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posted by Fnord666 on Monday September 11 2017, @03:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the torrents-are-so-2000's dept.

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/creative-ways-pirates-use-google-drive-google-maps-to-torrent-movies-1745774

As crackdown on torrent sites continues around the world, people who are pirating TV shows and movies are having to get a little more creative. Cloud storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Kim Dotcom's Mega are some of the popular ones that are being used to distribute copyrighted content, according to DMCA takedown requests reviewed by Gadgets 360.

These Google Drive links, as well as links to those of other cloud storage services, are then shared by people on select subreddits, forums, and Facebook groups. Over the past two weeks, Gadgets 360 located over a dozen Facebook groups where people openly share such files and request more movies and TV shows.

[...] Jon, who didn't share his last name, said people are moving to Google Drive and other services because authorities worldwide continue to crackdown on torrent websites and other file sharing services. In the last two years, KickassTorrents, ExtraTorrent, Shaanig, Yify Torrents and other websites, which together heydays used to garner over 500 million unique visitors (according to web analytics firm SimilarWeb), have all shut down.

Moreover, Internet service providers are increasingly making it difficult to access the few torrent websites that are still in operation, Jon said. "You've got to be part of a private tracker, public torrenting is over," he told Gadgets 360. Private torrent tracking websites usually require users to be invited — which in itself is a difficult process.

There are several publicly accessible torrent websites that continue to exist, but "torrenting" is getting more difficult by day, multiple people told Gadgets 360. Public sites are mired with pop-up windows filled with ads trying to sell them malware, which makes it a poor experience.

Torrents are dying as savvy pirates come to their senses and abandon antiquated torrent tech, uploading their wares to cloud hosting sites like Google Drive instead.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 11 2017, @05:30AM (6 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 11 2017, @05:30AM (#566130) Journal

    Gdrive is cool and all, but I only keep a few things on it. Google tracks EVERYTHING, in case anyone has forgotten. I really don't want to feed Google a lot of free data about me. I make them WORK to mine my data.

    I don't think Gdrive is going to replace a lot of torrenting. The typical use I see for torrenting is, you have an idea what you want, so you do a torrent search. You're offered dozens/hundreds of "matches", and you select a known release group, maybe staying within a group of one or six "trusted" torrent trackers. Having made a selection, you double click, it starts downloading, and your client exchanges trackers with however many other clients are downloading. You list of trackers may grow from two or three, to a dozen or more.

    Using Gdrive, you don't get all of that. You're merely offered a link by someone - hopefully someone you "trust" - or you stumble across the link on someone's Facefook page. Oh - wait - Facefook? They are mining you for data, remember? OF COURSE Facefook is going to look at whatever it is you're downloading. Uh-oh - you might as well just call the FBI/MAFIAA to snitch on yourself. Fek that!!

    Now, I have been leery of torrenting for quite some time. Few years ago, my ISP got a notification that we had downloaded a copyrighted book (that stupid wizard kid, Potter) AND that we were sharing that book via torrent. ISP wanted assurances that we had deleted the book, and that we wouldn't be torrenting anymore. Utter bullshit, we lied to them.

    Since then, we've gone to using Torrent via VPN. The person in this house who downloads terabytes of movies carefully set it all up so that we aren't tracked. I HOPE it's still running like it was the last time I looked!!

    Is this method "safe"? Well, like most things, it will work until it doesn't work.

    Meanwhile, I've not heard a single peep about torrents drying up. The sneaker net that feeds off of the torrenting still runs full bore, and no one complains a bout a lack of movies.

    I'm not personally involved, other than supplying the connection to the ISP. I just don't watch many movies, and none of the series, such as Game of Thrones.

    Maybe it's time I took another look at our setup, and be sure it's running like I think it's running.

    But, no, torrenting isn't dead, yet, at least.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:14AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:14AM (#566139)

    > I make them WORK to mine my data

    said the guy from his public, official, SN account.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:47AM (#566144)

      Yeah, I'm sure that pseudonym is very revealing. Well, it could be, but that's not necessarily the case.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:53AM (#566146)

      I was quite shocked when the POTUS [soylentnews.org] started posting here.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 11 2017, @10:17AM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday September 11 2017, @10:17AM (#566178) Journal

    I don't believe the Fine Article. Strikes me as a propaganda piece. Yeah, the MAFIAA wishes torrenting was dying! This NDTV that ran the article certainly could be biased, them being a media provider and all.

    Was that notification alleging that a certain wizard kid book was pirated on your connection through the Copyright Alert System? Well, fear not, CAS is dead now.

    The safety we have is in numbers. It is utterly impractical to throw every alleged pirate in prison, or sue them, or otherwise ruin their day, there are way too many for that. Merely keeping records on who supposedly pirated what is problematic. Trying to impose some cost or punishment is laughable, and can only backfire if they somehow found the power to do that to significant numbers of the accused.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 11 2017, @11:32AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 11 2017, @11:32AM (#566189) Journal

      To be honest, I can't remember exactly, it may have been CAS. The ISP told us that the third time would result in their canceling us - and there was another letter sent to our address after that. IF there were another, it would be the third. Mehhh, whatever. If it should happen, I'll go with satellite. Latency sucks, but I'll have a much faster connection - except in foul weather.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:16PM (#567004)

    I can't believe people are still relying on point to point/central point of anonymity failures like gdrive, vpns, etc.

    There are a number of solutions out there to lower your risk profile, including a few other anonymity networks.

    But I2P already has the infrastructure in place for this use case and unlike its alternatives is very unlikely to dox you without you personally sharing information that can tie you to your torrenting activities.