You know it’s bad when the almost constantly unhinged ‘Empress’ is the one speaking sense.
You looked at that screenshot and said, “Ah yes, here’s someone speaking sense” ?
It’s a sliding scale.
Haha, yeah okay perhaps sense isn’t the correct word.
Image Transcription:
Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point
February 5, 2018
This is also a TVTropes article, of course.
Something something broken clock
Yeah, except EMPRESS was just complaining that her own torrents got deleted, not that others were unsafe
I’ll translate: “I find actions of the 1337x admins disappointing. Deleting my torrents causes confusion for the user base, and these actions reflect poorly on your character, suggesting pusillanimity and insufficient discretion when selecting a sexual partner.”
There should be an Empress translator bot
That would be possible now with GPT technology. Just not OpenAI, because I assume everything Empress says is against their terms of service.
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what happened to rarbg
They closed due to upkeep costs.
EDIT: Here’s the full message:
Hello guys, We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site. The past 2 years have been very difficult for us - some of the people in our team died due to covid complications, others still suffer the side effects of it - not being able to work at all. Some are also fighting the war in Europe - ON BOTH SIDES. Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard. Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare. Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket. After an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it. We are sorry :( Bye
You know, it hurt at first but i think im happier that they went down while at the top of the game. Especially when you look at whats become of TPB and now 1337x apparently
TPB is not a valuable tracker anymore, but it’s a huge political statement, nobody is bringing them down and i respect that.
I haven’t had the courage to run executable code from P2P networks since the early 2000s. Even then it was probably a bad idea.
So you only pirate music and movies? How do you play games and use expensive software, then?
I buy them
I pirate movies and shows because the ecosystem for buying them is fucking trash. If I could just buy legal remuxes without DRM, I would.
Same. The day games start introducing arbitrary resolution limits based on my OS or browser choice, the way streaming sites do, is the day I’ll start pirating games.
Piracy, for me, is a matter of functionality, not price.
I am with you. It’s all a matter of convenience to me.
Steam, does a pretty good job of what it does. As does GOG.
Now- EA/UBI can suck a big fat one… but, steam/gog are good so far.
Regarding media, I am with you 100%. It’s strictly a matter of convenience. Back in the 20-teens, I didn’t even have a plex server running, as netflix was able to handle the majority of my media needs.
When, every fucking network created their own streaming service, and partitioned all of the media behind their own subscriptions, I said fuck that. The collection of linux ISOs keeps growing now.
When it is easier for me to use plex to streaming my Linux ISOs, rather then to use a paid service- THAT is the problem. And, that is why they can get my middle finger.
Maybe I’m wrong but isn’t there a drm free version of baldurs gate on GOG? Out of all the games to pirate this isn’t the one. I get that not everyone can afford it but I suspect a lot of people who do, can.
How is this being upvoted? Baldurs Gate 3 is a new release. In fact it’s so new that I think this is literally part of their marketing campaign, and good on them because the game looks amazing!
But the ecosystem for buying games without DRM is extremely limited.
All storefronts have tons of them, more games then you’ll have the time to play in your lifetime. Heck, Epic’s freebies that have DRM are the exception, that’s at least one DRM free game a week right there and let me tell you bud, as you grow older you don’t have the time to finish a game a week!
In my mind it was limited to GOG, which is already a pretty good amount. But I wouldn’t touch anything epic games anyway.
Meh, your loss, use a throwaway email and connect using the VPN you probably already use and you don’t need to worry about viruses and shit like you would when pirating and the game updates itself when updates are available and the devs actually receive money from Epic.
… Buy them?
It will be a cold day in hell when I give Adobe $400 for a single version of photoshop and it still not work properly.
You cannot even pay $400 Adobe anymore. Now it’s only on subscription
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I don’t know why, but I think calling people “pathetic cowardly whores” in this specific situation is hilarious.
What, exactly, does one have to do when moderating a torrent site to earn the title of “whore”?
If I were to wager a guess, empress is not a first language English speaker, and to her , it’s just a preferred general severe insult.
combined with her being completely unhinged lol
Well, doing something “wrong” for money is basically the definition of a whore, so yeah it fits in this case if the alligations are correct.
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Seriously, wtf is going on here lol
Cool, then what will be the 1337x alternative?
I learned about https://torrentgalaxy.to/ recently. I’m not positive it’s a good alternative though.
I used TorrentGalaxy for a while before I found RARBG and private trackers. It is the best site if you want small WebRips, but it’s not the greatest for untouched Web-DL and Bluray remux.
I’m wondering if this one is good. It’s listed as a goat in the megathread tho
private trackers are the only truly safe option left
Out of the loop, private trackers?
Private sites that people upload torrents to. A lot of them have requirements like “upload at least 1 content that we don’t have” and “must maintain a seed ratio of x”. Most that I’ve seen either have closed registrations, requiring someone to invite you as a referral, or they have interviews to make sure you’re not malicious”.
I’ve always wanted to be in one because every once in a while I can’t find content that’s old/obscure and it’s super annoying and supposedly private trackers have a bunch of old/obscure content as-well as super new stuff like blu ray rips and native stream rips.
A lot of them have requirements like “upload at least 1 content that we don’t have” and “must maintain a seed ratio of x”.
I can attest to seeding requirements, but I’ve seen lots of private trackers, and only very few have rules like “upload at least 1 piece of content that we don’t have.” I would say those ones are in the minority, and most are happy to accept people who only download as long as they keep seeding and keep their ratios up.
I’ve always wanted to be in one because every once in a while I can’t find content that’s old/obscure and it’s super annoying and supposedly private trackers have a bunch of old/obscure content as-well as super new stuff like blu ray rips and native stream rips.
Depends on the tracker. Cinemageddon literally only traffics in B-movies and so the worse and more obscure the film is, the more likely it is you will find numerous copies on CG.
Can you please explain the difference between seeders and leechers?
I’m fairly certain a seeder is someone who has already downloaded the file and is actively “uploading” it so that leechers get better download speeds. Don’t quote me on this as I’ve never really torrented anything ever. For more accurate information, just use google
The way torrenting works, you’re getting different parts of a file from different people, while at the same time you’re also sharing the little parts you’ve received so far with other recent downloaders.
Seeders are people that already have the full file and are spreading (seeds) for other users to download through the same torrent.
Leechers are those that are currently downloading the file but still have not finished.
The term “Leecher” is also used to call those that delete the torrent as soon as it finishes dowaloading. It’s good practice to seed it (upload), at the very least, for the same amount you downloaded.
So everyone is a leecher until the file is downloaded and you tou only become a seeder by allowing the upload to finish? Is that correct? Sorry, just got done driving 17hrs so my mind is a little mush.
Givers and takers. Seeders have the complete file and leechers are currently downloading the file.
EDIT: I think it is amazing that I have 10 upvotes, and -1 downvotes, resulting in 11 upvotes.
invite only torrent sites.
reddit used to have its own private tracker, baconBits, spawned on christmas day 2009. It shut down May of last year.
there’s plenty of others, though.
The benefit of private trackers is that since they’re invite-only, you don’t really run the risk of running into copyright cops who want to send you cease and desist notices. They generally tend to go for the easy fish at the public trackers like 1337x and torrentgalaxy. There is a sort of “circle of trust” on private trackers and it can be really easy to get your account banned if someone you invite got banned. They take the circle of trust pretty seriously on a lot of them. (That sounds more scary than it is, I’ve never seen it in practice, but the general rule is “don’t invite people who will cause trouble, because you’ll be accountable for their behavior since you invited them.”)
Also, many private trackers have an upper limit on users, and stop accepting new users when they hit that limit. Keeping user bases small also keeps you more “under the radar.”
Finally, private trackers are also a source of many scene groups releases, so if you get on certain trackers, you’ll have faster access to certain releases.
I hate being that bitch but I gotta clear up:
“The benefit of private trackers” is what this poster meant.
Thanks, I put this comment up half asleep before work earlier. Corrections edited in.
Invite only torrent sites.
Retention and availability of seeders is higher.
You have to seed each torrent for a certain period of time at minimum (usually a week or so) and maintain a good overall upload/download ratio total (1.0 +)
I subscribed to a usenet service. Still figuring out how to use it 🤔
Usernet requires at least one indexer and service provider. If you just got a provider your going to be missing a part of the tool chain. DM me if you need some help figuring what’s what.
🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Always has been
31337x?
At the risk of asking a stupid question: is there a viable alt?
Yes. Private trackers. Weird to see ppl in this thread go “what’s that?”
Look for releases on the sites of the groups / ppl releasing them. Most offer trackers they seed to.
Other than that and private trackers, I like torrends.to to meta search for torrents, but there proceed with caution.
I bet torrentleech will open for 1337x refugees
I’ve heard torrent leech has the same problem. The same guy uploaded it everywhere
If so, at least the admins arent affliated with it.
GGn too?
80085X
I e been using 8008135
nice
Response from the admins
From where I’m sitting it looks like classic overconfidence. I would say keep your eyes open in the future but don’t pick up the pitchforks just yet.
Thanks. This community needed your logical input. I’ve been following this over the past few days and it seems like a blatent Reddit-type pitchfork situation. Based on the mods response and the absolute lack of proof surrounding the mods profiting from the crypto miner (honestly who the actual fuck even came up with this?), I think we need to all take a beat.
Also I don’t follow cracked games but this Emperess person seems like a fucking psychopath and the fact that literally anyone here believes a word she says is absolutely astonishing.
I am asking this community to PLEASE STOP REPOSTING THIS. Don’t let this community follow the ways of Reddit, please. We are better than that.
I agree, this entire thing looks very blown out of proportion to me. It’s not the first time and not the last time there will be malware in a brand new game torrent on 1337x.
This exact situation has happened before with a new game torrent that had malware, torrent eventually got taken down, and nobody raised a huge fuss other than not to download that torrent.
I feel like this community and the reddit one are made up of 14 year olds who figured out how to torrent 2 weeks ago and are freaking out over the prospect that downloading exe files isn’t safe…who would have thought!
You can feel their frustration in this post. Being a mod is a thankless job.
Empress, though an interesting individual herself, is at least correct this time.
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And then probably follows it up with denying the holocaust.
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At the risk of asking an incredibly stupid question, but if I only ever torrent video/audio, scan everything I download with defender, and only ever use a recently updated version of vlc, what’s the risk?
I remember getting viruses in ye olden days, but afaik the main problem is malware now.
Risk is practically nothing in your case, because you’re being careful, and know what you’re doing. You won’t run a binary when you were expecting the Barbie movie, for example.
If you were downloading binaries, then your risk is significant, but even then, unless you’re downloading new releases immediately, it’s likely that your antivirus will catch the new popular ransomware after a few days, when a few thousands of people have become infected. Governments won’t employ valuable zero-days on any rando who just wants to see their new isekai episode.
If you’re using Windows, just make sure file extensions are visible and that your file isn’t named Movie.mp4.exe
This is about a game, which is a .exe. In your case, it’s probably not an issue, but games will be. Pdfs also had an issue for a while, but I think that’s solved. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any video/audio codec or VLC issues to be worried about though, so you should be good.
Movies and audio are very rarely infected, almost never. That depends on bugged software, so that you can be relatively safe of.
Executables… well… no anti virus can protect you in reality from dumb double-clicks. This is because viruses are trained against anti virus software until they can’t be recognized. There are mathematically an infinite number of patterns to run a program to trick all kinds of anti viruses. So in reality you can’t be safe. Once that’s done by an expert virus creator, the best you have to protect you is a behavioral detection of viruses, which may or may not work.
So, don’t rely on anti viruses. They barely protect you from script kiddies and legacy viruses.
why do you have to pirate VLC, just go to the website and download (or even compile from source)
He doesn’t pirate VLC, he pirates the audio/video he plays with it and asks if there is any danger in that.
Not what they’re asking, read closely. They’re curious about the risk from using pirated audio or video material (not executables). VLC is only mentioned as their player of choice, so it’s easy to assume they’ve already got it installed.
For those asking “private trackers what’s that?”
/r/trackers (on the bad site I know) has a lot of info
For those who may be interested in getting into private trackers, you should start with Myanonamouse.net in my opinion. They do an interview on the irc which is easy and you can join that way https://www.myanonamouse.net/inviteapp.php
It is a tracker for ebooks/audiobooks/comics that is easy to maintain a ratio on (via their generous bonus point system) as long as you are a decent seeder.
Once you’re on the site for a few months you can access the invite forum which can get you access to other private trackers. Think of it like a ladder.
Torrentleech (a general private tracker) occasionally has open signups throughout the year.
I’m on multiple private trackers, and they all hosted the infected version (they’ve been taken down now). Private doesn’t make it safe, especially when people are using automated tools to be the first to upload a torrent.
I didn’t say anything about that and don’t disagree but private trackers definitely have less of it due to their content having more scrutiny and standards.
Nothing is perfect. My comment only strived to let people know about private trackers as I saw multiple people ask about it.
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I’ve been on private trackers since demonid went down. Its the only way to sail, I’ve had zero issues and the content is heavily moderated for quality.
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No kidding. I pirate for the convenience of downloading whatever I want. I’m not interested in joining the cool kids club by trying to keep up with what’s freeleech and stress about how to maintain a ratio lest face their wrath.
I’ve never stressed over my ratio
Public trackers are great for when everything you’re looking for is common or freshly released/uploaded.
Ppl looking for niche content, it’s not gonna be on public trackers.
Also the main benefit of private vs Public is that you can find a 10-15 year old torrent of some niche content and it will still be actively seeded.
With public trackers, there is less retention of seeders, even more so for less common content.
Public trackers often end up with tons of dead torrents with 0-1 seeders after a couple years pass.
And on a private tracker there is incentive to keep old torrents alive. On public there is none. Ppl grab and run.
If you don’t mind me asking, do you think it would be possible to keep a an account on a few of these chillest private trackers without a seedbox? The main reason I’ve been avoiding private trackers for years now is that from the way people talk, those are a necessity.
Things get downloaded in an orderly manner and seeded forever(in a much slower rate that I’d like but), it’s just that Seedboxes are mostly a US and Europe run service and my country’s currency can’t handle that lol
some private trackers economies are easier than others and let you benefit off seed TIME rather than upload amount, so as long as you actively seed you still can gain points to gather buffer, etc. So yes it is possible.
Also depends on your internet speeds. I don’t use a seedbox and have done just fine, though I’ve had the luck of having had 300 mbps -> 500 mbps -> gigabit ethernet within the last 5 years.
I like private trackers but they sometimes have arbitrary limitations on some clients and I don’t like that
The best way to get invites is to make friends with as many people on irc as possible
Thanks. Looks like the registration window is closed. I’ll check back soon!
What evidence has been found that links the crypto-mining wallets with the 1337X admins?
I think there’s been comments calling out the malware that have been deleted, possibly by the admins. In addition the infected torrentes stayed up for a long while (not sure if they still are or not)
Haven’t seen any evidence of either of those things though…
See my reply to Whiskey Pickle for the evidence.
So the proof is them denying it? Huh?
They admit the listing existed in that statement, and there are easily accessible records of 1337x mods defending the listing prior to its deletion (such as the comment I had also provided in my post). You may need to re-read it?
I can provide additional sources if necessary.
What? Is anyone denying the torrent exists? I’m obviously asking for evidence that they’re taking bribes from crypto miners
You replied to this comment:
I think there’s been comments calling out the malware that have been deleted, possibly by the admins. In addition the infected torrentes stayed up for a long while (not sure if they still are or not)
… with this reply:
Haven’t seen any evidence of either of those things though…
Can you see how I would misunderstand what you were talking about here?
Literally nothing. This entire thing is one of the stupidest controversies that I’ve ever seen. One idiot made a wild accusation about the 1337 mods based on no evidence and apparently that was good enough for this community…we are better than this people, grow up.
See my reply to Whiskey Pickle for the evidence.
I hate empress but even I have to agree sometimes.
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Don’t go too far now
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Isn’t this ignoring the whole thing in the link about negative responses being removed?
Sure you can’t have mods being vigilant 24/7, but the link seems to be arguing they’re being vigilant in keeping the bad link up.
Tbf, people comment on almost any software with “keygen flagged as Trojan! Avoid!!1!” There are a lot of folk who aren’t as on the ball with this stuff that don’t know how anti-virus works or what a false positive is. It does get annoying dealing with those folk.
They’re not really backing their claim up though in regards to “related to admins” and “admins are deleting other people’s warnings”.
And as far as I know the torrent has been pulled even.
Uploads are disabled for new accounts, how can it be so hard?
Uploads are disabled for new accounts
This is simple to bypass. Accounts must be 30 days old to upload?
Create an account or 3 each day.
Post using the newly mature accounts till they get banned and move on to the next one.
how can it be so hard?
A simple solution to a complex problem is usually wrong.
They have some request trial uploader process now
The wild speculation and naitivity in these threads are out of this fucking world.
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Fuck Empress, however she’s right on this specific matter.
I guess if you lash out at absolutely everybody, eventually one of them will do something to deserve it.
What’s wrong with empress? I really don’t follow this stuff much.
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I wouldn’t go that far, but he does make great indie music
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=KGAAhzreGWw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Does this mean we should remove it from the megathread?
Meh this is one instance that just keeps getting reposted every couple days. Pirating executable files has always been a risk and brought with it issues like this. There is little risk with music, tv, and movies.
All the more reason to have a list of safe(est) sites. I can’t always afford games and when I do I prioritize multiplayer ones so I can play with friends. If I really enjoy a single player game I’ll go back and dish out for it of course but there are way too many bad, halfbaked, cashgrab landmines that will outright rob me and others if we’re not careful. Games are the biggest industry right now which means it’s ripe for bad actors.
![ATTENTION: 1337X IS NO LONGER SAFE [Reposted from Reddit]](https://lm.madiator.cloud/pictrs/image/46fa2d88-10a1-4ec6-81ee-c487321a15e1.jpeg){kind=link}