A Reddit User Admitted To Pirating a Movie 12 Years Ago. Movie Studios Want To Unmask Him.

c0mmando@links.hackliberty.org to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 812 points – A Reddit User Admitted To Pirating a Movie 12 Years Ago. Movie Studios Want To Unmask Him.
reclaimthenet.org

In what appears to be an escalating incursion into a user’s digital privacy, a collective of film companies continue to implore the court to compel Reddit to surrender its users’ personal details. This move is part of an ongoing piracy liability case against Internet Service Providers. Reddit, however, steadfastly resists, staunchly defending its users’ rights to anonymous speech.

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Movie studios: "This is definitely the most important thing we have to deal with right now"

Here's the plan, gentleman. Where's my cigar? Now listen up! We ain't gonna be making another movie the whole rest of duh year, see? Fuck dem writers. Don't even get me started on the talent! So here's what we do. We get the moneys from this kid dat donloided one of our movies 12 years ago. It's brilliant! Where's Harvey?

Harvey: *shaking because he knew that was the one on reddit /r/piracy 12 years ago, drunk posting for shits and giggles

Seriously. The kid could just say I lied. I wanted to look cool.

Not the shitty movies we’re pumping out as if there were no tomorrow.

With the writers and actors all in strike, they won't be putting out any movies until they decide to be less shitty and come to the table in good faith, or all the writers starve and come crawling back because they have families to feed. I'm not holding my breath on a happy ending, honestly.

I was talking more in general but yeah, there’s also the strike.

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They think that bullying one user is going to setup an example of what happens when you fuck with them.

Fuck 'em.

IIRC they aren't prosecuting these users, instead they want to make them be witnesses in a case against an ISP they want to say wasn't doing enough to stop piracy. The Reddit posts were about whether the ISP takes action against pirates or something like that.

Oh in that case I admit to pirating hundreds of movies while connected to the wifi on holiday at Disney Land. I'm happy to be a witness in a case if one of these scum bags wish to take on The Mouse.

Disney owns so many media companies, for any given movie pirate it's likely it was Disney content.

I don't think ISP's have any duty to prevent piracy, or anything else for that matter. Their business is providing internet to their customers, not policing each and every action

If you use encryption (I always change the settings from "prefer" to "require" encryption on every install), the ISPs literally can't identify what you're downloading.

So the IP enforcement companies send the ISP a letter saying "this IP was illegally downloading our stuff. We don't actually have proof, but trust us and punish them."

Big surprise, a ton of ISPs just ignore them.

Edit: to be clear, I'm only saying encryption prevents your ISP from seeing what you're downloading. IP (intellectual property) enforcers who participate in the torrent are the ones who inform your ISP, but their letters to the ISPs have no teeth. Some ISPs care, but a lot just ignore the letters. You still definitely want to use a VPN for all public trackers.

That sounds even worse. You killed two flies in a shot. Did he cooperated in the case?

Its a surprise to me that a reddit post or any kind of random text blurb can be used as an admission of anything. What if the guy simply says I made all that up for fun? There is no requirement for text written on the internet to be under oath. Edit: fixed spelling oauth -> oath ;)

Wait a minute. Are you saying people can lie on the internet?

This changes everything!

Hold on. Let's test this.

I knew you could lie on the internet.

Edit: holy shit it worked! I have a giant penis!!

I'm a billionaire. I have my own private island that floats above the world and I can also teleport anywhere in an instant and open portals into other dimensions. And I have a pet dragon named Sparkles.

I am a human penis with arms and legs, and I just learned how to use The Internet

The film companies have singled out a Reddit user, “xBROKEx,” citing a 12-year-old comment admitting to pirating the movie The Expendables.

Reddit counters that this attempted breach of privacy is unwarranted, given that the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is just three years.

How ridiculous. Someone admitted / bragged / bullshitted on the Internet 12 years ago. The statute of limitations expired 9 years ago. But, the film companies are still trying to get the information on a poor xBROKEx.

Could the selection be intentional? A silly unenforceable case to open the door for a more comprehensive invasion of privacy on platforms to make discussion and hosting discussion of piracy into a riskier endeavor?

This is what I'm thinking. This is just a case of them seeing how far they can take it. Once precedent is set they can start to litigate based on a user merely mentioning that they pirated a movie.

Could be that they're seeking exhaustion so that can push more of their privacy breaking bullshit in international trade agreements.

Exactly what the trick is. Once the precedent is set, they can exploit the hell out of it.

What a ridiculous case. You can't prove anything based on a comment made online. Defence will just be "i just said that to sound cool, I've never pirated anything and wouldn't know how" probably doesn't even need a lawyer as there's no evidence.

Oh fuck that. If those type of words are spoken in court you better have a lawyer or it's going to be twisted against you with some sort of proof that you do in fact know how to pirate stuff. Straight to jail.

Yup. They will use the fact that a user said they pirated a movie as a starting point. If Reddit capitulated and handed over the user info that could be used to hunt for more evidence and possibly connect them to other pirates. It would open a juicy can of worms for these bottom feeders. Good on Reddit for standing up for their users.

"Good on reddit for standing up for their users" I mean, you can't abuse them for cash if they're in jail.

even knowing it will be thrown out, the companies want to go after them. they want to hurt xBROKEx as much as they can, as an example to others that you'll never get away with it. That they'll hound you decades later.

Yeah, that's the thing. Even though xBROKEx would probably win in court, it would bankrupt them in lawyer fees.

This is fucking pathetic.

I, too, downloaded movies 12 years ago. Fuckin losers. I also used Napster, come at me.

I did the most egregious thing back in the day and rented DVDs from the video store, ripped them, then returned them.

Netflix dvds in the mail, 3 dvds at a time...practically daily ripping.

I used to do the same with CD's from the local library........ and then seed them

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Shhhhhhh bro facebooks watching come on bro don't be like that

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Reddit understands it's value is in content to sell. If reddit starts ratting out it's free content creators, they lose value. Their actions are a profit calculation, not some noble stand to protect privacy.

You’d think they’d have considered that these past few months in relation to, …other user concerns.

You are the product, not the paying customer. That means you are cattle.

The farmer will build a fence to protect the cattle from predators, because it is in the interest of the farmer to preserve the cattle. But come payday, the farmer will gladly butcher the cattle for profit.

Social media users in the you-are-the-product buisness model are no different. Your user experience will be catered to you to cultivate the user base. But your experience will be actively ruined the instant it benefits the paying customer, I.e. if that means the paying customer, advertisers, will get what they want (promotion).

The difference is people generally don't care about a change if it doesn't inconvenience them beyond their tolerance threshold. Losing access to 3rd party apps? Bad to some, but probably the profit of the move will exceed the cost. (their hope) But get a rep for ratting out your posters to authorities and it suddenly becomes very personal for more people.

Based on zero data and just my impression, it seems like only a minority of us were actually willing to leave over it. They might make more money money from addicts using the ad app or buying gold than they lose from reduced content creation.

They said the quiet part out loud during the API fiasco. They are planning on selling the data to AI companies, it's why old.reddit has to die.

Calling it all now (although in fairness it's basically already public information, even if everyone doesn't seem to believe it).

I confess. I was the 2nd gunman on the grassy knoll.

I logged your IP: 127.0.0.1 - police are on their way

☝️this guy right here, personal FBI agent! He basically admitted to pirating the JFK movie with Kevin Costner!! 💀

Maybe I'm missing context, but the article doesn't mention what this admission looked like. Was it just a use saying "yeah I downloaded the new ghostbusters movie, it sucked glad I didn't pay for it", or was it someone admitting to camming/distributing/facilitating piracy at a base level? Surely they are not going after someone for just casually mentioning they pirated a movie?

You're talking about the people that sued a single mother for millions because she uploaded a video of her child with a Beyonce song faintly in the background. These people are psychopaths.

Yeah it's not that I think they're above this kind of petty bullshit, but I don't get why they'd go "fuck this guy in particular".

That said, even if the guy admitted to running the world's biggest pirate ring, screw them anyway

Friendly reminder that piracy is not theft

Well, digital piracy.

But ye olde Black Beard and the modern Somalian type is very much theft.

Nah. Haven't you heard about how the lack of pirates is causing climate change? /s

That also typically includes murder, abduction, rape and general violence..

ive pirated 99.99% of the movies ive seen come find me xD

Wait, is it even possible to pay for movies outside of a movie theater?? I have taught everyone I know how to use bittorrent because I assumed that was a basic computer literacy thing. My grandma regularly pirates TV shows so they have something to watch at her adult daycare. That old bitch even offers DVD copies for a buck fifty.

Hope you also taught them to use a VPN.

Okay, I see this so much, but I have been pirating virtually all of my media downloading Linux ISOs (in the US) without a VPN for… 20 years?

I’ve gotten about a dozen letters from my ISP and I just chuck ‘‘em in a bin.

Haha, I used to do this (throw away the letters). Then one day my ISP shut off my internet for 24 hours (Verizon FIOS), so I got a VPN.

Yeah, if they’re going to twist my arm, that’s one thing haha. Surprised that your ISP actually took action.

Depending on the ISP your service can be terminated for pirating. VPNs are cheap enough where you might as well just use one

Okay, so I kind of lied, when I set up my radarr/sonarr/transmission/etc docked compose setup earlier this year, I did purchase PIA VPN, which is like $60 per year I believe. Didn’t want to have to think about it anymore, and I can afford it now, so whatever.

But still, over 20 years, that’s like a $1200 savings. When all that you’re realistically risking is having to switch ISPs, and that’s so unlikely that I’ve never met anyone who had to do it, I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

Having said that, don’t pirate things without a VPN and blame me when the fuzz comes for ya

@jemorgan @manapropos

Before using a VPN, I was sent numerous letters from my isp to knock it off. It really depends on both isp and where you live. If you live in the US, my understanding is that it's the isp who can get sued for allowing you to pirate, so while they don't want to lose your money and will give you numerous chances, they will eventually cease to do business with you.

I'm on Xfinity and the only time I've gotten a warning was torrenting a movie from a public tracker without a VPN. I switched back to a private tracker and no issues even without a VPN.

Your mileage may vary.

What's a cheap good VPN for someone in the US?

I’m using surfshark, I got it a 3 year subscription on a discount a while back. On reddit they had r/vpndeals if I remember right, that was a good source to find discounts. Not sure if there’s a similar community here on Lemmy

I still can't figure out why ISPs are even doing this. They have no financial reason to stop piracy from happening.

I’ve always thought it had something to do with absolving themselves if liability.

From what I understand, companies hired by copyright owners send a DMCA request to whichever ISP owns the IP addresses that show up in their honeypots.

ISP has to act on those requests in some way, so they send a sternly worded letter that basically says “we have been notified that your network was used to download copyrighted material illegally. Piracy is bad, you naughty boy/girl. If this continues, we may have to take action which could include canceling your service (don’t worry we won’t because we want your money)”.

Hypothetically, they could turn your information over to the digital rights company, who then could hypothetically file charges against you, but there is established judicial precedent in the US that says that showing that activity came from a specific IP address isn’t enough to convict an individual of a crime without more evidence. Could have been anyone in the household, or it could have been someone who hacked into the network and used it for piracy.

If we want to get even more hypothetical, they could try to convince a judge to issue a search warrant, seize your device, and look for evidence there, which could be used to convict you. But that is an insane amount of effort to go after one of the hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded an episode of game of thrones an Ubuntu ISO.

They do pull out all of those stops going after the original uploaded, though, but if that’s you you’re using way more than a VPN.

@jemorgan @mechoman444

I have had my service turned off for 24 hours once and that's why I finally started using a VPN, as that was just annoying.

Yes. They turn my internet off until I call them and someone over the phone scolds me for wanted to watch The Flash.

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Yep, I’ve pirated so much that my whole crew all refer to me as Captain Jack Sparrow. My MO is to fire a warning shot over the bow of every movie studio and if they don’t quickly capitulate, I’ll raise the Jolly Roger and take them by force. That’s the only true pirate’s modus operandi.

Oh yeah? Well one time I downloaded a car.

Damn, all I ever managed was to download some extra RAM.

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Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, 17 lawyers up that pirate's poor bum!

Every day that does by and /r/piracy isn’t shuttered is a surprise

The only party that wins is the law firm charging as many billable hours as possible.

I admit pirating all what I need during the last 20 years... So what, they may want to jail me for that !?

Yes...very naughty. Prison for you.

Damn, imagine extrading a guy from a developing country to a prison in the U.S, unless it's a maximum security I think it should be better than my current life.

What do they even have to gain from this? Going after small fry individuals worked out so well for their image in the early 2000s.

I don't think they care about their image. How many people decided to not see Avengers: End Game because the studios are greedy

I could say that I took a dump on Joe Bidens face while he soundly slept 12 years ago doesn't mean I actually did it. ;) ;)

what proof do they actually have it occurred though? 12 years is a long time - I dont think I have any electronics that are 12 years old, let alone digital media

Not only that, but their insane demand may not even be possible to comply with unless the user has been active semi-recently.

Shit, I wonder how long until they come for me too? I’ve pirated hundreds of movies.

I'm currently seeding quite a few... Let's see what they can do

Sir, we will give you two options, pay our fine or we tell everyone at your workplace that you pirated Happy Feet 2.

One question comes to mind, does the email you put in when you register at a instance get saved somewhere, and does it stay when its overwritten?

You can use the email for password reset, so it must be stored by the instance. Whether or not it gets overwritten is up to the instance, so it's good security practice to assume it's stored in perpetuity unless you have reason to suspect otherwise.

My instance didn't require me to get an email, but if they did so you can use those email forwarders like simplelogin, duckduckgo, or firefox.

On my instance it stays in backups for up to 7 days. But if I ever get a request for providing email address because of pirating, well it's a known fact backups do fail sometimes.

I also have committed the dangerous felony of pirating movies

Go ahead call the cops, I'm a gangsta yo