More Awesome Than You!

I've been torrenting for some time, and tonight my internet was abruptly shut off, with this message from my service provider displayed in my browser.
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f68/rosenshyne/CoxCeaseandDesist.jpg)
I wasn't leeching M&G, I was seeding it, and have been for at least a month. While this was likely the work of a mole, I wanted to ask if there are any precautions the more experienced among you use to hide your tracks. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Crikey, that's a bit of a shocker. I'd be livid. My sympathies.

I use satellite internet provided by Hughenet. Costs more but they don't care what I look at or download as long as the bill is paid every month. I'm not financially well off but I budget for it because it's a priority. Pay for better service get more free stuff.

Were you trying to encrypt the BitTorrent traffic in any way?

Apparently there's a service called Torrent Privacy that is billed as the only secure way to torrent privately, but it costs $100 a year to suscribe.  At that cost I might as well buy the stuff I'm torrenting.

There's your problem right there. Change your IP and loadout more frequently than that!

Looks like I need to learn a new skill.

Peer Guardian is also your friend.

"Peer Guardian" is a useless waste of space. Just don't sit around seeding things for months. :P

How do you change your IP? The only way I know is to use Tor and from what I understand that's frowned upon because it hogs the available resources. Correct me if I'm wrong. Like you wouldn't.

I normally only torrent pretty obscure stuff, ebooks and old music, stuff like that. But I torrented Sims 3 because I wanted to see if it was the POS people are saying it is before I plunked down cash for it. I seeded for a while but got nervous and shut it off. I hate being a leech but I can't afford to pay for privacy service. I do continue to seed the other torrents I've downloaded as I doubt they'll draw any interest from the powers that be. Maybe I'm wrong there, too.

One other question: The notice rosenshyne got says she can reactivate her connection once she's removed the M&G file from her computer. How can they tell whether she did or not, unless she resumed that specific torrent? Is Big Brother that big?

Satellite internet is crap. Get a real ISP.

Satellite internet is entirely serviceable for non-latency-sensitive operations, like Torrentry. It is a supplement to, not a substitute for, real Internets.

You can unplug your modem and wait a few minutes if you have DSL. If you have cable, It's not as easy. Try googling for more info about your modem or ISP and see if it's possible and how to do it. It's really not going to make much a difference if you do switch your IP, they keep records of who has what IP. If you've been caught, it's already too late.

As far as rosenshyne's notice, I highly doubt big brother is scanning her PC. They likely had bots out downloading torrents and picking up the IPs then just routing the IP to that page when they busted her. They will know if she didn't delete it if the bot finds her same IP seeding again.

Thanks for the response.

I do have cable and I know my IP is static. When I first started looking into torrents I searched for ways to stay anonymous and that's how I found out about Tor. The info I got said that you shouldn't use Tor for torrenting, though (sounds odd when you put it that way, doesn't it? You'd think something called Tor would be made for Tor-renting.) and that if too many people did it, they might even shut it down. I'm not geek enough to know how or why, it's just what I read. Every other method I found requires payment, except Peer Guardian, which I read everywhere is a worthless POS. Pescado thinks so, too, and that's the final word as far as I'm concerned. If you know of an effective anonymizer that's free please let me know!

I haven't been caught but I guess everybody who torrents worries about it. I avoid really popular stuff and recent releases. Most of that doesn't appeal to me anyway. As I said, I risked downloading Sims 3 because there's so much negative buzz about it and for me it's a lot of money to throw down for something I might not like and can't return.

Step one is, as everyone here has already informed you, getting a better ISP. Secondly you have to make sure you make it hard for the ISP find out what you are doing, since they automatically monitor certain types of traffic. If you're not already using a torrent client that has protocol encryption and tunneling options, you should switch to one that has it - it is also good for the ISP's that are throttling torrent traffic.To let you seed for longer times, you can change the seeding options in your client.

As for further security when torrenting, a secure VPN service is the best (unless you have other connections) - they are usually not pricey and more and more is popping up. The load times get slower, but nobody will know what you are doing.

Tor is not to be recommended - torrenting over the Tor network is very slow (slower than a vpn) and the network isn't designed for that kind of traffic - you might even piss some people of by using it for torrents.

Wow.  I can't believe so many of you are so n00bish when it comes the arring.  SHEESH.  Step one would be get rid of all your P2P junkware and ARRR for real.  In fact, the only necessarry step is for you to leech from files that are, usually, readily available from the original, tried and true servers of speech and share.  NEWS SERVERS, ya bunch o' dorks.  And to make things much easier, if you're like me and not invited to join newzbin, search for Usenet Explorer.  You must PAY for the program, mainly because it uses its own indexing server and hackers can't crack that with lasting success.  The program is well worth the costs, I've paid for it twice (18 month license) and it save tons of time by avoiding the task of downloading headers and sifting through them to find what you're wanting.  Actually, it's much like yer junkware only not as pretty and a little more complicated.  In addition, if your ISP doesn't provide good news service with high retention (mine leases access from giganews, which is about as good as it gets, plus I use Usenet-news.net as a backup) then you'll need to pay for usenet access from a third-party.  If you want to avoid a monthly payment and download less than 10GB per month, you can buy datablocks from Usenet-news.net that do not expire.

SO, to sum up, a very small investment will help you avoid yer stupidz P2P woes.  Oh, and if your arring isn't worth, say, $20 usd per month for a quality news services, then I don't know what to think.  I guess that's why stupid P2P and websites have such success preying on yer stupidz cheap azzez.  Oh yeah, and arring is intended to be TRIALWARE.  If you enjoy something after testdriving it, you should buy the damn thing and if you don't pay the dues, then I think you have no voice to criticize and should shut the fuck up with yer whining.  Get real, in a small, hickville southeast US town, I just spent $47.xx on a dinner meal for TWO.  In contrast, $49.99 for a game that I've had weeks of fun with.  Hmmm.  How can anyone not see the entertainment's worth in that small fee?  Huh?  Some of you people baffle me, just how fuckin' cheap are yoU?

Nimrod, your lack of knowledge about the general belief system is showing:
(http://cats.moreawesomethanyou.com/piratecat.jpg)
Agreed that some are doing it wrong, but then so are you. Paying for Arring defeats the purpose.


FYI, I am fucking cheap. $47 for dinner for two in hickville? Please. Two good meals here, in Chicago, cost about that. In my smallish town in Indiana, average dinner for two is $20-$25.

Well I know people need to seed but as soon as I get the torrent I get off as quickly as possible. I might let it seed for a few hours but certainly not for weeks. I do not want to draw attention to myself.

Zazazu, that wasn't an average price, it is mid-range, just an example of what I had spent the night before (and I actually compared the price to what I had spent on TS3 as I was paying).  Seems like the pricing up there and here are the same though.  No fair, you guys earn higher wages.   :P

Coincidentally, I just returned from an early Father's Day outting with my three daughters.  An outting that included Red Lobster... now if only I could have ARRRed that meal!  It was funny watching glimpses of their expressions as they tried to hide them while reviewing the bill.  HAha.  So, I snatched the bill, thanked them for their time they had spent with me and paid it myself.  But that's just me, I enjoy paying for things when I find them worthy and these days, getting all three of my daughters together at once is worth quiet a bit... apparently.

Lastly, I'm not the only one paying for my ARRing, I just go steps futher to get quality, reliability and privacy!  If you pay for internet access, then you're paying for yer ARRing.  In this light, the only ones who do it right are the ones who also leech off their neighbor's unsecured/poorly secured wireless access.

Actually, I make nothing since I'm laid off, except for a bit of income from a temp job a couple weeks ago. However, rent on a decent one-bedroom apartment 6 miles from downtown will run you about $900 here. And a condo? You can find places for around $130k, but you wouldn't want to live there unless you like getting shot at. A two bedroom, smallish place runs around $200k. In this market. There are little houses in my neighborhood that go for 1.5 mil. Yeah, we make more. We pay more, too. Food prices just aren't too bad if you stick to neighborhood joints (not downtown where there is an additional tax) and know the specials.

And I just almost had a panic attack, thinking it was Father's Day. My poor little dad would have been heartbroken if I forgot to call him.

I'll seed for a couple hours, too, but no longer than that. My Internets! Mine!

You PAY to eat out? That seems STUPID. If I actually can be bothered to go OUT, I expect to find my food for FREE. Try some of that free-range, organic, 100% all-natural, automotively processed meat.

Okay, Zazazu,  you're right, I apologize.  It's just that the scene has suffered severly because of P2P methods.  But alas, to each his own, ARRR. 

And our Presidente is a riot!  Road kill imagery on such a stuffed stomie though, that's tough.  :-X

Then the "scene" is suffering the same malaise as the industry: Failure to adapt to the changing landscape. Just like the industry, it must learn to adapt and become stronger and more efficient, or die. It is the way of things: The strong survive, the weak perish.

True, but I wouldn't consider any P2P method, what with its many restrictions, such as low bandwidth and reliance on end-users, to be something that is stonger nor more efficient to the trusty news servers.  Which, with the fact that there continues to be a premium cost,  the evidence is clear that some things are simply worth those costs.  I'll gladly pay the fee and have my nice, single channel connections that blast my stuffs to me at full 1.5 MBps sppeeedz, with no IP sniffs logging my activities to boot!  Heh, perhaps that's the crop cream, pay just a little for true anonymity... at least until "they" decide otherwise, becuase right now, usenet is the only thing not being fucked with, except the idiots that are flooding it with old trojans and various maleware. 

See PURPOSE DEFEATING. If you're going to PAY MONEY for that, you've defeated the entire point!

Your earlier suggestion that the price is the reason most people ARR is missing a point that is very relevant in the Sims community.

Many of the simmers I know that ARR their games (myself included) did not start ARRing until BV & SecuROM.  For this group of simmers, it's not about the cost of the game or not being able to afford the game, it is about refusing to pay for spyware that damages computers - including the computers of my adult daughter and at least one other person we know in real life.

As TS3 does not come with a version of SecuROM that installs itself onto your computer, my daughter and I have returned to buying the game.  Yes, we ARRed the pre-release version, but on release day we headed down to the local computer store and each of us handed over our $100 AUD to purchase the game - that's about $80 USD each.  We could each have paid for a couple of nights out at local restaurants for that.

Mr. Presidente, you are failing to keep things within the proper context here.  The amount paid is nothing when you compare it to what you've saved.  Chumpy lil' $50 buck games aren't all there is to be had.  Just think, for a small fee you get quality products that range a very broad spectrum.  TIVO is something that comes to mind.  FUCK TIVO, as I've read elsewhere.  I watch commercial free TV that's delivered speedily and on demand as I wish.  Of course, I did buy a Western Digital media player, and nifty passport drive in matching color and two 32MB flash drives, so I could free the laptop from the entertainment center.  Worth every cent, it was.

I understand your point and your purpose.  My point, however, is that some things, tangible or otherwise, are worth the costs.  If I spend $20 USD for a month of usenet service (which I do not because I get great service through ISP - I have paid for it in the past) and I obtain just one $50 game, how have I defeated the purpose?  I paid for a service and obtained a game through that service.  However you see this, the purpose wasn't defeated because I've saved $30 at the least, I've retained my anonymity and I wasn't bothered by P2P limitations and such.  If anything, I'm paying for the convenience and the safety of privacy, excluding ISP logging.  Then as the games, programs and media mount, that $20 is such a small fraction of the possible costs, that the cost itself is extremely justified.  But then, maybe my logic buffers are fried and I'm seeing this all wrong. 

Let's ignore the whole debate over how much electronic data is worth for a moment, because I have a really hard time deciding myself when the price reaches over $20. The problem with your model is that it's a subscription. That means that if I don't use it one month, I'm still paying for it. I'm adamantly against paying for anything I don't use. I'm also adamantly against having to go through the hassle of cancelling something. Been there, done that, with AOL back in the 90s, with RealArcade, with Columbia House and BMG in the 80s/90s. Subscriptions have never been anything but a pain to deal with. The closest I will get to a subscription of any kind today is my utilities, and those are basically unavoidable if you can't make a phone from a tin can, a fork, and a little motor oil.

I'll happily pay more for a single item than I could if I had a subscription to some monthly service. Why? Because after my purchase, it's over. If Usenet was $2.99/month, that would be too much, because I know that eventually I'm going to want to cancel it and I'll be stuck on the phone with some pimpled teen, screaming at him because he won't cancel my damn account already as his bosses require him to go through some 5 minute cross-sell script.

SecuROM hasn't presented me with any issues beyond minute memory usage and process cycles, I haven't experienced any sort of interference with other programs and stuffs.  Rootkits really piss me off though.  

I think we're relatively on the same page, you refuse to install SecuROM while I refuse to pay for something that I can't return if I'm not satisfied, simply because I MAY have copied the product to use illegally.  


I did stray from the original model of either, or.  Check it out, http://usenet-news.net/index1.php?url=get (http://usenet-news.net/index1.php?url=get) you can buy blocks that have no expiration date.  What is 100 gigabytes of data worth?  I'd say $23 is an acceptable amount, considering 100GB is a hugh amount of data!

Your name is quite fitting.

PIRATE CAT DOES NOT PAY FOR HIS DOWNLOADS

You wasscally wabbit you.  Oh well, fuck it.  Get yourselves a case built against you, see if I care.

Lucky you.  My daughter and that other person we know both had to replace their CD/DVD drives as a result of SecuROM.

Not quite the same page.  I refuse to install or pay for a version of secuROM that installs itself on my computer.  It's a fine distinction, but an important one.  This difference means that while you are happy to pay for an ARRed game if you find you like it, I know beforehand that I will *never* pay for any TS2 EP or SP released after they started including SecuROM.  I won't pay for malware.

Keep in mind that the average simmer is not your average gamer, we're a unique demographic in the gaming community.  We tend to be bitten by the "gotta own them all" bug (so yes, we want the EPs & SPs that come with SecuROM, but preferably without the SecuROM), but we are generally less likely to ARR until something like SecuROM comes along and changes our perspective on ARRing.

No shilling.

Or, you can hop on IRC and get your pirate cat fix that way. All this nonsense about newsgroups.

Also, Securom screwed with my anti-virus and firewall.

I do not think a pirate copy has the monetary value of a licensed copy for a simple reason - it lacks the license, which is what you actually pay for when you buy the software. For that reason, unlicensed copies are not worth being paid for more than the costs of data storage and transfer, which means the slowdown of network tubes and your computer and possibly additional power-on time, which slightly increases electricity consumption.

I don't see why anyone would pay EA a cent after the whole Securom thing, I haven't after I installed BV unknowing it'd be the last of my CD ROM. First I noticed the burner died, then it stopped reading discs, now it's permanently crippled and won't even open anymore. All happened within a week of installing so I know what did it. I've left it broke all this time because I don't really need it. I couldn't even put the Sims 3 disk in it if I wanted to, their fault, not mine.

None of those things have any worth to me whatsoever. I don't even own a TV.

1. By paying money to someone else, you've compromised your anonymity through THAT service, too.
2. Pirate Cat does not pay for his downloads. Period.

They're fried. You're missing one very important concept that has entirely eluded you:
(http://cats.moreawesomethanyou.com/piratecat.jpg)

You just had to mention IRC didn't you.  I...refuse...to allow myself...well let me just add that IRC is nothing but the original P2P.  Trace anyone?

Also, can someone produce unbiased, hard data materials about SucuROM and whether it is an actual rootkit, cause it's beginning to sound like one.  All I find are reports which are too biased one way or the other.  And, again, I've had no issues with it, except once, several years ago with dTools, before they went all commercial.  But other versions since then, and now, dTools Lite 4.30.4.0027 offer no hiccups.  I know this because the dreaded SucuROM is running it's little processes as I type, have an image mounted and have physical TS2AL disk in drive (which I haven't played in days but it works fine) and the downloaded retail of TS3 is running.  No problems anywhere, comodo is listing no suspicious connections and avast! pro reports system green with no rootkit activities.  Alas, I'm beginning to get paranoid about it though.

I know IRC is the original P2P. I was paranoid about COX and the torrents for Sims 3, I got it through IRC instead, grabbed a few movies and videos while I was there. If the industry starts cracking down on torrent sites then the pirates will just go back to IRC and News Groups. The scene isn't suffering because of torrenting, it's just become easier for even the average user, and is so much simpler. The IRC channels I've peeked into are still going strong. I have no idea about your newsgroups, maybe it's just that newsgroups aren't as popular anymore.

Securom gives itself access to the kernel of your OS. Ring 0. That way it can give itself permission to shut down or control programs that it shouldn't be able to. What benign copy protection does that? For me, it kept shutting my firewall down, I have my firewall set to only allow a handful of things out. Sims 2 was not among them. My anti-virus couldn't update, at all. It wouldn't allow it to. I couldn't even get it open to run. I removed Securom, all issues regarding that were gone. Several friends of mine online also suffered dvd drive loss. Couldn't burn anything, couldn't save family pictures to a disc, it soon stopped reading discs at all. These are people that I trust to not be retarded and just hop on the blame game, some were unable to open certain music player programs that they had and didn't put two and two together until several others were complaining of the same. There are completely legal reasons why you would have a program like Nero on your pc, but Securom says "no" and your game will not even run. What kind of benign copy protection dictates what software you can have on your pc? You would let some software tell you what you can and can not do on your own pc? It just assumes that you are a criminal and anything that even remotely looks like you can copy the game is seen as a threat, including some of Sony's own cd drives. Securom hides it's own files from you, why should it need to? Why should it need to lock it's own registry keys down so that you can't delete them, especially when the games are just going to reinstall it every time you run them? Just google Securom Issues and see how many people are complaining of them.
I'm the worst person to be giving this little talk though. My mind does not run in enough of a straight line and I can't seem to jot things down neatly. Visit reclaimyourgame.com, use google, listen to peoples' experiences, and form your own opinion.