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Piracy

Popular Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down (torrentfreak.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the end-of-an-era dept.
RARBG, one of the world's largest torrent sites, has said "farewell" to millions of users. From a report: The site, which was a prominent and stable source of new movie and TV show releases, cited a variety of reasons behind its decision to cease operations. The surprise shutdown marks the end of an era.
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Popular Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down More

Popular Torrent Site RARBG Shuts Down

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  • I used it mainly to see what new movies and series had been released through the trailers page.

    • Yeah, it was a well organized site for TV shows and movies..

      I liked how it had a link to IMDB, rating, and listed all episodes of whatever show you were viewing. Very convenient.

      Any other sites as organized as that?

      • The IMDB info (possibly accidentally) led to the fantastic feature that you could drop the IMDB TT number into the (otherwise mediocre) search and find the movie in all known variations. RIP.
    • can use https://www.justwatch.com/ [justwatch.com] for that purpose.

  • This time it's personal!

  • Torrents are great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @10:16AM (#63564265)

    But it bugs me that a mostly successful effort has been made to associate torrents exclusively with piracy... first, it's not a great way to pirate as it makes you a distributor as well as a recipient, so the legal liability is greater, but second (and mostly), it's a great file-sharing protocol that can be used for all sorts of other stuff as well.

    It allows people to distribute large files at high speed with fairly small initial investments, so long as whatever they're distributing is popular enough to have some seeders. It's also not a bad backbone for a distributed backup system in some cases.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      Torrents are to piracy as cryptocurrency is to money laundering.

      While there are certainly other uses of torrents, we all know why most people who know what they are have heard of them.

      It's not really a great file-sharing protocol in any ways other than offering distributed downloads. In particular it can take a very long time to download smaller files. I use and enjoy it, but sometimes it's actually irritating.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by cornfeedhobo ( 6270348 )

        Someone should have let Amazon know before they ... *checks notes* ... rolled it out for the largest cloud storage provider in the world [amazon.com] and someone should have warned Facebook before it got adopted by ... *checks notes* ... one of the largest companies in the world for internal software distribution [arstechnica.com].

        But please, keep using any chance you have to spread misinformation as usual.

        • But please, keep using any chance you have to spread misinformation as usual.

          Not one word of my comment was incorrect in any way.

          These companies are using it because they need a distributed system and don't want to write one, not because anything else about it is great. Free is the right price.

        • You misunderstood his point. He is saying both have legitimate uses but have a colored perception from the public and are used often for less than legal reasons.

      • It's not really a great file-sharing protocol in any ways other than offering distributed downloads.

        And what file sharing protocol do you use that is not distributed? Centrally located FTP file server? That is like saying Wifi is not a great connection for devices that have Ethernet.

        • what file sharing protocol do you use that is not distributed

          HTTP+SSL. It's well-understood, easy to pass through a firewall and/or NAT, easy to proxy, easy to cache, and has little overhead. Since most users access torrents from a link on a webpage, there's no functional difference to the user in accessing the download compared to using a torrent, whether with a torrent file link or magnet link, except that the entire process happens within their browser instead of an external application. I've downloaded way more files (and bytes) via HTTP than I have via Torrent.

          Centrally located FTP file server?

          I

          • HTTP+SSL. It's well-understood, easy to pass through a firewall and/or NAT, easy to proxy, easy to cache, and has little overhead. Since most users access torrents from a link on a webpage, there's no functional difference to the user in accessing the download compared to using a torrent, whether with a torrent file link or magnet link, except that the entire process happens within their browser instead of an external application. I've downloaded way more files (and bytes) via HTTP than I have via Torrent.

            Great. So you have set up a HTTP server every time you needed to distribute possible large files to thousands to millions of users then?

            I've probably downloaded more data via FTP than torrent, too :) But that'd be weird today. FTP is, as you know, not great. It is especially a hassle in several ways I mentioned HTTP being easy above.

            And have you distributed gigabytes of patches at a time like Blizzard? You seem to be forgetting the distribution side of file sharing and focusing only on the downloading part.

            • Great. So you have set up a HTTP server every time you needed to distribute possible large files to thousands to millions of users then?

              Well, typically I have a website, but right now there is just a parking page there for reasons. But there are tons of websites where people swap files. A lot of it is done on Facebook, although they have been deleting files a lot lately — a lot of manuals have disappeared from technical groups I'm in, so those files are being moved... to other websites.

              And have you distributed gigabytes of patches at a time like Blizzard? You seem to be forgetting the distribution side of file sharing and focusing only on the downloading part.

              I specifically addressed that the reason to use it is that you need a distributed system. You may reread my prior comments in this discussion at your l

              • Well, typically I have a website, but right now there is just a parking page there for reasons. But there are tons of websites where people swap files. A lot of it is done on Facebook, although they have been deleting files a lot lately — a lot of manuals have disappeared from technical groups I'm in, so those files are being moved... to other websites.

                So you have or you have not created a new website for thousands to millions of users to distribute files daily?

                I specifically addressed that the reason to use it is that you need a distributed system. You may reread my prior comments in this discussion at your leisure. Good day.

                And I pointed out you why your reason makes no sense for this exact purpose.

      • I dunno... I think of crypto more as some new form of a Ponzi-like scam where the last people to get on board before the bubble bursts will be left holding the bag when all the early adopters cash out. I know that's pretty dodgy too. But money laundering is not high on the list when crypto people blather about it to me.

    • I'm sure you're absolutely right. It's a great protocol, with definite value. But... while I may have used it unknowingly for game patching in the past, the only times I used it intentionally I was violating intellectual property law.

  • Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.

  • Meh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by muh_freeze_peach ( 9622152 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @12:12PM (#63564741)
    The RIAA and ilk are reducing piracy by releasing content that is not worth pirating.

  • As long as my favorite torrent site doesn't go down, doesn't matter what happens to the others. IP.

  • Wow I'm old. I quit torrents when Oink got killed.

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