Internet Downloading Laws

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unclehorse

33 posts

Geek

#89708 7-Sep-2011 21:56

As a matter of interest I am wondering if anyone out there is still using torrents to download material,I myself was quite a big user of the application but now am at the point where I am joining a payed site such as Rapidshare or W-Upload as these sites seem ok for downloading such things as T.V shows that seems years away from being showen here in New Zealand,an example is T.V 3 and Sons Of Anarchy to which they held for 2 years before they showed,I know there are a massive amount of people in this country who obtain Doctor Who via torrents directly after it has played overseas yet I have found it is as well to obtain it through one of the sites mentioned above as Rapidshare.

[Moderator edit (MF): moved to correct forum]

Ragnor

8223 posts

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#518464 8-Sep-2011 11:11

I can neither confirm or deny the fact that pretty much every geek with a moderate degree of tech savvy is still downloading content from torrents via seedbox, usenet or file locker sites.

This may or may not be extremely common where the content is not available digitally in NZ for a fair price in a reasonable time frame.

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

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#518481 8-Sep-2011 11:52

evenif you don't take advantage of the various well known work arounds, people are quite safe torrenting for several months at least. You need to recieve 2 warnings, spaced by quite a bit of time, before you need to start worrying.

Behodar

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#518512 8-Sep-2011 12:47

/hugs US iTunes account

I'm not a heavy downloader and I haven't yet run into a "need to download" scenario since the law change. I'll be interesting to see what I do when that situation arises :P

DravidDavid

1907 posts

Uber Geek

#518606 8-Sep-2011 15:20

People are still going to be downloading torrents. The extremely heavy users will put in the time, effort and money if necessary to give the MPAA the slip.

There is already an extremely high demand for end to end encryption on P2P applications. (uTorrent for example) It won't take long before even the average user will have a military grade method for circumventing these crazy laws. And at no cost to them.

PaulBrislen

198 posts

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#518616 8-Sep-2011 15:33

I'm getting reports of massive drop offs in terms of P2P traffic at various ISPs... one quoted a 30% decline in traffic volumes.

This has happened overseas as well - it always tends to bounce back in a few months.

Interestingly, Netflix in the US has overtaken Torrenting as the number one use of the internet in volume terms. Netflix accounts for about one third of all US internet traffic and at its current rate of increase will hit half by the end of the year.

The moral of the story is people will pay for content if you let them.

Cheers

Paul

gehenna

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#518617 8-Sep-2011 15:38

Some of us even find ways to pay for content when they won't let us :)

PaulBrislen

198 posts

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#518620 8-Sep-2011 15:39

heh... quite stupid the hoops they make us jump through to pay them.

breaching T&C, secure VPN tunnels...

Just outstanding. Good on you for bothering.