Is Software Piracy Dead? - read why I think it is, and more

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:58 am

If you're an old-school usenet guy like me, you probably remember the days when you could get 0-day-warez, anytime you wanted, yada yada yada.

Usenet is all but DESTROYED now. Thousands of assholes posing full 8-16 gig uploads just for you to get their trojan. It's not just a matter of piracy being dead, is society gone completely CRAZY.

I mean, it takes a serious ASSHOLE to post up 8 gig FAKE, just to get you to use their attached virus or trojan. Then, there's the 10,000 people who download it, for nothing. Talk about a colossal waste of internet bandwidth.

Some people believe it's the game companies, movie companies, etc. I think that's a pile of dogshit. They have better things to do, IMHO... especially the movie industry. The amount of money they make... and their gonna hire assclowns to flood usenet/torrent-land with passworded rars, fakes, scams/viruses/trojans... Uploading known viruses and trojans can't possibly be "legal" in most places, or by most governments, and I'm sure it breaks almost every ISP rulebook there is.

I mean, you seen these idiots DESTROY perfectly good groups on usenet. 100,000 files with different names of real products, and they're exactly the same file size... WOW, I wonder if they're REAL???

I guess there are some idiots who still download them, and I guess there are still some idiots who don't have at least 1-2 types of AV/firewalls running on their system.

Even all those sites, which I won't mention here, where you used to get cracks and serial numbers. They are ALL NUKED. I can't find a single one that doesn't have a virus attached to it now.. or, really, is JUST a virus all together.

It's SO much less headache to buy the software you actually like. Really. It is.

Torrents are tracked, and my son downloaded some stuff without my knowledge (true story), and I got warning emails from my ISP!!! I never even use the email address they sent them too, so I had no idea it was even happening for 2 months.

I won't use torrents worth a damn. It's like saying "Hey, I pirate your stuff!!!".. not without safeguards. SSL-based usenet used to be the way to go, but almost every group I've ever used it NUKED beyond repair.

I'm not even going to get into the off-topic posts of childporn on adult sex-related binary groups, etc... plus, the SPAM.. OMG, the SPAM.. the same posts over and over again just to get to go to their web site and sign up for their shitty porn web site.

I'm been getting this "I just read your profile and I want to meet" emails for 3 months now, and I NEVER signed up for any fake dating sight (they are just porn sites).. I report EVERY single one with Spamcop and Habul - using Thunderbird - WHICH EVERYONE who gets ANY kind of spam should do. Floor their ISP's with abuse complaints and those assholes will never be able to find an ISP to use again.. at least eventually.

Fighting spam and trojans/viruses costs EVERYONE who uses the internet, even the asshole spammers and virus spreaders. If I met a spammer/scammer/virus spreader in PERSON, I don't think they would live long enough to make it to the hospital. They are complete scumbags, who don't deserve to live - yes, that's extreme, but that's how I feel about people to try to destroy my PC, waste my time, and LIE to me, repeatedly.

Fighting this shit costs us all millions a year, and yet they not only could care less (the spammers), but ENJOY ruining peoples computer systems, annoying this SHIT out of them with scams, stealing money from them with their deceit, etc.

I'm NOT saying what I do, copying copyrighted software is OK, by any stretch of the imagination.. but, it doesn't come close to what these nukers do... not even close.

Piracy always finds a way, and honestly, I've LOVE to know what medium people have moved to.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:26 am

isoHunt doesn't condone the use or distribution of "cracked or pirated" software, I and the majority of others here buy their software.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:06 am

yeah.. majority *eyes shift left and right*

it might take them a while to post a fake, but for us it takes a few seconds to flag it as such.

it might take a "serious A#%^%le" to take hours to post fakes, but all it takes for you to swear like an angry sailor when you could easily articulate your anger properly takes only a few seconds. if you have to post your anger do it in the Vent Center, that's what it's for.

software piracy ain't dead, it's just not allowed here. generally speaking i would disagree. i've had experience with that sort of thing to know it is very much alive.

for your son i hope he's not in any real danger. hoping he'll pull thru with your support.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:48 am

games producers do indeed use black ops to make it inconveinient for the pirate. they will ship retail product with bugs on purpose, so they can release patches on a time line when they are needed by most legitimate customers. Ideally the pirate has to find a way to get around authentication and redistribute the patch, which may be trojaned from the start. The next step in pirating would be very sophisticated, beyond simple cracking it would be code raping a program to create, via reverse engineering a paralell version of the program with anti hack/pirate features removed. The current marketing trend to elevate the tablet to the must have gadjet is disturbing to me. most tablets are watered down versions of what a computer is and the average consumer, has a very signifigant loss of control over the hardware and software platform, as well as the application environment. the win8 remote app nukeing utility is baneful as well. My advice is often repeated. Learn how to code, teach your kids how to code, remodel your concept of a computer system beyond the black box mentality.
When you create your own wares, license them GNU so all may enjoy and build from your foundations. theres nothing more rewarding than seeing your effort take on a life of its own beyond what you originaly gave it.

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 3:09 pm

When it comes to software, only download from from verified/trusted uploaders with a good track record. It's very easy to click on the source page and see who uploaded what.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:21 am

Funny, I have been doing torrents for a couple of years now and haven't run into any of the problems you mention. Maybe you're doing it wrong.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:44 am

Interesting point of view, and well said.

But... It's all about education . Know what you are looking for and don't just download because the file name looks legit. The great thing about torrents is the Hash info. It follows the file regardless where you found it. If its crap.. it is easy to determine. There are some very good sticky's here that contain information on how to spot fakes. .

As far as viruses.. Although the antivirus software out there is great... Always use a sandbox to play in before you let a downloaded app run free on your system.

Personally.. I feel that the people out there that find p2p too risky or cumbersome have no business utilizing it. From the early days of p2p (or any download for that matter) there have been some inherent risks involved. If your not willing to educate yourself, then I agree.. one should obtain their software from more conventional sources. It is these type of people that continue to download files that "look good"... and then come onto a site such as this and ask why the 12GB file labeled as a DVDRip with a .rar suffix of a movie just hitting the theaters does not work... that give the hosers out there food to feast on.

Just my two cents.

Edit: Oh... and Welcome... Nice first post. Smile

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:22 am

Basically learn how to spot fakes.....its not that hard.
Most decent games have a demo release if your interested in seeing what your going to get before you spend cash.
As for the spam etc...... well the internet is a place where people make money and they is hungry. So hungry they will ie cheat and sell you someone else's grandma for a profit. Again quite easy to spot and easy to avoid.
If you are articulate enough to write such a long and well written post then I do not see you having any real issues. Again the spam the trojans and fakes you speak of are an inherent problem with todays webs but i say bring it on and let them post their shite as long as it is the only price we pay for a free internet. Your post whilst enlightening for the inexperienced is also an argument being used but with slightly different context to sieze the nets and police them with such idiotic bills as SOPA recently abandoned but as I type being it is being re written.
The idea as piracy as you present it is also something which many of us here are not really into.... we like to share we like to sample we like to be aware that a movie is worth the cash for a visit to the cinema etc.
I have downloaded movies and thought.....lucky as that was a waste of time but I also have a good collection of purchased DVD's as a result of finding something worth owning.
As for

Quote:

I mean, you seen these idiots DESTROY perfectly good groups on usenet. 100,000 files with different names of real products, and they're exactly the same file size... WOW, I wonder if they're REAL???

Exactly the plan..... but as stated relatively easy to see and to avoid.
Sadly or lucky there are in every 100 internet users a percentage of dipshits that download the stuff. Be happy cause if no one downloaded it they would get smarter and make it harder to spot the dammed fakes.
Anyways..... thanks for taking the time but have a quick read through the stickies on avoiding fakes etc etc.....and enjoy life without links to spam and other items of discontent.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:42 am

Quote:

Some people believe it's the game companies, movie companies, etc. I think that's a pile of dogshit. They have better things to do, IMHO... especially the movie industry. The amount of money they make... and their gonna hire assclowns to flood usenet/torrent-land with passworded rars, fakes, scams/viruses/trojans... Uploading known viruses and trojans can't possibly be "legal" in most places, or by most governments, and I'm sure it breaks almost every ISP rulebook there is.

I agree I don't think the game companies, movie companies, etc are responsable for the this.
I think bastard that are doing it for money.....

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 10:37 am

schrikg wrote:

Quote:

Some people believe it's the game companies, movie companies, etc. I think that's a pile of dogshit. They have better things to do, IMHO... especially the movie industry. The amount of money they make... and their gonna hire assclowns to flood usenet/torrent-land with passworded rars, fakes, scams/viruses/trojans... Uploading known viruses and trojans can't possibly be "legal" in most places, or by most governments, and I'm sure it breaks almost every ISP rulebook there is.

I agree I don't think the game companies, movie companies, etc are responsable for the this.
I think bastard that are doing it for money.....

I AM a software engineer, for many, many years now. I've worked at many companies, and to respond to another post here, there wasn't a SINGLE company that INTENTIONALLY put bugs in their software just to put a dent on piracy. Actually, if you were ever caught doing this, you'd get fired, immediately, and good luck getting another job after that. Almost every game that comes out buggy is hell is due to greed, and marketing assholes. That's been true of EVERY company I've worked at, especially in the gaming industry.

Putting defects in software intentionally?? Jeez... that's so ridiculous that I feel the need to type it again. Companies lose tons of money on games and other software that get bad reviews because of early releases.. ya know, buggy to the point of just broken, released as an alpha or beta, and you think they are doing it to curb piracy? You know how many game companies go under just from one bad release?

There's no conspiracy there. If anyone is doing that, it's 0.001% of software companies, or anti-piracy types. I highly doubt anyone in the movie industry is either. There the apathy and pure hatred out for your fellow man, especially your fellow internet user has skyrocketed from non-existent, to INSANE levels. Jeez guys, have you ever seen the comments to ANY video on u-toob? People are assholes these days, plain and simple. They do it because society has gone to shit (and I could back that up easily, but it would take too long), and because they CAN. When teens got on the net, it went straight to hell. Your average teen that is.

The net and bbs's before that, were almost 100% enthusiasts who did it because it was a hobby, and also for educational purposes, the way the net first started after it because public (no arpanet)... almost all users with above average intelligence... the same way that almost all internet users started. Then the flood-gates opened, and every malicious asshole on the planet was "allowed" to use it, and it went to straight to hell. You give people an inch, and they'll take a mile... when people can get away with murder, they WILL. That's the anonymity of the internet for you in a nutshell. It some ways it's good, but it many other ways, it's really, really, bad. People say shit here they would NEVER say in person, and I wish those "street rules" applied to the internet. That would curb the asshole content down by an unbelievable amount.

And to those people who post and just flat out lie that they don't use sites like this for piracy.. jeesus chirst. STFU, liar. That's probably 1% of you, or less. At least I don't like about doing something "wrong".

To the response that said "I'm doing it wrong". Wow, that was brilliant. I guess you haven't seen all the comments HERE for posts, flagging them as fakes, malware, etc, or been on usenet lately.

My main point is that I miss when the internet wasn't so devious and full of an ever growing malignant movement to waste your time, destroy your PC, or try and sell you shit you don't want, and never wanted in the first place.

It NEVER used to be that way. You used to be able to go to most newsgroups and get exactly what you wanted, virus free, spam free, scam free, fake free. Again, I'm not defending piracy... it's obviously stealing. I'm just saying, I'm an old school "pirate", and I miss the good old days. It's a shame that many of you missed it.. it's even worse that some of you don't believe me. Go take a look at alt.binaries.games these days. There's 95-99% fakes, viruses, and malware there now. It used to be just about 100% clean, like so many other newsgroups that have been destroyed by assholes.

We ALL pay for the waste bandwidth. Like it or not, all of us do. Fighting this insane level of bandwidth waste, increasing securing measures, etc, costs MILLIONS a year. I guess some you like paying 2-3 times for internet access, and constantly being spammed with BS in your mailbox, and so on.

If people just "accept" this as the way things are, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 12:26 pm

Quote:

If people just "accept" this as the way things are, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

Yes I accept it. Maybe you can call me a part of the problem. You can't deny the rapid globalization of p2p era. People from all over the world has access to almost everything if not filtered. Some of them are good willed; some of them work as an employee for turning down the p2p industry at so many levels. Top levels introduced crappy acts; they maybe the real scums (but it can be perspective). That's a different line of discussion. Let me tell you mate; I'm a long time user. Before that I downloaded couple of fake torrents because I was stupid enough to read those guides that's on isohunt and got me infected by few viruses that made me format my PC twice; I hated the torrent concept after that. Then I realized i was being childish over it. I've joined isohunt and now a days flagging fakes for the users who were once like me. These guys in here devote their valuable time over making illustrative guides with vivid explanations of using them properly. If someone doesn't read it, that says in big black bold font "How Spot Fake Torrents" then whining is just futile. There are guides to everything; take a real life example. What are those road signs, traffic regulations are for? If you haven't gone through them; you wont get a driving license. And most importantly if you don't know them you'll eventually develop a habit of calling other drivers "a-holes". Simple as that. It's one out of billions of examples. If one downloads a fake and wastes his/her bandwidth at a colossal level, should realize that "Hey I was 5 minutes and two clicks away from a guide that describes everything about avoiding fakes." At this level of personal use of Internet we can take precautions; nothing more.

OK; let's talk about now those 100s of people who download fakes and leave comments "It's scams". But you dont see the 1000s of people who actually read the guide to avoid fakes because they are umm...invisible. You only see the complaining comments. It's "learning from your mistakes". Once you learn from your mistakes, you never make the same mistake again. *period*. It took me 3 hours to learn from my mistakes. I got myself utorrent, read them guides, installed peerblock (that blocks anti p2p sites accessing your peer). My ISP was shitty too; I changed it instantly.

In this world of exploding population you can't possibly get everything real and mint. Hell even in my area medicines are black marketed under our crappy govt.'s nose. No one can step up and do thing about it because they are the average consumers. If you're a consumer and you're stupid then you're bound to suffer. I'm not saying that; society teaches you that. Spam, scams and other shitty gobbledygook are part of the internet; call it a side effect of being "modernized". I'm 23 years old now; when I'll turn 40; the era might be "trans-modern"; where the scenes would look like shithole. People might raping each other on the streets like dogs and we'll be missing this day; calling it "good old 2012". And still we wont be doing a thing about it. It's a plain and simple logic.

Quote:

I AM a software engineer, for many, many years now. I've worked at many companies

Before I joined Isohunt I didn't know much about torrents; I used to have a file-sharing site's premium account from which I downloaded stuffs. I'm "just" a civil engineer. But I stepped up in the world of computers and torrents and information and still trying to help the people without any greedy intentions; with the best of my ability. It was very interesting. My line of work "civil engineering" might look classy from the distance; it really is but it's a boring branch. Same equations almost in every buildings; same STAAD application. Similar BMD, SFD...etc. It's not that bad though. But your line of work on the other hand is interesting because it's adventurous on a comparative scale. You can be a hactivist if you want to take revenge and do some work for your fellow netizens. A good way to start is from the forums; like this one for an example. We have many selfless cognitive brains in here helping others within a fraction of minutes on the problems posted. And many of them aren't even certified computer geeks. You're always welcome to blend in and help others with your knowledge. Smile

It'll be appreciated.

This would be my 6th or 7th post in this debate forum. I'm scared of this section... Laughing

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:46 pm

ChemicalImbalance wrote:

And to those people who post and just flat out lie that they don't use sites like this for piracy.. jeesus chirst. STFU, liar. That's probably 1% of you, or less. At least I don't like about doing something "wrong".

Want me to post serial numbers and receipts for all the software I've bought ?? Everything on my system is paid for. FACT.

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:49 pm

i think ace has a valid pointer, its not just a short call to pop a stack into the heap! There is a learning curve to everything, and it is an infinite curve. knowledge becomes outdated, or refined or very often is forgotten and needs a refresh cycle, a real fandango on the core situation Laughing

one of the biggest occupations in software now involves threat evaluation of code, and you see a lot of dirty tricks in there, as the tools are very common now. script kiddies really suck, corporate grey hats suck too, literal cloak and dagger guys that leave non critical, but run stopping bugs in game, and they flourish, under the guise of laziness, or deathmarch projects, as they make it hard for people who try to make it free. and so do AP2P methods such as poison trackers, or corrupt seeds. This site has its roots in the later half of the old school scene, and has been on the long haul to become what it is (a robust website) from what it was (a script development project) along the way new technology had to be addressed, new problems surrmounted in innovative ways, and new knowledge assimilation was the kernal class process that made it happen. Ring1 had to become ring"won" with a continuation of the learning curve, after all its what we software engineers do Cool

Oh by the way, microsoft sites are where most of the piracy i see is going on Laughing

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 2:37 pm

Quote:

I AM a software engineer, for many, many years now.

You want a medal or something ??

Quote:

You know how many game companies go under just from one bad release?

Explain why EA is still going strong then ??

Quote:

And to those people who post and just flat out lie that they don't use sites like this for piracy.. jeesus chirst. STFU, liar.

Pull your head or piss off, dont come here just to to start trolling, for a software engineer bagging noob teenagers you sure sound like the latter, and if you troll me for this post make it worth while because it will be your last.

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2012 3:09 pm

no one wanted to steal the trolls thunder, but now that its gone there, i believe the trollster and i have a number of sentiments in common