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> There is malware lingering at each page. The movies are typically in english. Torrents may be very slow at certain times. Subtitles needs to be searched, gene
by jonknee 9y ago
> There is malware lingering at each page. The movies are typically in english. Torrents may be very slow at certain times. Subtitles needs to be searched, generally separately, and generally, are available only in english. Subtitles may even be malware (happened a few times to me).
These problems are [mostly] solved for private trackers. It always amazes me that a group of volunteers can do a better job than huge companies that are dedicated to the same thing. I'd love to be able to pay for stuff with the same ease of use as a good private tracker.
- chx 9y agoThere is not always a company dedicated to this thing. There is a private tracker where the three most popular torrents are the following: Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker, Chris Marker L'héritage de la chouette , Louis Malle Le feu follet AKA The Fire Within. Tens of thousands of movies, series etc you'd have serious trouble obtaining with money. The second Vernay adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo from 1954 is considered perhaps the truest to the book but it is impossible to get hold of, especially in any digital format. It seems there was a VHS edition in 1988 and Amazon.fr occasionally has third party sellers selling them. Or you can torrent it. Vernay himself is dead for 40 years, Marais only 19 years -- but of course the movie is now over 60 years old. I do not lose much sleep over "stealing" it. I am sure everyone on that tracker has similar stories. Edit: I am so wrong! Apparently in 2015 a German publisher made a DVD out of it! I am off to amazon.de to purchase it. I haven't checked the last few years because it seemed rather futile. This time Hackernews served as a rubber duck for debugging, sort of :D
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> It always amazes me that a group of volunteers can do a better job than huge companies that are dedicated to the same thing. That's a general fact of life, applicable beyond piracy scene.
- zerocrates 9y agoThe little guys can do it where the big companies can't because the little guys can break the law and not get caught or sued into oblivion (for the most part). It's a theme that appears a lot in these pages: you can do all sorts of neat things when you ignore the rules.
- jonknee 9y agoThere's nothing stopping a company from distributing non-DRM files with an easy to use interface and fast download speeds...
- coldtea 9y agoDid you miss the part above about the law? Content providers don't allow companies to ship non-DRM movies, so unless that changes...
- oarsinsync 9y agoI think GP was referring to content providers who distribute their own content, e.g. HBO, Disney, etc.
- zerocrates 9y agoOne of the big things people were mentioning here was having all the content under one roof. This is something the torrent space is great at, since they simply ignore ownership. Of course, getting the content for free (or for the cost of one member purchasing or renting it a single time) doesn't hurt selection either. Even the specific stuff mentioned here about subtitles is affected by the law: translations are derivative works.
- tfha 9y agoPrivate trackers leverage the power of exclusivity and status to get volunteers to work hard. I worked probably 1000 hours on about 30 movies to get access to some of the exclusive perks reserved for only the most skilled encoders. To this day I'm proud of my work and glad that thousands of people have downloaded my completed works.
- codeblack08 9y agoThe group of volunteers and the corporation aren't really optimizing for the same goal. The corporation is trying to make money through X and the volunteers are really just doing X because they find it worthwhile in itself.