Thursday, 21 July 2016

Feds Seize KickassTorrents Domains, Arrest Owner

quote [ The U.S. Government has arrested the alleged owner of KickassTorrents, the world's largest torrent site. The 30-year-old Ukrainian was arrested in Poland today and is charged with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. In addition, a federal court in Chicago has ordered the seizure of several KAT domain names. ]

So much for that. Time to find another torrent site, preferably one that deals heavily with ebooks. Suggestions currently being accepted.

What I can't make up my mind about is, KAT was also an experiment to see if strong DMCA compliance would keep the man off their backs. Turns out, no, it won't. So fuck the man for shitting on a site that tried to follow the rules, but at the same time, fuck sites that do DMCA takedowns on shit I like, and maybe now sites will quit that ridiculous shit and stick it to the man even harder.

The other torrent site I still use on a regular basis: 1377x.to
[SFW] [obituaries] [+9 Sad]
[by rndmnmbr@12:21amGMT]

Comments

spaceloaf said @ 12:40am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Informative]
Personally, I don't use torrents anymore. I feel like media online distribution has gotten to the point that it's really unnecessary.

It's taken a lot of kicking and screaming from the conglomerates, and I do credit torrents for helping put pressure on them to get with the times. But now we access to basically limitless entertainment for a pretty reasonable cost in most cases (assuming you aren't trying to get the latest thing right as it comes out).


That being said, who the hell uses torrents for ebooks? That's like using an airplane to go to grocery store. Just use Library Genesis like a normal person. If you are in the US (or one of the other banned countries), you just have to use a free proxy to actually download a book (but you can browse without a proxy).
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 1:08am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Underrated]
Are you saying you wouldn't take a private airplane to the grocery store if you could?
takajou said @ 4:25am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:2 Insightful]
What do you take us for, plebians? The help is supposed to take the private plane to the grocery store.
cb361 said @ 11:22am GMT on 21st Jul
Your help has to take the private plane to the grocery? Squalor! Our help has people to do that kind of thing for them.
rndmnmbr said @ 12:49am GMT on 21st Jul
Well, see my own personal "reasonable cost" is precisely zero dollars. I am a thief, I steal things. Fuck paying for media.

(Also, christ on a pogo stick I had no idea Library Genesis existed!)
rndmnmbr said @ 1:09am GMT on 21st Jul
Also, I've been getting a lot of stuff through Open Library lately, via the Open Library book checkout > activated copy of Adobe Digital Editions > Calibre with De-DRM plugin program stack. My problem with that is, a lot of the books I want either don't have an ebook copy available, or someone else already has it checked out (which I guess I understand, they only have license to so many copies, but goddamnit it this is the digital age it's just data get with the program!)
mechavolt said @ 12:16pm GMT on 21st Jul
Huh, I'll have to check Library Genesis out. I've been using IRC for my ebooks, #ebooks on IRC Highway.
EvilNinjaX24 said @ 4:27am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
Well. Shit.
damnit said @ 12:27am GMT on 21st Jul
Damn. I guess I'll go to the next thousand other torrent sites.
rndmnmbr said @ 12:32am GMT on 21st Jul
Yes, but which thousand other torrent sites? And don't say The Pirate Bay, TPB has sucked for the past couple of years.
damnit said @ 12:34am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Informative]
Ok. This torrent has sourced me for the last 7 years: https://rarbg.com
rndmnmbr said[1] @ 12:37am GMT on 21st Jul [Score:1 Good]
Alas, Rarbg fails on two points: they don't have a well-curated ebook section, and registrations are closed. Scratch that. Don't need to join to download and there is an ebook section. So thanks!
conception said[1] @ 2:57am GMT on 21st Jul
iptorrents is my go to. If you are a good user and can maintain a good ratio, pm me your email I can send an invite. Only have three though so don't take if you won't use. :)
rndmnmbr said @ 5:57am GMT on 21st Jul
Tell me about their ebook section. Is it large, wide variety, well categorized? I'm not a ratio slave, but I'll happily keep a positive ratio if it gets me something I can't get as well anywhere else.

For reference, my current Empornium ratio is 2.4.
conception said @ 1:55pm GMT on 21st Jul
They have 21214 active book torrents. Is that good? I have no idea. They also have magazines and comic sections. Is that well categorized? They don't break the book section down into like fiction/non-fiction/young adult or anything like that.
rndmnmbr said @ 2:25am GMT on 22nd Jul
Yeah, that's a little thin on the water for my taste. Ebooks aren't a major focus of most torrent sites. Thanks for the offer, but I'm good.
arrowhen said @ 3:57am GMT on 21st Jul
My first stop for ebooks is usually bookzz.org. As long as what I'm looking for is at least vaguely "mainstream" (i.e., SF/fantasy novels, popular non-fiction, programming manuals) I can almost always find it there.

Sadly, what I haven't found, since the heyday of Demonoid and Chaos Wasteland, is a decent source for obscure old RPG manuals.
rndmnmbr said @ 6:00am GMT on 21st Jul
I used to frequent the rpgbookz DC++ server, which was all old and obscure RPG books, but that's been gone for longer than Demonoid.

Personally I blame DriveThruRPG. Yes, the releasers buying PDFs and releasing them as torrents are doing god's work, but now no one is interested in scanning and distilling sourcebooks anymore.
conception said @ 2:06pm GMT on 21st Jul
Demonoid still has a pretty good selection.
stacyswirl said @ 12:11am GMT on 22nd Jul
Yeah, none of my torrent sites were working yesterday.... now I know why. Ugh. I bind comic books into hardcovers, and am always researching comics to figure out what I want to buy. Torrents have let me do that pretty well, but now my options are drying up. I've been using Google to find them, Google for god's sake!
Dienes said @ 2:48am GMT on 22nd Jul
I've been using anonymouse.org for ebooks, comics, and audiobooks. The selection is incredible. Buuuuttttt its an invite-only private tracker. And I don't have invites to share yet. :(
rndmnmbr said[1] @ 7:42am GMT on 22nd Jul
I've heard good things about Anonamouse. But I highly dislike the idea of exclusivity.
thepublicone said[1] @ 8:09pm GMT on 22nd Jul
Does anyone happen to have a spare invite to TorrentDay? I've heard good things.

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