Like auto update and auto driver installation? They expired for sure, but especially the auto driver installation patent is hilarious. Like no shit sherlock: Check internet for driver with the device md5 hash and the version of the driver installer. Download driver if it’s a newer version. Install driver if md5 hash matches. Repeat for all devices, and that’s fucking it. Plus an irrelevant figure that shows a computer connected to a printer, scanner and the internet. 3 pages in total, of which 1 page is a copy of another page, so only 2 real pages in total.

They have computers, but only a privileged few know how to use them: https://youtu.be/IrCQh1usdzE?t=944

Yeah sure let’s ignore out of print books that nobody will ever see again unless you pirate it.

Copyright doesn’t encourage new works. If anything, copyright discourages new works by locking fair use and transformative behind an expensive legal process. Digitization in America is illegal by default except for books where a judge ruled it’s transformative enough.

The proven method to encourage new works is to have no copyright. But alas, publishers back then didn’t appreciate that others print “their” books. Higher quality cover? More durable paper? Book is out of print? Zero profits? Give me money or fuck off. Publishers sure didn’t change.

Domain name ~$15/year

.com starts at $10.28/year

Offshore server providers usually start around $30/server/month and quickly raise to thousands

Proxy everything from cheap offshore servers to servers from legit hosting providers with fair pricing.

Corporate application techs are usually $2k-200k/month depending on size

Ops are a tech themselves, work with techs they split donations with or pay or nothing at all, or become a tech themselves as time goes on.

Anything that requires a GPU would be a custom build, dell power edge is a powerful machine you can lookup retail for

True, but a website like FitGirl Repacks needs no GPU.

Storage Amazon s3 is $0.022 per GB/month

Don’t use Amazon S3 if pricing is a concern.

Keep in mind that providers […] often provide multiple releases codexes, resolutions and providing a lot more than people are requesting

I’m not sure what to say about that? They sure can do that for images, but not for game repacks.

You often have to pay for networking as well which scales exponentially

Pirates don’t build on-prem data centers, they rent servers or services.

Email accounts are usually $10/user/month any time would come from a senior developer ~120+k/year

No, they can re-use whatever server they use for email. Why pay a senior developer ~120+k/year for email?

But they are likely full stack developers so it might be closer to 200k in the US

If a developer works with a pirate, they don’t get paid a wage. They’re part of the operation, and get paid depending on the donations or nothing at all.

And servers to run development environments (double the costs above!!!)

The development environment can be on the server or even on the dev’s laptop. They already paid for that, so $0.

And infrastructure like Jenkins/monitoring which can scale high as well, but likely <$20k/year

Put it on the server. Scalability isn’t practical for pirates to begin with. If they lay all eggs in one basket for maximum scalability and cost savings, then the cloud provider can end their entire operation.

I didn’t know that. Yeah, that sounds reasonable if they need it. It’s probably best to view my original comment from the perspective that they don’t need these benefits.

Hard if not impossible to say. It depends on what they host. Hosting also gets real expensive if they make poor choices.

If they choose to host their WordPress piracy website on WordPress.com, then that’s a shit idea. They’re overpriced as hell, even with an annual discount. 300 € annually is WordPress.com’s discounted price for a somewhat usable, but still restricted WordPress instance. Furthermore, pirates face the risk that hosting providers terminate their account and keep the money, so long billing periods are risky.

They accept that risk to save some cash, and use WordPress.com. Okay, now what? WordPress.com terminates the account at the start of the new billing period and keeps the money. How sweet. Pay 300 € for the privilege of another restricted WordPress instance. Annual spending: 600 € for what could’ve been 21.12 € annually with a dumb simple Hetzner webspace.

You may think that this is impossible, nobody is dumb enough to spend 600 € when a 21.12 € solution is good enough, right? Look no further than any company that lifts and shifts apps into the cloud that weren’t designed to run in the cloud. Expensive as hell for no fucking reason other than it’s in the cloud now. Or this poor fella who got a $ 30 gift card for saving their employer $ 500,000 with five clicks.

… from committing the severe crime of copyright infringement, of course!

I see you’ve never used a Lisp REPL before.

Unlimited is never unlimited. Why nobody forces them to disclose this clearly is a mystery to me. An unlimited contract with 5 TB data for 15€/m is better than an unlimited contract with 1 TB data for 15€/m, given everything else is aight.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/18ab5p9/is_using_a_tool_with_an_occult_name_a_sin/

You conflate VPN providers have an incentive to store no logs with it’s impossible to verify whether VPN providers store logs. It’s like trusting your friend to keep a secret. They promise not to write down what you say, but you can’t be sure. You accept that risk in your threat model, and that’s fine. But newcomers should judge that risk themselves. I feel like “Don’t worry bro, they don’t keep logs.” is an inappropriate response to people that’re about to commit a crime that can land them in jail.

This page no longer exists.

Man, that’d be horrible! Imagine people could exercise their rights. Thank God we live in a world of zero digital ownership with anti DRM circumvention laws to strip everyone from rights copyright laws are supposed to grant. We can sue anyone that scans books and lends them out 1:1 as that’s untransformative and unfair use. But hey, it’s a free market! Let’s offer them e-books with DRM for $15 that libraries can only lend out 15 times, 20 hours total read time or three months after purchase, whichever comes first, and then jack up the price to $30 when they’re locked into the ecosystem. Sounds like a fair deal to me! Not like they have an alternative.

Because Defender already covers what DNS blacklists block and more with less false positives and a proper way to manage exceptions for non-technical people. Older malware is a solved problem for Defender since it’s literally pre-installed everywhere. VPN providers don’t have a way to manage DNS blacklist exceptions, so have fun disabling your VPN to do any research. You also don’t get to choose the blacklists your VPN provider uses. Saying 3. is not a point is like saying malware that’s always able to bypass your anti-malware solution is irrelevant.

I can’t call DNS blacklists part of defense in depth. DNS blacklists are a poor man’s version of existing and pre-installed anti-malware software.

• DNS blacklists block only older known malware, similar to existing anti-malware, but less effective.
• DNS blacklists block hijacked, but legit websites that host malware, contrary to existing anti-malware.
• DNS blacklists? What is that? I use DoH, get fucked. Contrary to existing anti-malware.

They’re completely bypassable, they boast a high false positive rate due to how threat actors host malware, and they don’t even block newer malware. Just use Windows Defender. It ain’t perfect, but it’s leagues better than any DNS blacklist.

DNS blacklists also don’t protect you from most malware.

VPN providers don’t protect you from malware.

You can’t trust VPN providers to store no logs. It’s impossible to verify. I don’t get why people downvote this comment.

Yeah, the ads are a crime against humanity. I bought the movie ffs. Let me watch it.