that going to hold up in any court?
And now think back on what we are actually talking about: comments admitting to having illegally downloaded some content. I would assume they won’t even try to start investigating that. Like how on earth are you going to get proof of that?
It’s like people are forgetting that piracy is actually illegal.
They’re just lying about pirating to look cool.
I highly doubt there are any actual pirates on here, it’s just users being edgy. A bunch of dorks that don’t even own a boat role playing badass pirates.
Does a canoe count?
I’d like to be that variety of pirate, at least in the older style. Not so much a modern nautical pirate though.
Being a pirate back in the day was also less pleasant than creative media has led us to believe, I’m afraid
I think many people just couldn’t care less about pirating and believe the companies can’t figure out who they are. For example, I discuss pirating stuff pretty openly on my reddit account. But every single comment I make, I consciously make sure to not reveal enough for people to dox me.
I also don’t have Facebook which is how most people figure out identities.
“Hmm, they’re an underwater welder from a specific small town and they have three sons. Well this is the only Facebook profile that matches that so I bet it’s this person” type of thing.
You are only truly anonymous if you always use a VPN or Tor. If not, Reddit has your IP and the ISP knows who is behind the IP. If LE knocks at Reddit’s door with a warrant, they will give them your IP, with which they go to the ISP to get your name.
they’re an underwater welder from a specific small town and they have three sons
You would be suprised of how much less info than that is needed to ID a person. There are studies about ID’ing people via their favorites and last-watched lists on netflix.
I think a lot of it is to do with the actual chance that the individual is going to get charged with it, big companies generally go after the Distributors and not the individuals regarding it. Plus staying online that you did something doesn’t prove that you actually did it so they would still have to get solid evidence that you actually did it which costs money A lot of times more money than they would have lost from the pirating activity in the first place which is why a lot of them just settle for sending a dmca to the ISP and the ISP for as it saying LOL you better not be doing this
Been teaching my kid this. Do what you’re expected to do, follow directions from teachers and parents, so that when you do something you’re not supposed to and if you get caught, they won’t even believe you did it. Hide in plain site and cover your tracks by thinking of what you’d look for trying to catch someone.
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This was something I suggested for this instance, since there is even a guide for hosting an onion service: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/135234
Maybe /u/db0 will have more time after the spam settles down, but it seems he’s got a lot on his plate at the moment between being an admin and doing AI stuff.
@skullgiver @Fonz It is possible; you have to set it up yourself and you won’t federate with many places.
Hosting Lemmy or Mastodon on Tor or I2P isn’t hard; you just host it, and link your Tor/I2P daemon to it same as any other website. But you have to be aware you’ll be cut off from the majority of other instances. You’ll be running standalone.
I am not sure about Lemmy, but Pleroma supports feeding all your federation traffic through a proxy; you can use one called fedproxy to split out your I2P federation traffic through your I2P daemon, and likewise for Tor. I am not currently running this on my server. It should still work for other fedisoftware than Pleroma. https://docs.akkoma.dev/stable/configuration/i2p/
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@skullgiver Yes, there are many ways to make sure your server connects to Tor and I2P sites. But that’s what the guy who ISN’T running a Tor/I2P site has to do, to federate with the Tor/I2P site. If you’re running the Tor/I2P site you can’t really do much on your side to enable federation.
Cloudflare won’t help because you need inbound connections. Some VPNs support *transient* port mapping designed for BitTorrent, but good luck trying to claim a stable port number for any significant length of time, never mind port 443 (which I’m sure is outside of the allocation range anyway). You’d have more luck trying to find a VPS provider crazy enough to let you pay anonymously with cryptocurrency with just a pinky promise that you’re not hosting child porn. Or just don’t federate.
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I mean you can very much onion route to a regular server, if it allows connections from Tor.
Unfortunately Tor means it’s very hard to IP ban abusers, so a lot of services automatically ban common Tor exit nodes.
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This is basically true. You need to have certain DNS configurations you cannot afford on Tor hidden services to federate, and while you still could be listening on a Tor hidden service, clearnet servers would still need to reach you to federate.
On top of that, even if you somehow manage to do that, either youre federation trafic goes through Tor (lmao how to DDoS Tor in 1 step), or It doesn’t and all servers can see your public IP, which deafeats the purpose.
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In a way this does make me slightpy concerned about Lemmy servers, Reddit has a team of lawyers and tonnes of funds behind it to fight pointless demands like these
A lot of server owners won’t and will be much easier to coax into giving up information about it’s users
The thing is, chasing individual instances is a game of whack-a-mole, with a lot of downside and not a lot of upside. Established companies follow laws and regulations because they are easy targets, with local assets, offices, and public figures that are worth serving/seizing and can be compelled to comply to court orders. How TF you going to enforce a court order in a country that doesn’t recognize your jurisdiction or laws?
The other thing thing is, if you run an instance with moderation rules that skirt the law, you are incentivised not to log personal information and disseminate it because a) that makes you a target, and b) you’ll get called out by your own users for logging and leaking IPs, and people will just move to a different server.
It seems pretty obvious to me that you should assume at all times when you are online that you are basically in a public space, like in a public cafe: People can see you, even if the fact that they are not paying close attention to you creates the illusion of privacy. If you start doing something to stand out, people will start to pay attention to you, and it’s all visible to see unless you actively take precautions to hide your identity. That starts–but doesn’t end–with not browsing piracy on main.
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Both IVPN and Mullvad have just removed port forwarding. I hear the options now are proton (which I hear may not have port forwarding on linux yet, but say they will) and AirVPN.
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While it can be abused, it can also not be abused, surprisingly enough. I don’t want a secondary cheap vpn for DOWNLOADING, I happen to SEED, you leech, and also use slsk which means I now can’t connect to anyone who also can’t forward their ports because they also use one of your cheap VPNs with no port forwarding for DOWNLOADING.
You are condescending, have added no new info, and you’re clearly just a leech, I’m pretty done with this conversation, sorry “pal.”
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Wah wah wah, I called some guy out for being a leech and he is now mad at me, whatever will I do?!
Go “danger” your own colon, I’m done talking to you.
Laughs in GDPR deletion request
12 years ago, talking about piracy isn’t incriminating so why do the big movie companies need their info? So they can potentially intimidate them for more info they potentially don’t have?
Really no idea why that timeline. In 2010 I got an email from whatever ISP I was using at the time politely asking me to stop torrenting music. They basically said, hey we see you’re doing this, please stop or you can’t have internet through us anymore. That is when I learned what vpns and tor browser’s are for.
Seems absolutely bonkers that any corporation would be digging back that far for media pirates. Absolute waste of time.
I got a similar email once from my ISP, but it was more of a “this is your first and final warning”.
They might be looking for something specific. Like they are investigating an individual, or network of individuals, and this is just a piece of that investigation. I doubt they are asking for this to randomly look for opportunities to charge people with a crime related to piracy.
