this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
150 points (94.1% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

54788 readers
712 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Thanks to whoever posted this on reddit. I hope other clients detect and blocking it.

top 45 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] catsup@lemmy.one 39 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If it's spoofing them, its going to be more effort than it's worth to actually detect that client. I strongly recommend you to delete this post or you're gonna cause a massive Streissand Effect

[–] Sheeple@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seriously I didn't even know about Stremio up until now

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Seems to be a good app if you pair it with Real Debrid. Good UI, good platform support, very popular. I just don't want it wasting my seeding bandwidth.

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

There are more ways to detect than peer ID.

This client is already extremely popular. Before the spoofing update, it's mis-identified as TorrentStorm 0.0.0.8 in qBittorrent. It makes up half the peers on a lot of my torrents. Have you checked?

[–] Darkncoldbard@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

That. Is. Hilarious. I always block anyone that pops up as torrent storm since I never get any data from people on that service

Me, using a private tracker: Nope, don’t see them.

[–] duplexsystem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lemmy is not any where big enough of a platform to cause any noticeable Streissand Effect let alone a "massive" one

[–] SchizoDenji@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Lmao. Lemmy's active users isn't even 1% of people pirating.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does this really bother folks that much? I've never cared much about this kind of leeching as long as it isn't dominating my personal bandwidth. And it never has so far, though I have to admit my 4ish tb of movies isn't exactly high demand stuff, so I don't usually have more than one or two at a time being leeched.

Hell, I don't really care much about leeches anyway, as long as the overall ability to find things is still there. I look at it as the price of the freedom of torrents. There's always going to be higher demand for data than there are people with the resources/time/willingness to seed heavily. I'm okay with that because I don't really want to have to keep and seed every fucking thing out there, it would take much more storage than I can afford to be able to keep a ratio on most private trackers since I tend not to keep shit I don't intend to watch at least once a year unless it's something pretty damn obscure.

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It does dominate my personal bandwidth. You'll notice if one of your torrents is on their app. You'll be uploading all day and it'll fill half your peers list.

[–] TwanHE@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

As someone that uses stremio quite a lot thats sad but understandable to hear. I do try to make up for my leeching habbits by keeping every normal torrent seeding indefinitely.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I guess the low demand files I have keep me from running into it.

[–] lido@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't understand what's going on. Can someone ELI5?

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Torrents are people sharing files with each other, uploading and downloading. Stremio downloads, but never uploads. And now it doesn't want you to know who's using it, because people kept banning it.

[–] lido@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

Got it. Thanks!

[–] IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I though that streamio uploads too. Because a few months ago my internet browsing was slow, after I closed streamio the issue stopped.

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I dont think stremio does either technically. Stremio it's typically used as a front end application for debrid services. Mainly real debrid, all debrid and premiumize.

I believe the 2 debrids only download, but i think premiumize seeds, but not 100% sure.

That being said if a file gets added to these services it is not constantly leeching like op said. The real debid servers for example will download a torrent and distrubute the downloaded file throughout their cdn, leaving it in their cache for 30 days. I believe each time it is accessed by a user that 30 day clock is reset.

Stremio typically only shows cached torrents in there app so in order for a user to force a download they would need to go to their debrid provider directly and add the torrent causing it to get added to the cache.

Is it bad for the torrenting network, yes because they don't seed, is stremio using up all of seeders bandwidth, probably not

[–] hh93@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My girlfriend got a legal claim for using stremio when her vpn failed which in Germany is only possible if you actively upload something so I'd say it does that

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, maybe stremio has a torrent client compiled in or maybe a plugin i dont use has one then.

However, if you turn off upload in your torrent client you can still get caught, uploading isnt want triggers it, connecting to peers with your exposed ip triggers

[–] hh93@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah but afaik downloading in Germany isn't against the law since it's allowed to download a "backup copy" of things you actually own legally so it's pretty much never enforced. The only way people in Germany get sued is for uploading but then a couple of bytes is already enough in many cases

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

I can't speak for germany but where i live downloaders dont ever get sued, they just get complaints from isps and if they get too many they may be shut off or have their speed throttled.

Uploaders get sued because its too costly and time consuming to go after the downloaders

[–] ShinyRanger@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 points 1 year ago

Not using a debrid service in Germany is crazy

[–] IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What if im not using real debrid in streamio?

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not 100% sure but since they are free links they wont come from torrents, at least not in the same way. They are being scraped from streaming websites.

Whetger or not the original uploaded got them from a torrent is unknown but they would have just downloaded it once and uploaded so very different in its effect on torrenting.

Those sites have always coexisted with torrents because they are often of low quality whereas torrents are higher quality

[–] IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In Stremio Im using torrent plugins, not streaming websites.

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

Gotcha, i only use the debrid links so my knowledge on this was how cinemahd used to do it in the past

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

But to answer your question, if there is a plugin with a torrent client included then it is most likely set up to download the files sequentially to allow streaming but i would assume it is set to turn upload off (so it leeches) because your tv would probably buffer more if it used additional bandwith

If thats the case (not 100%) then that may be why they are trying to block stremio

[–] DroneRights@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Torrenting is a technology where a network of ordinary people share a file in tiny pieces all together. There's no central server, you connect to one, ten, or a hundred other computers who each give you part of the file.

Torrenting only works if people are uploading the file as well as downloading it. Giving a file to others is called seeding, and taking a file from others without giving back is called leeching. Most people are peers, who take the same amount they give. Ideally, everyone would be a peer, but since some people are leeches, we also need seeders.

I'm not familiar with this stremio app, but if it does what I think it does, then it takes from the network without giving back and it can now pretend to be a different client to sneak onto the network. If enough stremio users watch a show, it'll become unavailable to other pirates.

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not 100%, stremio is a front end for a debrid service and the debrid service will download the torrent and add it to their cache and stremio users will access the downloaded file directly from the debrid services' servers.

Only the initially download may cause a slow down of torrents. Idk exactly how they distribute the file to their cdn. If all the servers in their cdn download the same file at 1 time it may cause a temporary slow down of torrents but i would assume they don't download directly on each server and instead download on some close to the requesting user and then use some kind of file synchronization technique to propogate the file through the network.

Their cache is pretty huge and for most shows they already have tons of links cached and wouldn't need to keep downloading very often.

Stremio isn't the first front end for these services and like all the rest of them it will eventually get shutdown too and this will continue long after stremio.

The real.issuein my opinion isnt bandwidth hogging by debrid services its that if everyone migrates to them that the majority of the network will be leechers. With less seeders the remaining seeders will need more powerful computers to support the torrents and if they cant afford the upgrade them the whole system could collapse

[–] DroneRights@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of the shows I watch aren't popular to torrent. Infinity Train got taken down by Cartoon Network, and now it only exists for pirates. So pirates need to seed it so it can continue to exist in any form. Same for Generator Rex. I wanted to watch The Flying Nun, but it ran out of seeds and can't be watched anymore. If a single leech downloads a show on the brink like Generator Rex, it could end up like The Flying Nun. Gone forever. I'm not worried about these popular new releases like Invincible or Loki, I'm worried about media preservation.

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not so sure that this would hurt those tho. These services would require their to be at least 1 seeder to be able to stream it, so they arent really taking the seeder away. Most likely the seeder dropped.

If anything this would help the seeder by offloading downloading of the show else where and providing a second place for the file. Typically if you see a low seeded content that you like, it would be courteous to seed it after downloading it

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Stremio doesn't seed after you download. It downloads, puts on the screen, and throws away.

[–] neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, i get that the best option would be for stremio to seed it but i don't see how it would be feasible considering the low storage capacities of tvs.

The reality is i dont think this will kill torturing because leechers have always existed piracy is about providing things for free to others, can we really expect all the people who can't afford to buy the media to suddenly be able to afford a vpn, seedbox, storage?

Piracy is like tor network, volunteers are the backbone but most users are leechers. The network has been going strong for years with leechers and it wont die now

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago

Just use real-debrid. It acts as a cache for you for $3/month. Leech off someone you pay to leech off.

Not 100% on the terminology. Peers are everyone connected. Seeders have 100% of the file, and leechers don't. Leechers can be someone who stopped halfway and uploads the half they have, or someone who is still downloading, or someone who actually leeches.

[–] i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok... I like the interface of StremIO, which looks like a service aggregator (ie I can open the movie on a streaming service i have access to), but I don't like the fact that I can't pre-download and seed less popular files. It supports debrid services, but from the technical description, thesec seems to be leech-equivalent to seedboxes...

What would be a good drop -in replacement? Something that works on google TVs and is easy to maintain?

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If you use a debrid service, you're okay because the debrid service just downloads the file once and caches it for everyone, and you pay for the bandwidth to download from them. That isn't excessive leeching, whether they seed or not.

[–] i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

From my early torrent days, we used to say that any torrent we dont seed back to at rast 1:1 is bad for the network (leeching). I can see why there is a desire to block StremIO clients, but if it was modified to see back to some ratio, it would be nicer.

As for debrid, it's a bit too "centralised" for me still... I've read that it's a major weak point in the system and that servers are often unavailable. That's why i like the resilience of torrents. (Plus the sharing aspect. Sharing is caring!)

[–] blindsight@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've heard there are (more expensive) debris services that seed back, but I haven't researched it. I'd already paid for Real Debrid when I read that and it hasn't come up for renewal yet.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How much was it? They don’t seem to have prices clearly on their website.

[–] Froyn@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's what it's showing me:
$3.26 for 15 days.
$4.35 for 30 days.
$9.79 for 90 days.
$17.40 for 180 days.

I did the 90 days to try it out for $10.
3 days of "playing around with it".
Day 4 it was linked to StremIO on my Chromecast.
Day 5 it was linked to my NAS through rclone.

Thank you mate :)

[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I could never get it to work well, every movie I tried would only play for a few seconds then buffer, then just become unplayable, on very good Internet.

Did anyone create issue yet?

[–] tagginator@utter.online -3 points 1 year ago

New Lemmy Post: PSA: The popular leech client Stremio got an upgrade to spoof other clients than TorrentStorm. (https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/9523935)
Tagging: #Piracy

(Replying in the OP of this thread (NOT THIS BOT!) will appear as a comment in the lemmy discussion.)

I am a FOSS bot. Check my README: https://github.com/db0/lemmy-tagginator/blob/main/README.md