2023 Reddit Refugee
On Decentralization:
“We no longer have choice. We no longer have voice. And what is left when you have no choice and no voice? Exit.” - Andreas Antonopoulos
This is something I’ve thought about too. I have some rare items on old DVDs that should be preserved. I’d love to upload it to Archive.org, but I’m hesitant because I don’t know if personal identifiers get attached to the media.
If I use a program like MakeMKV to rip my DVD to a computer, how do I check the file if there’s any personal identifiers? I’m aware I can right click and pick “Remover Personal Information” or whatever in Windows, but is there anything else that would attach any hardware identifiers to it? I want to preserve some of these discs since they’re long out of print and the company that distributed it is no more and you can’t buy this anywhere. I just don’t want my uploads to be linked back to me.
Fair point. There is temporary obfuscation, and certainly not end to end encryption when torrenting.
The creator of BitTorrent himself has this to say:
“The so-called ‘encryption’ of BitTorrent traffic isn’t really encryption, it’s obfuscation. It provides no anonymity whatsoever, and only temporarily evades traffic shaping. There are better approaches to obfuscation, and I’ve got a great team of engineers who are quite eager to fight that battle, but I’m hoping that everything can be resolved amicably without getting into a serious arms race.” Source: https://torrentfreak.com/interview-with-bram-cohen-the-inventor-of-bittorrent/
In my opinion using a trusted VPN not just for torrenting, but also for sourcing pirated software or other content is just a best practice.
While people sometimes suggest ignoring it because they say that your ISP is only sending you those notices because the laws compel them to and you downloaded something that was tracked, you may want to evaluate your risk.
Nothing has happened so far. Could something happen in the future?
Your ISP has built an entire portfolio of the things you’ve done online and which content you pirated. Who know how long your ISP retains that data, or which companies or regulatory bodies it shares this data with?
Laws may change.
Up to you on what you want to do with this information.
I set my VPN to Russia. Russian viruses are known to not infect their homeland, by design. They promised they wouldn’t, so you know it’s good. I then run the program, and sometimes my CPU starts heating up and slowing down my computer a bit. It happens anytime I turn on my computer now that I think about it. Computer is always running slow. I guess that’s the CPU checking if the viruses are Russian and then rejecting their requests. I can verify this because when I open Task Manager, I don’t see anything showing high CPU usage. It’s probably my imagination since the thing is doing what it’s supposed to be doing and stopping the viruses.
Only downside is I occasionally get a random command prompt pop up that disappears immediately before I can read it. Plus, my identity has been stolen several times and I’ve had to get ahold of Macrosoft Support (they built Windows so I trust them) and buy their premium $500 virus total scam defender package that I pay for monthly, but I don’t think those are related.
There’s the official Jellyfin app for Apple TV. It works very well with only minor UI bugs when browsing libraries. Nothing that detracts from or reduces the quality of the service.