One thing that leaps out at me about this ruling is that courts understand the internet a lot better nowadays. A decade or so ago Sony would have probably gotten away with the argument that Cox profited from the users' piracy; nowadays judges themselves use the internet and are going to go "lolno, they probably would have been Cox customers anyway. It's not like anyone pays for internet connection solely to pirate. And in most areas people don't even have a choice of provider, so how is Cox profiting from this?"

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[–] 184 points 2 years ago* (64 children)

Don't believe that you're always gonna be protected by some judge somewhere.

Get a proper VPN, dammit!

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  • [+] 10 points 2 years ago (34 children)
  • [–] 88 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    I’ve never been able to find a private tracker to join in like 20 years of this shit. Everything is closed off to registration and you basically have to find some guy in a dingy alley to suck off for the chance they might give you an invite.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Fuck em, don't need em. Never have, probably never will

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    TorrentLeech has open registration several times per year. Keep an eye on Opentrackers.org for any of these. Note that some are open, while others are open application. The latter means you must meet certain criteria to be accepted. Typically this is proof of your stats on other trackers, but sometimes it's exclusively for refugees from one that failed.

    Keep in mind that you will not ever find open registrations on an established, reputable tracker. They don't need more users. They only recruit from lesser, more accessible trackers. You will need to start on these to establish yourself. There are plenty of guides on this, with most starting on RED or MAM.

    If you aren't on any of these, it's not because they're too hard to get into- it's because you don't want to put in the effort. Which is exactly what private trackers want to avoid.

    Also, smaller doesn't always mean bad. TorrentDB was a rising star, with regular open invites, right up until its collapse. Even the giants like PTP started from nothing. Getting in early is a perfectly viable strategy, especially if you help grow it.

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    [–] 118 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Ain't nobody going to talk about that guy in the thumbnail eating a CD while wearing that hat? Stock photos are weird.

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago (3 children)
  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Create a Lemmy version! Be the change you want to see.

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  • [–] 113 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    When will Sony be sued for stealing their customer's legally purchased digital media

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  • [–] 109 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Internet is a utility and should be treated as such.

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  • [–] 53 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    Billion? What are they smoking???

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Ikr? It's like they're counting every act of digital piracy ever to be their lost profits when that's obviously not the case.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

    It's not "like", that has been the argument with these piracy cases for ages. If I pirate 100 movies, it obviously means that if I couldn't have I would have gone to the shop to buy each and every one of them. It's even worse for anyone caught distributing the downloads, where a site host can be hit with this logic for every user download ever.

    Apparently these days they are claiming that movie and TV piracy costs the US film industry $29-71 billion a year and the US GDP a cool $115 billion in total
    Because, you know, we have all that money just floating in our pockets now thanks to piracy.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Media Corporations should not have a say in disconnecting users from the internet based on copyright infringement. The right to social participation is part of a basic human right - self-determination. Today, the majority of interactions with society involve communication via internet in one way or another, so that access to the internet is vital for enabling social participation.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago

    Spoons made me fat!

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I live in Brazil, there are many problems here and stuff. But at least no one gives a fuck about piracy, lol. Never needed a VPN for torrents, not gonna need anytime soon.

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    [–] [B] 21 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    A federal appeals court today overturned a $1 billion piracy verdict that a jury handed down against cable Internet service provider Cox Communications in 2019.

    If the correct legal standard had been used in the district court, "no reasonable jury could find that Cox received a direct financial benefit from its subscribers' infringement of Plaintiffs' copyrights," judges wrote.

    The case began when Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox, claiming that it didn't adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers.

    Cox's appeal was supported by advocacy groups concerned that the big-money judgment could force ISPs to disconnect more Internet users based merely on accusations of copyright infringement.

    If not overturned, this decision will lead to an untold number of people losing vital Internet access as ISPs start to cut off more and more customers to avoid massive damages."

    In today's 4th Circuit ruling, appeals court judges wrote that "Sony failed, as a matter of law, to prove that Cox profits directly from its subscribers' copyright infringement."


    The original article contains 543 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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