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DarkMaze
Joined: Feb 24 2006
Posts: 2578
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It occurred to me a while back, after discovering full episodes of TV shows (and, indeed, movies) on YouTube, that the face of piracy has changed drastically and I hadn't even given it a second thought. Perhaps it's occurred to everyone else long before this, but I thought I'd share anyway. Mind you, I'm neither condemning nor advocating piracy here -- merely musing.
Back in the Old Days of internet video piracy, if one wanted to download a movie, one needed to download and install a file sharing program like Kazaa or Morpheus. Using that program, Cap'n Blackbyte could establish a peer-to-peer connection and yoink the target video more-or-less directly from another computer. The video could be any size or quality, although downloading could take a while. And the risk was significant -- the pirate could easily be caught, particularly if the file he was downloading was from a user who was actually, say, a cop. And of course in some places, file sharing programs were banned, blocked, or both.
Today, there's YouTube, the Everyman's piracy shack. Now you don't have to download or install any program -- all you need is a web browser. You don't even need to download the videos themselves, because it's all streaming. The quality may be mediocre, but the variety is almost endless, and you don't have to wait for a gap in another user's queue to get what you're looking for. Also, back in the Kazaa days, if you were downloading a movie, it was pretty clear you knew what you were doing and that it was illegal. But with YouTube, there's any number of ways you might have "stumbled across" the URL of the film. It's just there.
Thoughts?
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Chrisby
Joined: Mar 31 2006
Location: Where my computer is.
Posts: 1262
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Yeah I agree with you on that. Though it does seem that YouTube may be cracking down on the pirating of TV shows and movies and stuff. For example, someone had loaded every episode of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series and they were up on the site until about a month or so ago when all of a sudden they all vanished. This has occurred with other shows as well on the site.
Also I've been hearing there's a new restriction limiting maximum video length to 10 minutes for all newly-added videos.
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Dr. Jeebus
Moderator
Title: SLF Harbinger of Death
Joined: Sep 03 2005
Location: Wakefield, MA
Posts: 5228
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For the record, the golden days of piracy had nothing to do with kazaa or morpheus. It was all about establishing relationships in mIRC. And while I cannot confirm or deny anything that may or may not have happened, let's just say that the key to piracy was having a shared campus T3 connection that only you only like 1 other person were using because the wireless cards you needed were $150 each and very few people in the covered area cared to spend that sort of money. With such a connection, you needed merely to set up an FTP and would immediately become a distributor, or "distro" in one of the largest piracy rings online for having such amazing bandwidth and would have the actual pirates themselves uploading newly cracked software and the freshest DVD screeners onto your computer while you were in class playing neopets. Then, even 3 days before Morrowind came out and your computer was pumping out a constant 2 megs per second for about 90 hours straight, the unviersity would fail to notice the excessive bandwidth and your stream of piracy would continue, unprohibited.
...or so I hear
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 dr.jeebus.sydlexia.com - Updated sometimes, but on hiatus!
| UsaSatsui wrote: |
| The three greatest heels in history...Andy Kaufman, Triple H, and Dr. Jeebus |
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DarkMaze
Joined: Feb 24 2006
Posts: 2578
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| Dr. Jeebus wrote: |
| For the record, the golden days of piracy had nothing to do with kazaa or morpheus. It was all about establishing relationships in mIRC. |
Good point.
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Syd Lexia
Site Admin
Title: Pop Culture Junkie
Joined: Jul 30 2005
Location: Wakefield, MA
Posts: 24869
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The problem with YouTube is that the quality usually sucks. You're usually stuck watching crappy los res WMV or RealMedia versions of stuff. And unlike stuff you download, it's not there forever. Stuff eventually gets taken down due to copyright infringment, such as the Lazy Sunday rap from SNL.
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Jo_thepirate
Title: the Great Bob
Joined: Jan 18 2006
Location: Spammamania
Posts: 82
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yeah but if the cie doesnt botter about youtube and their own right over the copy, the show/episode or even complete series can stay there for months.. one of my friend told me that there was - or maybe still "is" - the complete Berserk serie( one of my favorite anime) and he told me that it was good quality, damn i took the pain to pay for that serie !!
I think that youtube is a 'cheap' form of piracy and target only movie and clip, but maybe not good as torrent/newsgroup..
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DarkMaze
Joined: Feb 24 2006
Posts: 2578
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Right, exactly. That's why I was referring to it as "Lite". The quality is merely watchable, and there's no guarantee that what's on there today will be there tomorrow. But it's quick, easy, and accessible. And there's some real variety there.
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Sock
Title: Master Fornicator
Joined: Mar 12 2006
Location: The Skies Above
Posts: 989
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If you really want to watch an episode of anime, or a TV show, you'll pirate it elsewhere, or buy it. Youtbue is for people who mostly want to watch something once. That, and all the TV show clips on there are pretty rad. Such as interviews and the like that you missed. Heck, there's just some rad shit in general on there that's not even copyrighted.
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Murdar Machene
New Member
Title: bimmy
Joined: Nov 06 2005
Location: the black warriors turf
Posts: 3207
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| Dr. Jeebus wrote: |
| awesome pirating story |
Wow, I bet that was the best shit ever. I wish I had a T3 of my own...
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Dr. Jeebus
Moderator
Title: SLF Harbinger of Death
Joined: Sep 03 2005
Location: Wakefield, MA
Posts: 5228
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Well by my 4th year in Miami (3rd year of the wireless), the wireless had caught on enough so I didn't get all the bandwidth to myself, all ports except 80 were blocked, and you had to log in every 8 hours. (So every 8 hours you would get booted from aim, though file transfers already in progress, up or down, would continue, but no new ones could begin)
It was still really cool that for the 24 hours before morrowind hit shelves I was, quite possibly, the most popular person on the internet that no one knew. (What was NOT cool was the dude that kept trying to put How High on my fucking ftp no matter how many times I deleted it)
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dr.jeebus.sydlexia.com - Updated sometimes, but on hiatus!
| UsaSatsui wrote: |
| The three greatest heels in history...Andy Kaufman, Triple H, and Dr. Jeebus |
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Murdar Machene
New Member
Title: bimmy
Joined: Nov 06 2005
Location: the black warriors turf
Posts: 3207
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Hahah. Yeah, I would hate that, losers putting crappy stuff on my FTP. I only share the best stuff. I hate people that are like "Ya iv got 900 gigs of files  " and it's all gay shit nobody cares about, like Fast and the Furious 8 and SWAT.
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