OK mateys, let's talk about direct links. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 years ago by db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The original /r/piracy was purposefully gimped because Reddit received DMCAs for any random thing and didn't even bother to follow up. Since we're in new waters, I want things to be a bit more relaxed, but there's a limit on how relaxed we can be, without starting to get lawsuits, which I will not be able to fight off. I also host other communities and interests which might cause me headaches.

Remember, this is a hobby project (and none of you scurvy dogs are donating) :D

So here are some piracy-related ground rules for he whole of lemmy.dbzer0.com as of today

No direct links. This means anything which would make Nintendo or Disney light my ass on fire. I am not going to ban you for it (unless you start doing this on purpose), but I will ask admins and mods to remove them.
You can link to websites pages related to piracy. Linking to websites linking to your content (not with a 301 redirect, before you ask) is OK. In general try to keep one degree of separation between our collective groins and your links.
Magnet Links and links to Torrent files are OK, unless we start getting into trouble for it.
/c/piracy has its own, more restrictive rules. Follow them first when they differ from what I post here! /c/piracy is for generic discussion, I don't want it to turn into a link repository full of beggars, got it?
These rules apply to all pirate communities in lemmy.dbzer0.com. Unless that community has more restrictive rules from its own mods. I can easily get a lawsuit because you start making a nintendo ROM link repository.
You can still post direct links elsewhere: If you want a place to post direct links, I suggest you use a community on a server setup to handle this. This requires some significant investment in anonymity and hosting provider (these providers are 3x as expensive, yo!). You can still subscribe and share from those communities with your account in lemmy.dbzer0.com, which can serve as your "port of safety" as those lemmies could be taken down due to those links. If that happens, this safer community will still be up.

All in all, this lemmy is supposed to be Pirate-allied, but not a direct link repository. I literally cannot handle that legal risk at the moment. I hope you all understand the realities of our situation. As much as we can argue that a link to a file is not infringing, the Cartel's legal fund is bottomless, and all I have is a tinsy-tiny treasure chest under my birdbath.

If any pirate communites need to migrate after this, I understand. I would still suggest you keep them around as the "safe" community, and post your link aggregation on a lemmy instance which can handle the eye of sauron. This way you get both a stable community and account, and your links via fediverse. Win-win.

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[-] Otome-chan@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

Wait this is the new home for /r/piracy? Based af.

[-] OtakuAltair@vlemmy.net 5 points 2 years ago

And thus the new home for me.

Goodbye reddit I guess 🫡

[-] gjghkk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago

I suggest to post any links here encoded in base64 (see 64decode.org/) It’s easy encryption/decryption.

That way the DMCA crawlers can’t get to it. That is how some forums operate, and I love the idea.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 years ago

Yes but it might be only a batter of time until they catch up. Keep to the main rule about no direct links even under b64. I am too poor for lawyers yo

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 years ago

It's not encryption. Or rather, it's about as much encryption as ROT-13.

[-] juusukun@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

Arrrr matey, I code all my pirate maps in base64. I suggest ye do the same, matey. Arrrrrrrggggh 🦜

[-] eric3a@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 years ago

Rules that make sense. And I just donated a few days of server use. Ain't much but it's honest piracy.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 years ago

I appreciate if matey

[-] arkcom@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

Something I've seen is encoding links and sending people to https://www.base64decode.org/. Whether that alleviates legal risk is questionable (unlikely?), but it does prevent scraping for keywords.

[-] jmf@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah the megalinks community’s new forum does that extensively, seems to keep links alive and untroubled for a long time.

[-] taaz@biglemmowski.win 3 points 2 years ago

This requires some significant investment in anonymity and hosting provider (these providers are 3x as expensive, yo!).

What is meant by these? Any links, I mean, pointers?

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 years ago

https://njal.la/

[-] ademir@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

https://njal.la/

There are a lot of cases of people losing their domain without reason.
njal.la uses https://www.tucows.com/ as a source

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I heard njal.la experienced a social engineering attack on tucows to steal some of their domains at some point. But other than that, is there really any DNS registration that cannot be lost if enough powerful people demand it?

[-] ademir@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 2 years ago

I heard njal.la experienced a social engineering attack on tucows to steal some of their domains at some point.

Oh, I did not know that was the reason. IMHO it is better to know it was not because of malice.

is there really any DNS registration that cannot be lost if enough powerful people demand it?

The answer is no. I was just trying to give a heads up, because a friend of mine just warned me of it, and I remembered I learned about njal.la here.

[-] Amongog@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

I remember not too long ago (before the discord server went kaput, for other reasons) Sin Eater's Cove discord server posted all links encrypted, and they had a cool bot that could message you the decoded link privately.

Maybe a future bot here could do the same.

But for now posting the encrypted links would be good, just as an extra layer of protection.

I think it's a healthy standard practice to implement when sailing high seas.

[-] Anopey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years ago

just gave a donation!

How much does it cost to host this instance btw? Hopefully not too much D:

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Thank you! Currently the costs would be close to 40 Eur per month, but I'm using some shared resources so the split is not exact. More than 30 Eur for sure.

[-] Deref@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

This gives me an idea. Make a federated torrent site. It would be practically impossible to take down and one instance going offline because they don't have money wouldn't destroy everything like in RARBG's case.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago

not going to work due to trust/validation issues.

[-] ingwiephoenix@drachennetz.com 2 points 2 years ago

Was thinking the same - this looks like a prime usecase for IPFS, honestly.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Absolute newbie. What's c/piracy?

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 years ago

The community where you are right now

[-] OtakuAltair@vlemmy.net 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It might be better to refer to it by its full name (!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com) so it doesn't get confusing for new users, since alot of us are seeing this from other instances, some of which have their own /c/piracy.

[-] topranks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years ago

Fully agree. Tbh I'd have no problem even if you said no magnet or torrent links. It's good to have places for discussion, there are other places to actually go and find those things. Thanks for all the work setting this up hoping it takes off!

[-] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Links can also be hidden in images FYI https://linuxcommandlibrary.com/man/steghide

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

Is it acceptable to upload a link encrypted using a service like https://linkenc.net/?

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

A link to what?

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

This is the direct link mentioned in number 1.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The sporadic encrypted link would be OK, but nothing becoming standardized. If we become known as a link sharing site, we'll get in trouble.

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

The fundamental reason for saying this is that I am one of the representatives of a Korean piracy community. We used to utilize shortfile hosting to share stuff like scene and 0day with link encryption + base64. But for some reason our community died and we became internet refugees and we were looking for a place on the web to create another pirate community and this is where we found it. If you welcome us or don't welcome us for some reason, please let me know why and if you don't welcome us, please let me know a decent alternative.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

You're of course welcome here. It's just a matter of how likely your practices is to lead to us being targeted, you know? If you're going to share the occasional link encrypted between yourselves, it should be fine. But if you start posting whole directories of links, it might be a problem. However a hybrid option where you have a comm here for discussions and you use things like pastebins to host your link collection should work.

If you give me some idea of how you plan to utilize the comm, I can give some more practical pointers on how to ensure we're not in danger.

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

To give a brief description of the existing community, it's basically in Korean and consists of chatting about piracy, sharing information like ripped.guide, and for data, you make a request (the request format is scene name and predb), someone uploads it, and it's shared via the aforementioned encryption and base64. What I would like to get is to change the whole operation and the way requests and uploads are done to be as low risk as possible, but I've already tried chatting like a matrix and it didn't work. Oh, and here's the community as it's currently built:) https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/highway

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

The problem is, if you were to do this, it would defacto makes us a piracy indexer, as the names of the releases the the relevant link to get them would be on our website. This could cause the copyright cartel to go after us and we can't defend against that. If you could arrange to have the index externally (for example, on a rentry.co entry) and then when someone requests a link, you point them to that to ctrl+f, it could work.

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago

I have confirmed. I plan to take your advice as top priority and operate accordingly. If you have any advice for me at any time, please send me a message.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Ye, basically always keep in mind how much risk it creates. Anything you would do that make us look like an indexer, makes us a target. So the more layers between us and the infringing content we have, the safer.

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

And please understand that if the community I've re-launched sees an increase in subscribers, more posts, or more upvotes, it's not spam, but a temporary result of accepting Internet refugees.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

That's fine. I hope you can all enjoy the threadiverse! Just remember that this is an anarchist-run server, so ensure that your members take heed of our code of conduct.

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

Then, if the problem is that indexing and data sharing are done at the same time, would it be a safe solution to share the data here using encryption and base64 and make requests from outside (e.g. matrix, telegram)?

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

So you'd have a bunch of encrypted strings here but no information of what they are? I mean that's fine but I think it wouldn't work very optimally for you. Because if someone requested the link on matrix, why not directly give them the link in matrix in the first place?

[-] nodrm@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

For example, if we choose matrix, the matrix link will be shown in announcements or introductions so that anyone can enter. A request will be made in matrix, and the requested data will be uploaded to a third-party short-term hosting by the uploader. After that, we will encrypt the link with AES256 using our own password (only Koreans can understand it, and there will be no way to know this password within dbzer0). The link encrypted with AES256 will be uploaded to the dbzer0 community.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago

Sure that works, I just don't see what benefit you have in using dbzer0 instead of a pastebin with this approach (or hell, just giving them the direct link in matrix)