Movie Companies Sue 'YTS' and 'YIFY' Site Operators in US Court (torrentfreak.com) 169
The companies behind the movies "Singularity," "Once Upon a Time in
Venice," "Mechanic: Resurrection," "The Hitman's Bodyguard," "I Feel Pretty," "Boyka: Undisputed" and "Hunter Killer," accuse the alleged operators of YIFYMovies.is and YTS.am of inducing and contributing to massive piracy. From a report: "Plaintiffs bring this action to stop the massive piracy of their motion pictures brought on by websites under the collective names YIFY and YTS and their users," it reads. The case was filed last month but has thus far remained under the radar. The names of the alleged site operators are not known. They are referred to as Doe 1 and Doe 2 respectively. "Defendants DOE 1 and DOE 2 cause harm to Plaintiffs' business within this District by diverting customers in this District to unauthorized Internet based content distribution services through, at least, the websites yifymovies.is and yts.ag."
Both sites operate differently. YTS.ag, which now uses the YTS.am domain name, is a torrent site and by far the most popular of the two. YIFYMovies.is, on the other hand, allows users to stream content directly on the site. The movie companies accuse both site operators of intentional inducement of copyright infringement as well as contributory copyright infringement.
Both sites operate differently. YTS.ag, which now uses the YTS.am domain name, is a torrent site and by far the most popular of the two. YIFYMovies.is, on the other hand, allows users to stream content directly on the site. The movie companies accuse both site operators of intentional inducement of copyright infringement as well as contributory copyright infringement.
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Not sure what they expect to achieve either. Even if they take those sites down a dozen more will just pop up to replace them.
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And all this resulted in was that those sites got free public recognition.
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Well, with a name like Yify I'd be hoping for some unique, original content. Sad.
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Singularity has one of those titles that could be promising (gives nice Sci-fi goosebumps)... until you look at the premise: tech singularity achieved, supercomputer attempts to wipe out h
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I've seen Singularity. Don't. It's a rambling, incoherent mess. Nothing it makes any sense. It's just not worth wasting your time on.
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...of what seems to be absolutely shitty movies. These are their Crown Jewels? I've never heard of any of these, till now. The bigger question is, does anyone even pirate these?
Yeah, if you want people to actually consider buying your stuff, make it good first.
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If people will watch it , people will spend on it.
This would require people knowing they exist first. I honestly hadn't heard of any of these titles, and from the sounds of them, I really didn't miss much.
I do find it interesting that the loudest litigants of piracy are most often those whose properties fizzled out after a couple of weeks, or, most often of all, just plain flopped before their opening weekend was over with.
times like this I wish copyright would be ganked back to its original 30 years or so, made retroactive, and force these "Creatives" to
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Wanna buy a shirt?
No. I'll pirate one of yours.
Go for it.
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TBH, some of these movies could use a little piracy to ensure they stayed alive in the general public's consciousness longer than they otherwise would have. Who knows - some of them might end up actual cult classics (perhaps even along the lines of Rocky Horror Picture Show - where you know that, on a critical basis, it's utter shit, but you love it anyway.)
I mean, hell, the entire Star Trek enterprise * is only a thing today because a bunch of nerds in the 1970s kept the chatter going about the show long a
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Rocky Horror Picture Show has nothing to do with being utter shit that you love anyways.
It is a cult classic because people attend the screening as if it is a live show, and behave in ways that are not normally tolerated in public. It is a live activity that happens at the same time that the film is on the screen that is the actual subject of the event.
You're not going to get that from mere copying. You have to start with film screenings that get out of control (from an outside-the-fandom perspective) in a
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The reason it's a list of shitty movies is because the producers of these films are looking to make bank. These films didn't do well at the box office, so this is just another revenue stream to work. This is particularly important for them if the film didn't generate enough revenue in theaters to cover expenses.
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It also doesn't seem to do its own hosting. You get directed to other sites to subscribe to all the streamable content. If I wanted to do that I would just subscribe to them directly.
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I wouldn't even watch them if they were given to me for free.
There's no good alternative to Popcorntime (Score:1)
I pay subscriptions for both Netflix and HBOGO, but I still prefer Popcorntime.
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Pacific Rim hasn't been on my netflix home page in a very long time, if it ever was. That's not even how that works. Usually its full of recommendations based on my viewing history, and whatever new series Netflix is trying to push this week.
So they damn well should! (Score:2)
YIFY releases are always far far too small with too low a bit rate, personally I'll only download stuff with RZR-1911 amended to the name!
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But they are great if you only have a 3mbps connection and your hard drives keep dying and you don't have the money to replace them and you only have an old 1600x1200 monitor to watch them on. Yes I too had a dismissive attitude towards them when I had fiber internet and 25 TB of hard drive space, but now the ones I hate are the old fashioned 4 GB 720p and 8 GB 1080p releases. They take forever and a day for me to download. And forget about the uncompressed bluray releases that are like 25 - 50 GB. It would
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old 1600x1200 monitor
Hey, wait; that's what I'm running. It works just fine, thank you very much. I have a faster speed and larger space, but like you, I don't want to have just one movie per HD. All of these 50G 8K videos, I just ignore. And really, *I* can barely detect 480p vs 720p -- I'm SURE as heck not going to worry about 4K or 8K with it's gigantic increase in size.
I have hundreds of DVDs and 10s of unique BDs, I pirate them since I don't want to be bothered to rip them. A few special ones I've directly done, but
YIFY = Garbage (Score:2)
So they are great if you have an SD VCD player connected to a crt with a 2 watt speaker? I guess he knows his market. I just assumed the masses didnt give a fuck about quality and thats why his releases are so popular... Ill remember to grab them before the apocalypse then. You know you can buy terabytes for basically
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You know you can buy terabytes for basically nothing right?
If it's nothing then send me a brand new 3TB hard drive. Thanks in advance. I really need the space.
and really you dont need to retain the movies after you download them
Not sure if this is sarcasm. Yes I have to delete the bad movies, but I keep the good ones. YIFY releases take up very little space. So keeping them is no problem.
If you are that poor just go rent DVDs from the library for free
There is no library that rents DVDs here for free or otherwise but even if there were the 800 MB super-compressed YIFY 720p download takes less than an hour to download and I don't have to go anywhere.
There is fiber internet here but I would have t
Hawaii??? (Score:5, Interesting)
So they are suing two unknown defendants who could be anywhere in the world in the Hawaii courts. I can draw some conclusions from this:
1) Hawaii has a history of favourable results and large damages for copyright holders
2) The plaintiffs are starting a game of whack-a-mole with the torrent indexers
3) The plaintiff's lawyers are looking forward to buying new cars and/or houses
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How can you enjoin legal action against someone you don't even know exists? Isn't that kinda of a first requirement, find out who you want to enjoin?
Did "Terrorism" have an identifiable face before we spent a trillion dollars fighting it?
Does it now?
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Actually, no, it isn't. All you need is evidence that some unknown person has done something legally actionable. Hence the legal form of a John Doe defendant.
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Did America take legal action again Terrorism? I think it pretty much did the opposite, didn't it?
Broken business model is broken (Score:5, Funny)
First, I would like to thank the studios for making me aware of YTS.am - I hadn't heard of that site before.
Second, I would like to remind the studios of the reason that people like me torrent: it's the only way to get the product I want to buy. It's not about money, it's about convenience. I don't want to deal with region locks. I want to be able to put media on the family media server, where any of us can watch it from whatever device we want. What the studios offer is region-locked, DRM-crippled blu-ray, which is a PITA. Sell me products in a usable form, and you can have my business. Until then, I torrent.
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Meanwhile the other 99 people are not noble like you, and just are cheap.
Re:Broken business model is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
"Meanwhile the other 99 people are not noble like you, and just are cheap."
I disagree. Downloading torrents is not totally trivial for Joe Sixpack. Give him a simple website where he enter's his credit card number, clicks download, and can see the latest flick - and he's not going to go hunting for torrent sites. Seriously, the studios need to make it easy to give them money.
Re:Broken business model is broken (Score:4, Interesting)
It's almost easy enough for Joe Sixpack now. Was at a party last night and video piracy and how easy it was came up.
Several of the non-tech guys (a physician, a psychiatrist, and two finance guys) there had access to VPNs that don't log (three used Nordvpn) and simple bit torrent clients (ie: Transmission).
I'm not sure what else they would need to cover their tracks from the MPAA.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Between that comic and now, you can get HBO as a free-standing subscription [wikipedia.org].
Should have been launched at the same time as GO, but, uh, better late than never?
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Between that comic and now, you can get HBO as a free-standing subscription [wikipedia.org].
Should have been launched at the same time as GO, but, uh, better late than never?
Is that true for everybody, or do you actually need to know what OS I use, what browser I use, etc., before you can claim it is available? Is it geo-fenced?
Better late than never is true, but we're not there yet.
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You had me going up until you said you attended a party. Good one!
"I'm not sure what else they would need to cover their tracks from the MPAA." == Encrypted DNS for starters that VPN doesn't protect you from your local ISP's (or google) DNS logs.
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Is there a punchline? Sounds like the Rabbi, Priest, and a Monk jokes.
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So, your concept of "Joe Sixpack" is a group of high income guys with lots of college education, and you concluded that it is just barely easy enough.
If you put on your thinking cap, you might realize that your story shows that it is not easy enough for "Joe Sixpack," aka "The Average Idiot."
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>>a physician, a psychiatrist, and two finance guys
I don't know what you're talking about, these totally sound like NASCAR hats or skateboards, going to the bar on fridays to get shitfaced on budweiser.
Also, if Joe Sixpack is this savvy, decades of "tech support stories" don't exist.
It's as GGP says and everyone know it: Schmucks want to rattle off their CC and have their product and be done with the bullshit. Every newton of friction beyond that is an inch towards ANY other alternative, including p2p but also Giving Up (ie not watching it after all).
But th
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Give him a simple website where he enter's his credit card number, clicks download, and can see the latest flick - and he's not going to go hunting for torrent sites. Seriously, the studios need to make it easy to give them money.
They kinda had that in netflix but now all the studios want a piece of that pie so spin off their own exclusive streaming service with only 1 or 2 things worth watching and then wonder why people pirate those 1 or 2 things instead of subscribing to and overpriced service.
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The other issue with the random streaming services is that they only work on mobile devices or computers. Netflix is on practically every smart TV, they had the good sense to make sure of that.
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Re: Broken business model is broken (Score:2)
Stop spreading misinformation.
On Vudu, episodes are $2-3 and full seasons are $15-25. Movie rentals are $3-7. Movie purchases are $10-20
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You actually believe you are purchasing something?
Re: Broken business model is broken (Score:2)
A perpetual license from an industry standard licensing platform and from an industry which has already demonstrated its desire to ensure a smooth user experience in the case of the UltraViolet service shutdown.
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The DRM isn't at all effective though. It's trivial to defeat - even if you don't know how, instructions are easily found.
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Bullshit, they said that about VHS and cassette tapes, too.
You can take an audio CD, insert it into the drive, and drag the folder to make a copy of all the music. And yet, people are more willing to pay for a streaming service than to manage their own music collection! That's how lazy people are.
People who do have music collections rarely want to keep them organized, and actually end up streaming things they already have copies of, because it is faster to search within the streaming service than within the
Devil's advocate (Score:2)
That said I was tempted to pirate them when they were $240 bucks for the 3 movies (I held off since I'd have felt bad, they were expensive as hell to make). So cost is definitely a factor. If the discs had been $20-$30 a pop I'd have probably done it.
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Which is why the studios should be tripping over themselves to give Netflix access to their content instead of treating Netflix like a glass of poison that will kill them. Imagine if the studios gave Netflix (and Amazon Prime and Hulu - so as to not give one service an advantage) all of their content. Who would need to pirate when you could pay Netflix a monthly fee and get access to everything? Yes, I'm sure some people would still pirate but the vast majority would sign up with Netflix (or Amazon or Hulu)
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I would disagree. That sentiment is held by quite a few people I know. Though for what it is worth, it is the inconvenience of being impatient. Media companies release titles with staggered dates around the planet. Many people I know want to see a film when it is initially released, and not wait for the time it takes to arrive in their country, in their language. Watching a movie in the original language at the time it is released is important. Nobody likes old news. If you try to control the release of inf
Re:Broken business model is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
There are 127 million households in the U.S. [stlouisfed.org]
That works out to 100 million subscriptions. There's probably some overlap, but I think it's safe to say about 75% of households are honest and pay to stream movies and TV shows. If you eliminate the households who don't stream or torrent at all and just watch OTA or cable TV, the percentage who are honest and pay for a streaming service is probably around 90%. That means the percentage of people who illegally pirate movies is down around 10%. A far cry from the 99% you're estimating.
(I'm like OP. If I want a movie for my HTPC, I buy the Blu-ray. But I'm not skilled enough to make a clean rip and encode of it, so I torrent it and put that copy on my HTPC. I have a nice collection of Blu-ray movies still in their shrink-wrap.)
Re:Broken business model is broken (Score:4, Informative)
I buy the Blu-ray. But I'm not skilled enough to make a clean rip and encode of it, so I torrent it and put that copy on my HTPC.
MakeMKV to rip, Handbrake to re-encode to something smaller. The catch is you need a relatively beefy PC or the process takes an eternity.
The advantage to the DIY approach is that you can target for the best compression codec supported by your playback hardware. Most pirate releases are still H.264, because most people who pirate apparently can't afford a Fire Stick. If your playback hardware supports H.265/HEVC for example, you could either have double the quality in the same space, the same quality in half the space, or pick some compromise in between.
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Maybe the pirate releases use the penultimate codec because more people can play it, and P2P works best when there are lots of peers?
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Ideally, I just go to Netflix and start streaming right away.
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Could you define beefy and eternity? I built a machine for it like a decade ago but never got around to really following through. I remember it didn't take that long for the few DVDs I did but never got around to doing it to any blurays as I couldn't read them on it. Plus ample storage was my other concern as I was a broke grad student.
At some point, I would like to actually go through that process so I can put all my media into some kind of storage and free up space but I'd be curious what level of investm
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I have Netflix and Prime. I don't even mind paying for movies on top of my subscriptions if the price is reasonable. The problem is that I live in Germany. Sometimes, Amazon or Netflix will get the licence much later. I was complaining once about the delay of a particular season getting to Netflix Germany that was already there for Netflix US and people suggested that I download it illegally. I actually didn't want to because I wanted Netflix to see me as interested.
The other issue is dubbing/Synchron. Some
Re:Broken business model is broken (Score:4, Insightful)
So poor people don't exist in your model of the world? Some people just cannot afford the cost of the real thing. I am not actually saying I think they are priced too high. I don't necessarily think that. I am just saying that not everyone in the world has the money to buy them. Where I live only the richest people could afford to spend even $10 - $15 for a movie. So it's either copyright infringement or just watch the walls for entertainment. People here like in many countries actually often buy physical copies of movies sold in the street on fold out tables at night for like 1 USD and they would not pay much more than that.
I download YIFY movies with my slow 3mbps connection and I am sorry for having zero sympathy for people with giant houses and Ferraris and boats when they claim I am stealing from them. If I stole their Ferraris and yachts and burned down their houses then yes they would have a reason to complain. That I am watching a copy of some movie they are making millions on...no I don't feel guilty about that and it is incredible to me that people like you would probably like me to. It would be different if it were actual stealing. Then maybe I would feel bad. Maybe. But just copying something? It isn't taking anything away from anyone. Seems ridiculous to feel bad about it.
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I love that argument.
So your to poor to buy a $10 movie but you have a $1k TV and/or a $1k laptop/desktop along with a monthly internet payment?
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I have a very old 1600x1200 monitor and a very old desktop computer. I do not own a laptop. I have never owned a laptop. I don't own a TV either and don't have the money to buy one. My monthly internet payment is 20 USD. $10 is about 4 days of food budget for me. So yes if I just didn't eat for 4-5 days I could afford to buy a movie. But instead I infringe copyright and download the movie for free and get to eat for those 4 days.
I really don't think the rich people who made the movie need my $10, but even i
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I love the argument that they have only the two options of staring at a blank wall or watching a downloaded movie. As if there is nothing else in the world the they could could be doing. They wouldn't actually want to communicate with another human being, whether family or friend. It could be over the computer, in person, or while playing a game. Maybe read a book or do a course online. How about a bit of exercise? Maybe see if there's something free to do in town. There are many, many other things other th
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Do you get to decide what I do with my free time? How about I decide what you do with your free time. I don't have any human beings to communicate with. Not at the moment. And anyway that is a bit boring isn't it? I'd rather write code. Reading a book or playing a computer game also requires violating copyright. Exercise is a form of work and is not an alternative to watching a movie.
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What the hell is your problem? I throw out some suggestions for things to do and you bitch because I don't list every possible conceivable one. You completely missed the point of the post which was to show that the choice wasn't just between watching a downloaded movie or staring at a blank wall. I wasn't telling you what to do. I used the words "maybe" and "how about" and not "do". And I also said that there were many, many other things. It might be helpful if you took an English comprehension course durin
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Meanwhile the other 99 people are not noble like you, and just are cheap.
Yeah but the cheap fuckers are not lost sales anyway. They either can play it, or the they can't, you don't have access to their money. (If they have any, or not!)
But if they see it and like it, they'll still give you word-of-mouth. So they're a much smaller gain than a sale, but they're certainly a gain, not a loss.
What matters most is lost sales, not cheap fuckers.
Re:Broken business model is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
This. I bought several movies in a row only to have to torrent them anyway because they wouldn't play on my laptop. I figured that having a physical copy of the movie wasn't going to save me anyway if the MPAA came a-knocking, so I might as well keep the money in my pocket.
Re:Broken business model is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
And don't forget the unskippable ads and trailers in those blurays.
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And the warning about copyright infringement which you can't skip.
Hey idiots, I bought it, I'm not the one you should be pissing off with messages that you can't skip over about not to steal stuff.
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The warning is theoretically to deter the person who bought the disk from copying it for their friends. DVD rips typically appear a week or two before the DVDs go on sale. I deduce that someone working in the Amazon warehouse or upstream in the distribution chain is "borrowing" a disk long enough to rip it for release groups, then putting it back before it is noticed as missing. So the warning is irrelevant. By the time you see it, it is too late.
Wow -- Streisand Effect now in play (Score:1)
I've never heard of these websites, let alone these movies. Now, I guess, everyone does now.
Movie companies should be the ones sued (Score:2)
The movies in question are so horrible that the companies producing that crap should be the ones sued over trying to sell that bad, bad grade waste of film to cinema-goers.
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Singularity certainly was. I can't comment on the others.
Aha! (Score:3)
Now it's no longer stealing, robbery, piracy,...
Now they call it 'diverting customers'?
Let's call it progress. I'm curious how many people were condemned in the past for 'diverting customers'
PS: Isn't 'diverting customers' the whole advertisement business?
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Now it's no longer stealing, robbery, piracy,...
Now they call it 'diverting customers'?
Let's call it progress. I'm curious how many people were condemned in the past for 'diverting customers'
PS: Isn't 'diverting customers' the whole advertisement business?
That's what we've been calling it for years. A pirate is just an unserved customer.
Find out why they're not being served, take measures to serve them in the way they want, with a price point they are happy with and volia... give them a plate because the customer had been served.
The problem is that the music and film industry doesn't want to serve customers in a way that is convenient for them. They want to go back to the pre-internet days where they controlled all the distribution and you as a custome
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I'd argue that there's a segment of pirates that aren't "unserved customers." There will always be a small group that wouldn't buy your product if you sold it for $1. These people would, instead, pirate it - justifying it as "sticking it to the big companies" or "even $1 is too much for this". The trick is to ignore these people. These aren't lost sales or lost customers. Ignore these people and focus, like you said, on the actual "lost sales" due to lack of availability or price being too high, etc. It can
Pretty sure (Score:4, Insightful)
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I dunnow, The Hitman's Bodyguard was pretty good.
Greek Mythology Can Teach Us About Torrent Sites (Score:1)
Hard to believe (Score:2)
With successes like End Game making record dollars. GFY, Hollywood.
Streisand effect. (Score:2)
Never heard of these sites before. Thanks movie companies!
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YIFY specialises in lower bitrate rips. The quality is passable - it's certainly a lot better than a DVD rip - but it's not the best, because they sacrifice some quality for the convenience of much smaller downloads. If you are on a metered connection, YIFY may be the one for you.
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Ah thanks. I was just making a point though. I have do have better sources for torrents. :)
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I misspoke. I utilize usenet servers. But I also use the RARGB and Zoogle to round out my searches.
Good. (Score:2)
ok, now I know why ppl hate the Military (Score:2)
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Please cite the incredibly long term pain anyone in the US has suffered from some minor tariffs ....
Easy.
The farmers on welfare.
Case closed. Paying for tarriff inflation AND 16 BILLION more corporate welfare
Oh and tRump is subsidizing ZTE as well, since the ban stopped their sales.
Add in the 1.7TRILLION in new debt PER YEAR (a record of course) and tRump will go down as the worst pResident ever.
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That's not the big picture, and you would admit that were you being honest.
What you're really saying is: "Style is more important than substance", which is incorrect.
The comment you're responding to lists that.
Trumps weird, crazy antics don't help anyone, but he's occasionally right. On China trade, he's right.
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"That's not the big picture, and you would admit that were you being honest."
The entirety of my post is the big picture. Not the single first sentence.
"What you're really saying is: "Style is more important than substance", which is incorrect."
The substance of Trump's diplomacy is "you can't trust america". We'll trash our allies, throw them under the bus, and we'll break our agreements.
"On China trade, he's right."
He's right there is a problem. His administrations supposed "solutions" to china trade issues