Do you help keep torrents alive?

So that incident where Sony's customers data was stolen could never have happened because they are a big company which are never careless? Right...

Why do you keep changing the issue at hand? What on earth does potentially being hacked have to do with 'proving' you paid for a legit service by credit card, and/or connected to it over SSL by harvesting ISP logs? Even if they were hacked, I wouldn't be worried. The effort (and mass of space) needed to set up logging, where none is required by law and where they advertise there is none, outweighs any remote possibility Astraweb/Giganews/Highwinds care what traffic passes through their servers.

We know they are involved in criminal activity, anyone who has used newsgroups know that. Large corporations are rarely honest with moral credibility in reality.

In as much as Google has supplied probably 99% of torrents downloaded? Yeah.
 
Why do you keep changing the issue at hand? What on earth does potentially being hacked have to do with 'proving' you paid for a legit service by credit card, and/or connected to it over SSL by harvesting ISP logs? Even if they were hacked, I wouldn't be worried. The effort (and mass of space) needed to set up logging, where none is required by law and where they advertise there is none, outweighs any remote possibility Astraweb/Giganews/Highwinds care what traffic passes through their servers.

You were the one who said that they were trustworthy because of their size.

What I'm saying is that I wouldn't be so trusting of company policies given the track record businesses have for being lax with their customer privacy and security.

In as much as Google has supplied probably 99% of torrents downloaded? Yeah.

I wasn't aware google hosted pirated movies and games. Nor purposely did it for profit.
 
You were the one who said that they were trustworthy because of their size.

No, you called them criminals and I pointed out they were old, well established and industry-prevalent corporations.

What I'm saying is that I wouldn't be so trusting of company policies given the track record businesses have for being lax with their customer privacy and security.

If they're multi-million (billion?) dollar criminals who've managed to survive for decades, I'd imagine they'd be aware that going to all the trouble of paying for a ton of extra server space, CPU cycles and electricity to log evidence against themselves was a bad idea.

I wasn't aware google hosted pirated movies and games. Nor purporsely did it for profit.

Google makes profit from almost every search (ad-blockers excepted) and certainly hosts a great deal of indexed copyright content ranging from NZB and torrent files (other sites have been closed down because this indexing was held to be illegal), through to images and books. My point was that Usenet is a lawful and useful service and that the companies running them are about as criminal as Google.

We clearly will have to agree to disagree as I have no desire to spend the rest of the night/day arguing such a frankly trivial point. Goodnight. :)
 
I almost forgot about this, but yes you are putting a lot of trust in a company involved in criminal activity by assuming that what they are saying is true. For all you know they could be keeping logs, whether out of legal requirement or apathy.

Do you have any idea how massive Usenet providers are? The providers themselves have nothing to do with "criminal activity". They are run by extremely large and trust-able service providers.

Even Virgin Media give usenet access to their customers!
 
The money isn't in the linux distros.

You could say the same thing about ISPs selling 16, 24, 30, 50 and 100+ Mbps connections for substantially more than dial up or 512Kbps services. The money isn't in email and basic web pages.

Oops I was supposed to be staying out of this lol :o :D
 
You could say the same thing about ISPs selling 16, 24, 30, 50 and 100+ Mbps connections for substantially more than dial up or 512Kbps services. The money isn't in email and basic web pages.

Oops I was supposed to be staying out of this lol :o :D

Not really because one is a service designed and run specifically to cater for illegal activity where the providers make no effort to regulate it, while the other isn't. Also you seem to be confusing bandwidth for transfer limit, because those fast connections allow one to download content rapidly but not necessarily download a lot of it. It is not acceptable to knowingly run a business based on criminal activity.
 
Not really because one is a service designed and run specifically to cater for illegal activity where the providers make no effort to regulate it, while the other isn't. Also you seem to be confusing bandwidth for transfer limit, because those fast connections allow one to download content rapidly but not necessarily download a lot of it. It is not acceptable to knowingly run a business based on criminal activity.

Oh please stop pulling arguments out of........ err... thin air ;)

Usenet was NOT designed for illegal activity.
 
Not really because one is a service designed and run specifically to cater for illegal activity where the providers make no effort to regulate it, while the other isn't. Also you seem to be confusing bandwidth for transfer limit, because those fast connections allow one to download content rapidly but not necessarily download a lot of it. It is not acceptable to knowingly run a business based on criminal activity.

Nonsense. Usenet is older than the ark and is not designed and run specifically for illegal activity at all. As for confusing bandwidth and transfer limits (WTH?), I regularly pull over 1TB a month on my 100Mbps connection. Try that on dial-up.
 
Usenet was NOT designed for illegal activity.

Nonsense. Usenet is older than the ark and is not designed and run specifically for illegal activity at all. As for confusing bandwidth and transfer limits (WTH?), I regularly pull over 1TB a month on my 100Mbps connection. Try that on dial-up.

I'm not referring to the architecture, I'm referring to specific premium services.
 
I'm not referring to the architecture, I'm referring to specific premium services.

:confused:

There are no "specific premium services" on usenet. Usenet is usenet, simple. Usenet is propagated throughout the world. If I make a post on a usenet server in Timbuktu it'll make it's way to every other usenet server in the world, premium service or otherwise. :confused:

I'm going to leave now because you seem to have no idea about usenet and by continuing here I am breaking the 1st rule of usenet ;) :p
 
:confused:

There are no "specific premium services" on usenet. Usenet is usenet, simple. Usenet is propagated throughout the world. If I make a post on a usenet server in Timbuktu it'll make it's way to every other usenet server in the world, premium service or otherwise. :confused:

I'm going to leave now because you seem to have no idea about usenet and by continuing here I am breaking the 1st rule of usenet ;) :p

It is you who does not understand what I am saying. I'm referring to the premium servers created to facilitate the downloading of illegal content, not the architecture as I have already stated.
 
I'm referring to the premium servers created to facilitate the downloading of illegal content, not the architecture as I have already stated.

IT IS the architecture. Usenet is the same wherever you go!. There's no such thing as a non-premium server created for completely non-illegal content.

Virgin Media's usenet service has exactly the same illegal stuff you would find on giganews.


I can't believe I keep getting suckered in to reply. Must stop wasting my time. No more.
 
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IT IS the architecture. Usenet is the same wherever you go!. There's no such thing as a non-premium server created for completely non-illegal content.

I'm specifically criticising the businesses based on selling illegal content which is what the premium servers are used for by customers. People don't tend to use them for legal downloads!
 
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I can see what Energize is trying to say, Usenet is just that, exactly, but companies like giganewz, UNS etc are taking advantage of that architecture and selling access to what usenet has. True, VM does have the same illegal stuff on there, but with a MUCH shorter retention of 30 days (used to be 7), whereas giga / UNS is 200 odd days retention now.

On topic, i don't torrent that much tbh, i don't download half as much as i used to, but i'll always check usenet first before i rely on a torrent, and i probably hav close to a 1:1 ratio, purely as i forget to close utorrent after i use it.
 
Can I also add that as far as I know the only people who have ever been caught/fined are torrent users because they share.
Every case I've ever read always includes 'sharing' in it.
Perhaps somebody who knows more than me can clarify this.
 
I believe you are right dmpoole, it's usually those who share that are caught / fined. Maybe it's easier to prove?
 
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