For AI training? Or why would someone specifically pay attention to watermarks? I believe there are curated datasets out there. And watermark detectors to weed out watermarked pictures from a pile of data. I don’t think the general public sorts by presence of watermarks…
And I’m not sure about games and webcomics. They all have some logo somewhere, because they’ve been made by someone. If you don’t want that, you’re looking for white-label products. I think in the realm of privacy, and those product types, that’s a small to non-existent niche.

Maybe you can find some more discussion and the reasoning in their documentation or Github issues or pull requests. I bet this has been discussed before someone implemented it. Maybe there’s also a way to restore the old behaviour.

We also had expensive engineering software at university. Oftentimes it’s a major PITA for everyone. The PhD students have to get their work done and are met by the software refusing to start because all licenses are taken. Sometimes someone forgot to log off or the computer crashed and the software takes most of the day to recover that license. Or some people do like 5 simulations in parallel. Or lock the computer, go home and block a license. The IT department will get lots of calls and have to deal with it. Especially when the pool of licenses is small. And it takes additinal effort to coordinate practical courses and excercises where you teach a group of 24 people which then need half the license pool available at a fixed time each week, despite the daily routine of everyone else.

And I’m not even sure if the people responsible, care too much for pirated software. But they’re liable. Of course they write strongly worded mails when talking to everyone. It’s their IT infrastructure and they can’t have people do illegal things with it. Especially not while having an expensive contract with some supplyer. They can’t have anyone leak a mail where they endorse piracy. Or post screenshots or turn in assignments or papers with screenshots that say “unregistered copy” in the bottom corner. And once students do silly things and the piracy is on display publicly, they’ll have to do something. Usually that’s writing a strongly worded email first. Because that takes next to no effort. I think the usual IT department doesn’t care as long as things go smoothly, people do their various things and no one complains. They usually have other stuff to do. That makes me think in this story something must have happened that warranted some form of public reaction or at least show they addressed it and they have it in writing.

And I think the rest of the mail fits such IT people. They said why they do it and that they can’t have piracy connected to the institutes name. They say they need some incoming complaints to justify buying more licenses. And the punishment fits the crime. They just disconnect the computer from their network and it’s not their problem anymore. I think that’s fair.

That’s a good idea. I think it’s a bit problematic under these circumstances since OP wants to host game files which are probably some larger binaries. And that’s going to show a different usage pattern and more traffic than the usual code. I don’t know if they monitor things like that and remove these repos. But I have to remember that idea.

And an idea regarding the links: I’ve tried some emulators and do some retrogaming every now and the. Usually these projects take some care to not list the sites with the ROM collections on their official pages. As a user you usually go to archive.org and download things from there or scroll through their forum or subreddit and that kind of info pops up pretty quickly. So once they have an active community it spreads via word of mouth. Maybe you can also post a sticky you’re not affiliated with websites like X and Y, but you’d have to ask a lawyer if that’s alright.

I guess some people just don’t care and do it anyways. And I’m not sure how much the copyright industry and courts care about people chatting about copyright infringement and not actually doing it at that place. Could be protected by free spech in some jurisdictions. You can obviously live in a place that doesn’t care about copyright. But I guess people don’t move across the world just for that.

You could find bulletproof hosting pay anonymously and take care to never mention any personal information about you. But given what you said, that’s not what you want. I’d split responsibility between several people and let someone else do the copyright infringement. Someone who lives someplace else and doesn’t engage themselves on the website. And focus on the development and the legal aspect of it. Or just do the illegal part and not do the software. But I imaging it’s really complicated to do both sides of that coin in one person… And I suppose running an illegal website costs more money than running a regular one.

Is there some precedent to believe that they correlate (encrypted) datacenter traffic, find the patterns and actually use that somehow?

I mean I can see how that’d theoretically work under certain circumstances and low network load on the VPN server. But that’s really complicated, circumstantial, unreliable and takes lots of effort and probably can’t be used in court anyways. So I wonder if that’s ever been done. Maybe for some circumstancial evidence for some proper crimes to find out where to investigate? And I mean I’m pretty sure the NSA snoops everywhere. Still they’re unlikely to be able to look inside with just these tools. And they’re also unlikely to prosecute some swedish user for some lame copyright violation.

To add a bit: It doesn’t make a difference whether you’re use a cable or the wifi. It’s still the same internet connection. What helps is the VPN connection. And it doesn’t really matter if you’re setting it to your home country or a random one. If it protects you as intended, they can’t find you either way. And if it doesn’t, you may be screwed either way.

Yeah. Just make sure you’re also smarter than them or they’ll outsmart you. You’re moving into their territory and you don’t seem prepared at all. That makes you prey once you do anything without thinking it through.

And don’t keep it to the hackers. Be careful with the police, too. Once you download such things, you’re in posession of the data. And you did it deliberately. So if your contry has a hacking law: You’re liable. And you’re in for fraud, too. That might be more than some lame copyright infringement, but a proper felony.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BreachForums
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulled
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaidForums
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark0de
• …

Good luck 😩 I hope you read what I wrote earlier… Don’t get cought by police. The usual copyright infringement we discuss here is one thing. Getting involved with fraud and proper criminals is another thing. I wouldn’t do it if I were you.

Usually those kinds of things are traded in bulk in some (hidden) forums. As stolen credit cards, payment accounts etc are used to commit fraud and steal money, they also want quite some money for the datasets. And you won’t get all of the stolen accounts, just some random chunk with an amount of stolen accounts you can afford. So I don’t think it’ll help you in your situation.

And beware if engaging with such people. They already commit fraud and they might as well rip you off, too. Not deliver anything or whatever. Since you’re doing something illegal, too, you can’t do anything about that and some people are bound to exploit that. And don’t pay them money regardless, or you’ll support their business.

And sometimes lists of stolen passwords, accounts also get leaked to the public and they’re available via torrent or something. But that’s rare, the datasets are old, or one group hacked another and it was an one-off thing to damage their business… Also not what’s going to help in your case. If it’s still of value, it usually costs money.

A Dell laptop

Well, I’d say take content you yourself like. Maybe something with value. It’s always nice if people who are passionate about something are involved.

Regarding websites: I’m not sure if that’s the correct way. Usually they’re done by a small closed group. And if you want to be a pirate, you have to climb the ladders. There isn’t a simple tutorial that makes you the captain stright away. You start scrubbing the deck, learn how things work, gain knowledge and choose where to get involved. Slowly you’ll learn and someday may be crew or even first mate.

So dive in. Watch. See what you like and see if there’s something at that place that could need your attention. And ask the people there.

1. Download content
2. Share content with other people.

• Use protection

I’m pretty sure most (all?) ISPs in Europe refuse nice requests. We have some data/privacy protection laws (GDPR …) and it’d be illegal for them to just hand out your address. But as a company they have to comply with law, so that’s why they need involve a judge. I think the courts also don’t like to do this kind of work.

In the good old times some of our providers solved the issue by not logging IP addresses. So they’d be ordered by the court to say who did it, and they’d rightully say they don’t have logs and don’t know. But as far as I know that’s a thing of the past. Some politicians regularly push for more surveillance. They start an argument every year or so, claiming online child abuse and pushing for more surveillance. I think as of now most providers keep logs, at least for some time.

The situation depends on the European country, however. Some don’t really pursue copyright violations. And we’re in a similar situation to Australia in that it’s a civil matter and not any crime. I’m not sure how it is in the USA. They famously don’t have any strong privacy protection (in most states), so maybe ISPs just hand out info about their customers. I don’t really know.

Tor has massive issues with torrent traffic. Don’t do torrent over TOR.

Internet service providers don’t directly rat you out. The way it works is: Some (shady) companies watch torrent traffic for the copyright holders, and log the IP addresses. If it’s a residential address and from a country they can pursue in, they file a court case. The judge then decides and sends a letter to the internet service provider. The ISP then is obliged to tell the court. It’s a lawful request by a court. And then they get you.

Sometimes they can also take some shortcuts for a action for injunction(?). (I’m not sure if that’s the correct term.) At least that’s what they commonly do in Germany, where I live.

I’m not sure how law works in Australia. But where I live, it’s pretty uncommon to pirate content via bittorrent without a VPN. There is a good chance you’ll one day get an uncomfortable letter in the mail, if you push it.

It’s probably a map of where VPN servers are located mixed with countries that don’t persue copyright violations. And not necessarily where the users are located.

Uuh. I wouldn’t do it. As far as I know iOS is still pretty locked down and that won’t change.

I’m not sure if we’re going for the same thing or have different views. I think especially with art there is a difference between mass produced and good things. And it’s the same thing with other topics. You can buy a domestic made brand name electric drill that’ll last you some time or a cheap one from china for $30. Nice clothes or the cheap ones from Primark. You can buy a deep-frozen pizza and eat that or go to the nice italian restaurant…

I don’t think I have any issue with that concept. (At least in general… Sewing t-shirts in horrible conditions somewhere in Bangladesh isn’t moral. But it’s a stretch to apply that analogy to AI.) I mean what’s the issue with that? If I want some super cheap food that is easy to prepare, I’m glad that we have frozen pizza. And if someone invents a way to mass produce frozen pizza even cheaper… I have more options available to decide which quality I like and what I can afford.

And sticking with that crude analogy… I’m not sure if we should ban frozen pizza so the italian restaurant can make more profit… In the end I think it’s supply and demand and how capitalism works. I like original and creative music. There might be a demand for mass produced and cheap music, too.

Being out-competed at producing some low-quality, cheap products isn’t necessarily a bad thing (in my eyes). And it doesn’t really take away from the quality products. Also if someone is doing lots of tedious work and ends up with something low-quality, I’m not sure who is at fault. As far as I know there are a lot of studios and writers who pump out pop song lyrics and melodies en masse. It’s not the same process as what a proper band does. And that’s also something AI can’t do, so I don’t see any issue there.

Correct. And the RIAA and Sony Music Entertainment etc have lots of money for expensive lawyers. Small artists, companies and people don’t have that and start with a big disadvantage per default. It’s always like that. I have some limited faith in the judiciary. Sometimes there is a David vs Goliath moment. But we all know in reality there are many stunts available for rich entities to pull, and win against someone, despite being in the wrong.

There is a line somewhere between copying a style (which seems to be fine) and copying a song. I suppose that has to be judged on a case by case basis. And it’s not something new. We’ve had Red Hot Chili Peppers cover bands who need to pay them to use their songs. And bands who play original songs in the style of RHCP. I’ve been to such a concert in some pub like 7 years ago and it was awesome. I don’t think that’s copyright infringement. But they had a very very similar style, a name that was a pun on the original and even the vocalist did a good job of sounding similar to Anthony Kiedis.

I’m not sure what kinds of laws there are. But if that’s okay, I think same should apply to AI.

I’m a bit split on the whole topic. Artists get ripped off anyways. Look at what Spotify pays them, and we can skip arguing about other things. They take 15€ from me and forward next to nothing to smaller artists. And I’ve rarely heard original songs in the radio. I think 99% of music is dull pop songs made for radio and to appease. Always a similar set of instruments, one of the common chord progressions, not too adventurous so it can be played on radio, same small set of topics they sing about. It’s not my music and I don’t feel anything when listening to that kind of music. I don’t mind at all if that gets replaced by AI.

My thinking is: If that’s the level of creativity the artists are able to come up with, they deserve to get replaced by AI. And if the audience wants dull, canned pop made in a factory (as it’s been for some time already), they, too, don’t deserve any better.