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How accessible is piracy for the average person? I’ve had people in my circle of friends and acquaintances ask me how to pirate media safely. They are broadly a

How accessible is piracy for the average person? I’ve had people in my circle of friends and acquaintances ask me how to pirate media safely. They are broadly aware that music and movies can be pirated, but they typically just visit some sketchy website that plays the content in the browser or they do not attempt to pirate anything because they are afraid of getting caught and/or sued. Downloading a torrent client and VPN is seen as confusingly complicated for many of them. Once I help them get past that, I also have to train them to search safely and parse the file names of what they are trying to find. More than just informing them that a movie is not a 25 MB exe file, but that there is a convention around encoding/file type, bit rate, and how episodes/tracks are named. It is understandable, but I think there is a huge mental barrier for most non-savvy computer users. I think that unless there is some friendly and non-sketchy all in one service to facilitate piracy there will not be some widespread upswell in piracy among the general public.

Foxhuls 4y ago
I’d recommend looking into Radarr and Sonarr. Those two programs really simplify the process and is basically automated once the initial setup including automatically moving and renaming the files for to a plex library if you happen to be interested in using something like plex. I personally think Usenet is better than torrenting but I also choose to spend about $60ish dollars per year on providers and indexers because I feel that it’s worth the cost.
- dvngnt_ 4y ago
  for me this was infinitely harder than using kodi or just torrenting and saving to library. and i work in software dev with CS major.
  - Foxhuls 4y ago
    It’s definitely not the solution for everyone. I don’t and have never worked in anything IT related but I have a homelab for fun and this was just the first “major” thing I did with the old server I bought to teach myself some things and provide something somewhat useful at the same time.
z3c0 4y ago
Much like how private chat and gaming servers work, I expect the onus will fall upon the tech-savvy to host content for their friends via services like Plex, Jellyfin, or the like.
claaams 4y ago
You can also be the person that downloads things and hosts it privately for your friends. You could even share it via onedrive or similar cloud platforms provided you zip, encrypt/pw protect and rename it.
dublinben 4y ago
>friendly and non-sketchy all in one service to facilitate piracy I've heard that paid Plexshares are more or less this. You pay to access a private streaming server that has all the content you could ever want. No VPNs, no torrent clients, no parsing formats, no viruses, no running an HDMI cable from a PC to your TV. It's as easy as any other paid streaming service, without exclusive content restrictions.
epicide 4y ago
Great points, but I'd like to draw attention to the distinction between pirating media and doing so safely. It used to be that either one required a bit of know-how, but I've personally seen cases where the barrier to entry is lower for just obtaining the media. Safety isn't just an afterthought as much as total ignorance. In the most alarming case I witnessed, an acquaintance of mine had a friend who "knew enough to be dangerous": they were sideloading an app on their settop box for them that just pulled from some site. I'm sure it would work to watch rips of new movies or whatever, but I doubt it even used TLS. I had to explain to my acquaintance that not only would it be easily visible by their ISP (and why that's bad), but that it was almost certainly illegal in the first place. Getting a movie for free sounds obviously sketchy to most of us, but think about the number of gadgets and services that have been advertising exactly that for decades[0]. Understanding the difference requires some technical knowledge. [0]: The catch usually being that "free" really means "after fulfilling some other obligation", such as signing up for a free trial of something.
Liquix 4y ago
Would a "widespread upswell in piracy amongst the general public" ultimately be a good thing? How much more accessible can it get? If A.) clicking through a software installer and B.) reading file names is too high a barrier of entry... Streaming services will gladly take your money. A small-scale solution could be setting up a Jellyfin or similar server for all your friends + family members. Curate it with what they ask for, maybe give them access to a Sonarr instance so they can add content themselves. There are client apps for smart TVs, phones, and a web player. Maybe they'll like it so much they tell their friends, or want to set up their own :)
- thakoppno 4y ago
  A few friends in different US regions running Jellyfin in a container with an Hdhomerun (~$100) and rabbit ears (~$50) could effectively reproduce the DirectTV Sunday ticket (~$300). I anticipate some version of family and friend supported distributed services to continue growing in the near future.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  There used to be an app called Popcorn Time which had a Netflix-like UI but was actually serving the videos from torrents. It would attempt to download the torrent data sequentially so you could stream the show/movie after about 10 seconds of buffering.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  I’ll admit that A) and B) are ultimately really simple things that most people should be able to manage. However I’ve come to learn that most people are not nearly as comfortable using computers as we would think. They use computers very narrowly and are hesitant to break them.
hanniabu 4y ago
Syncler + Premiumize or Real Debris is fantastic and super easy to use. No server setup needed, you stream everything. Comes working out of the box and if you want to play with some settings it's in an easy settings menu.

Foxhuls 4y ago

I’d recommend looking into Radarr and Sonarr. Those two programs really simplify the process and is basically automated once the initial setup including automatically moving and renaming the files for to a plex library if you happen to be interested in using something like plex. I personally think Usenet is better than torrenting but I also choose to spend about $60ish dollars per year on providers and indexers because I feel that it’s worth the cost.

dvngnt_ 4y ago
for me this was infinitely harder than using kodi or just torrenting and saving to library. and i work in software dev with CS major.
- Foxhuls 4y ago
  It’s definitely not the solution for everyone. I don’t and have never worked in anything IT related but I have a homelab for fun and this was just the first “major” thing I did with the old server I bought to teach myself some things and provide something somewhat useful at the same time.

z3c0 4y ago

Much like how private chat and gaming servers work, I expect the onus will fall upon the tech-savvy to host content for their friends via services like Plex, Jellyfin, or the like.

claaams 4y ago

You can also be the person that downloads things and hosts it privately for your friends. You could even share it via onedrive or similar cloud platforms provided you zip, encrypt/pw protect and rename it.

dublinben 4y ago

>friendly and non-sketchy all in one service to facilitate piracy I've heard that paid Plexshares are more or less this. You pay to access a private streaming server that has all the content you could ever want. No VPNs, no torrent clients, no parsing formats, no viruses, no running an HDMI cable from a PC to your TV. It's as easy as any other paid streaming service, without exclusive content restrictions.

epicide 4y ago

Great points, but I'd like to draw attention to the distinction between pirating media and doing so safely. It used to be that either one required a bit of know-how, but I've personally seen cases where the barrier to entry is lower for just obtaining the media. Safety isn't just an afterthought as much as total ignorance. In the most alarming case I witnessed, an acquaintance of mine had a friend who "knew enough to be dangerous": they were sideloading an app on their settop box for them that just pulled from some site. I'm sure it would work to watch rips of new movies or whatever, but I doubt it even used TLS. I had to explain to my acquaintance that not only would it be easily visible by their ISP (and why that's bad), but that it was almost certainly illegal in the first place. Getting a movie for free sounds obviously sketchy to most of us, but think about the number of gadgets and services that have been advertising exactly that for decades[0]. Understanding the difference requires some technical knowledge. [0]: The catch usually being that "free" really means "after fulfilling some other obligation", such as signing up for a free trial of something.

Liquix 4y ago

Would a "widespread upswell in piracy amongst the general public" ultimately be a good thing? How much more accessible can it get? If A.) clicking through a software installer and B.) reading file names is too high a barrier of entry... Streaming services will gladly take your money. A small-scale solution could be setting up a Jellyfin or similar server for all your friends + family members. Curate it with what they ask for, maybe give them access to a Sonarr instance so they can add content themselves. There are client apps for smart TVs, phones, and a web player. Maybe they'll like it so much they tell their friends, or want to set up their own :)

thakoppno 4y ago
A few friends in different US regions running Jellyfin in a container with an Hdhomerun (~$100) and rabbit ears (~$50) could effectively reproduce the DirectTV Sunday ticket (~$300). I anticipate some version of family and friend supported distributed services to continue growing in the near future.
squeaky-clean 4y ago
There used to be an app called Popcorn Time which had a Netflix-like UI but was actually serving the videos from torrents. It would attempt to download the torrent data sequentially so you could stream the show/movie after about 10 seconds of buffering.
BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
I’ll admit that A) and B) are ultimately really simple things that most people should be able to manage. However I’ve come to learn that most people are not nearly as comfortable using computers as we would think. They use computers very narrowly and are hesitant to break them.

hanniabu 4y ago

Syncler + Premiumize or Real Debris is fantastic and super easy to use. No server setup needed, you stream everything. Comes working out of the box and if you want to play with some settings it's in an easy settings menu.