Can Pirate's Bay be considered "safe" if it is used only for non-executable multimedia content? angielski

superkret, rok temu (edited rok temu)

The data will be safe to play on a linux box.
Whether you’ll be safe depends on where you live and whether you have a VPN in a different country.

I had to fight off a law suit for over 2 years over a single movie I torrented someone on my network allegedly torrented from Piratebay (Germany).

Xirup, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Fortunately I live in a country where they don’t care about piracy, but maybe I misspelled the question, I meant “sure” it can’t contain some kind of virus.

And I guess you won the lawsuit? On Reddit I remember that people would commonly say they got those law suits but people would always suggest “don’t do anything about it because they were just warnings”.

superkret, rok temu

Yeah, “don’t do anything” is horribly advice, at least in Germany.
I managed to avoid the lawsuit by showing the lawyers who wanted to fleece me that I had legal representation and collected enough evidence in my favor to make it difficult.
All they had was a file and an IP address.
It was a back-and-forth of letters between me, them and the court, which eventually refused to formally open a trial.

Appoxo, rok temu

Any more advice for a fellow torrenter in Germany regarding linux isos (hey lawyer ;))

Using a seedbox from abroad to avoid local downloads.

superkret, rok temu

Torrenting Linux ISOs is legal and doesn’t violate any copyright so there’s nothing to worry about.

superkret, rok temu

The way they catch you is by downloading a complete “Linux ISO” you seeded. Their log from that download shows your IP and that’s the evidence.

So either don’t seed a complete “ISO”, or use a VPN from a provider that will laugh at info requests from German lawyers.

Safest way is to make sure you only torrent Linux ISOs that can be legally shared according to their copyright license, of course ;)

Chewy7324, rok temu

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a complete iso, but a part of the “Linux ISO” is enough. Since your still helping others complete their “ISO” illegally.

Appoxo, rok temu

Well already using a seedbox located abroad.
I will just hope it won’t be linked back to me lol :p

spiderman, rok temu

I had to fight off a law suit for over 2 years over a single movie I torrented from Piratebay (Germany).

How serious was it and did you hire a lawyer for that?

superkret, rok temu

Yes, I hired a lawyer for consultation.
Since I was very poor at the time, I could get the cost for it reimbursed from the state, after laying bare my finances in front of a judge.

As for the seriousness, the legal firm moving against me had opened a case before a court in Munich (500km from where I lived) and I had to plead my case in writing to the court.
Next step after a lot of legalese back and forth would have been a summons before the court in person, which didn’t happen. The letters just stopped.

In the end, I paid 60€ for fees and postage. They had wanted me to pay 2000€ to settle and my lawyer told me if it goes before a judge, worst probable outcome would have been 600€ in court and lawyer fees.

Chewy7324, rok temu

Yes it’s inexcusable in my opinion that they want over 1000€ for a single movie. 600€ is still a lot of money but asking so much more than the “damage” is obviously worth is just…

I heard of some people who actually paid the fine they were asked for, since they didn’t know better (it wasn’t them but an exchange student from a country where torrenting media isn’t an issue, or so they said).

fiat_lux, rok temu

Not necessarily. For example, I know RAR is a bit out of style, but WinRAR just this week had some articles about malware lurking in otherwise non-executable files

There is no such thing as 'safe' user-generated content, only a spectrum of more or less safe content.

FeelzGoodMan420, rok temu

Who the actual fuck still uses winrar?

fiat_lux, rok temu

Enough people that the dude is still actively supporting and updating it for new OS versions. The RAR is unkillable.

Historical_General, rok temu

I only recently stopped using it. And a lot of content on the internet, expecially ones for download use rar part files to split it up and host freely.

FeelzGoodMan420, rok temu

You can just use 7zip tho

HughJanus, rok temu

You can check justwatch.com to see if it’s available anywhere for streaming or purchase. I dunno how they do it but they’re amazing at tracking this sort of thing.

LiveLM, rok temu

Since it’s a Linux box, you could try to sandbox your player with Firejail or a Flatpak + Flatseal. Just for a little bit of extra peace of mind.

amio, rok temu (edited rok temu)

There's no such thing as safe safe. While unlikely, even media/data files could contain exploits. They'd need to target specific issues in specific software, but that happens all the time.

WinRAR had a recent high publicity mistake earlier, where a "specially crafted" archive can make executables seem like other files so it's easy to accidentally run them. Big no.

I also recently saw an (old) exploit analysis: some Linux thing got wrecked specifically because of vulnerabilities in a media player/codec - in fact opening the folder was enough to trigger the exploit, which could give someone unrestricted access to your system. Very, very big no.

Back in the day, I think Windows Media Player had some idiotic license download thing that was also used as an attack vector.

Basically: executables are just a slam dunk malware delivery vector. Media files are safer in general but not safe.

Francis_Fujiwara, rok temu

If it’s for multimedia content, it’s safe, I guess. I have been downloading movies and series from that page for 5 years, and I have never had any security problems.

Xirup, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Good to know! I know it’s stupid and not at all the case, but I had read about a virus that ran on an old version of Windows when you open a file because Windows needed to compile the file to open it and the exploit took advantage of a vulnerability in that compiler to rescale to admin permissions, and I think about that when downloaded this serie.

Appoxo, rok temu

You can hide malware in EXIF metadata.
Just let common sense and be always aware of abnormal device behavior.

wildbus8979, rok temu

There has also been a number of malwares targeted at codec decoders, VLC was at one time a big target, not sure that is true now a days though

rah, rok temu

The Pirate’s Bay

I think you mean “The Pirate Bay”?

ryannathans, rok temu

Any media can contain exploits, for the most part if you stick to reputable uploaders you should do alright but it’s essentially an unavoidable problem. Keep your media player up to date

istdaslol, rok temu

If you are a bit paranoid download it into a safe box and re-encode the file.

MalReynolds, rok temu

It has to be executed to have any danger, so you’d need a zero day exploit for your media player, even then it should be contained at user level rather than system. I’ve not really heard of it happening, but it’s theoretically possible I guess, would take a really bad coding mistake. Keep your players updated and you should be fine.