US Netflix is now illegal in Canada

[Thales of Miletus]

Harpers governments new copyright law makes it illegal for TV viewers on this side of the border to access U.S. Netflix.

As part of recent copyright law reforms, the government made it illegal to circumvent technologies that control access to copyrighted works, such as digital locks.

I wonder how long this boneheaded move will take to straighten out?

[BensonTT]

So what does this mean? VPN wont work anymore?

[FraserB]

Originally posted by BensonTT
So what does this mean? VPN wont work anymore?

Still works fine, nothing will happen.

[M.alex]

Originally posted by FraserB


Still works fine, nothing will happen.

you go to jail to get raped if caught!!!!111111oneoneoneone

[nzwasp]

I dont know if I believe this, the law seemed to be targetting people who torrent via vpn rather than watch netflix. Also it was very public recently about how there is a large amount of people who watch us netflix via vpn. I dont I just change my dns which isnt using a vpn. Anyway its been in the news, the ceo of netflix said he doesnt care or will not change anything to canadians who access us netflix because they are still paying for the content. And I doubt that US content providers are going to start targetting people who watch US netflix for copyright violation.

[ZenOps]

I would have made US netflix available for all Canadians.

Segregated content in a worldwide internet is interesting in theory. US culture is pervasive, especially in violence - much of Hollywood is based on "Sniper".

The bigger question to me is, do Canadians view this as being second class citizens and do they care?

I'd still rather have the 100 flavours of Campbells Soup instead of the dozen we get in Canada all things being first class US citizen and the "rest of us".

I am very glad that Canada decided to not segregate out Japanese content. Kill la Kill, Devil is a part timer, Attack on Titan... Culturally strange, and yet wonderful.

[Xtrema]

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/08/michael-geist-copyright-modernization-act_n_6436584.html

Tldr, keep doing what you are doing. $5000 doesn't even worth sueing you for.

[ZenOps]

IMO, the reason that noone gets a second notice is that once you have been warned on one xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, most torrentors know to change their MAC address, release renew and get a new xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

$5,000 fine is enough for me to stop downloading.

[schocker]

Do you do any reading or do you just make things up and start a thread?
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/crp-prda.nsf/eng/rp01182.html
Accessing US netflix is changing your geolocation, not a digital lock.

The Copyright Modernization Act introduces legal protection for digital locks. These locks are sometimes used by copyright owners to prevent their works from being accessed or copied without permission. Examples include passwords, encryption software and access codes.

[codetrap]

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[ZenOps]

Originally posted by codetrap
Changing your MAC won't do anything, nor will changing your IP.

Sure it will. You can claim that someone else with a laptop leeched off your internet line. If you always stay on one IP, you will become a much larger target - if you spread it out to twenty IP's - they are less likely to come after you (small potatoes)

If they have to create twenty $250 claims and prove identity for all of them, they are infinitely more likely to go after the one $5000 claim.

Like everything else, people only tend to sue if they can actually make money off it. Nigerian prince letters, same thing - change addresses every month. Stock market, same thing... Noone buys direct anymore, they buy through 100 different proxies to avoid detection and mitigate lawsuits. It doesn't matter if what you are doing is 100% legal, you always want to mitigate risk (of lawsuit) as it can save ridiculous amounts of money in defending innocence.

"And the meek shall inherit the earth".

[sheik_yerbouti]

I have too many friends who are lawyers. The advice I got from my IP lawyer friend is to ignore the any letters you get. It's not worth perusing people for $5000, especially if you don't reply, throw out letters, etc. Tt ends up costing them more in legal expenses, which they can't go after you for in this situation. Just don't be disrespectful to the judge.

[cycosis]

So I'm good using un block US still?

[adam c]

Originally posted by ZenOps
IMO, the reason that noone gets a second notice is that once you have been warned on one xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, most torrentors know to change their MAC address, release renew and get a new xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

$5,000 fine is enough for me to stop downloading.

Not exactly, you would need to change your router mac address and that's not exactly easy for most people and those that are using the shaw modem/router or telus modem/router won't be able to do this

[R!zz0]

It's probably Shaw and Rogers who want this to happen. As it is, they're losing tons of money because of Netflix.

[frizzlefry]

5 grand maximum makes it not worth it to sue. Also a recent judgment in Teksavvy vs Voltage Pictures a judge ruled that Voltage pictures must pay teksavvy's costs to determine who owned what IP at the time of infringement. Also, any demand letters sent to subscribers must be pre-approved by the court as the court has made it very clear it will not tolerate copy-write trolls in Canada.

In short, it's a massive PIA to sue for torrenting up here.

Technical remedy is to get a VPN. Not all are equal however. The one I have settled on is Private Internet Access. 8 bucks a month and I have seen speeds up to 80Mb/s on them. The IP addresses you exit out of are shared among all users and they do not keep logs. Right now they have 25 servers you can connect to all over the world. They recently added 2 in Australia as they just got netflix. Use them and set your torrent client to always use the TAP network adapter just in case the VPN drops. If you don't set that and the VPN drops the torrent will redirect out your normal adapter and expose you. But I have never seen PIA drop once. They support OpenVPN and L2TP so most decent routers should be able to connect as well in order to work around no VPN apps for playstation. This way you can watch various netflix sources on your PS3 or whatever and not be restricted to your computer.

Changing your MAC will not do a damn thing. Shaw logs the time, IP, MAC and customer. They can go back to a set period in time if asked and ID you. Even if your MAC has changed 10 times since. So that does nothing. I know, I got a nasty letter despite changing my MAC every day.

The chances of being sued in Canada are slim. But still use a VPN. The lawyers and firm voltage uses to track people have made so many mistakes and falsely identified people numerous times (they outsource their collection to a german firm who once identified a printer as a pirate). The nasty letter I got forwarded to me by shaw said that I participated in a torrent swarm and therefor I shared copyrighted content and therfore I am a bad bad man. But they don't have a clue if you actually shared or not. At the time I used Deluge, which you can disable uploading on. So I was not sharing anything. I was a pure leech. But, the people filing these lawsuits don't know, or care. Reading court transcripts makes it very apparent they have no flipping idea how torrents work or that you don't have to upload to use it.

So cover your butts people. Pay for a good VPN. Only way. Plus, all the netflix you want.

*edit* also, disable UPnP on your router! UPnP is Universal Plug and Play for networks. What it does is attempt to automatically make connections by advertising your shaw or telus IP in an attempt to make automatic connections. While it can speed up torrents, if you are using a VPN and your external ip is not your ISP address UPnP could still advertise your actual IP over the VPN. So turn that off. Most torrent clients also have a setting for it enabled by default. Disable it there too. Even if you don't torrent or anything, UPnP is a massive security risk. Rapid7 (a security firm) has shown that malicious apps can utilize it to connect to a router and compromise it even if a firewall is on.

[ZenOps]

Originally posted by adam c


Not exactly, you would need to change your router mac address and that's not exactly easy for most people and those that are using the shaw modem/router or telus modem/router won't be able to do this

Most linksys/Cisco routers allow mac spoofing. It wasn't designed to help torrenters jump around, it was designed to let people get off an IP that may have too many incoming requests (just in case the previous owner ran a server of some sort) Of course, they tend to refer to it as "cloning" and not "spoofing".

http://screenshots.portforward.com/routers/Cisco/Linksys_E1200/MAC_Address_Clone.htm

Just like getting a phone number that was previously owned, you can get a dynamic IP that was abused especially if IPV4.

Any torrentor will have the ability to spoof macs and IP's, my built in network card on $150 motherboard does it. I personally went through ten different MACs and IP's to find one with the least amount of residual dynamic IP traffic.

[CanmoreOrLess]

Like "frizzle fry", I'm using PIA as well. Plenty of good advice on Beyond for PIA and others. So no worries.

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by ZenOps

Just like getting a phone number that was previously owned, you can get a dynamic IP that was abused especially if IPV4.


Most ISPs log the IP, MAC and customer at a set time. When an ISP gets a copywrite request they don't look to see who currently has the ip. They go back in their logs and find out who had that ip at that time. The "maybe I got someone's IP who did it after they stole the movie" defense has been tried and shot down over and over in the states. It's actually one of the few excuses that are not technically legitimate.

Again folks, changing your MAC will not protect you in any way unless your ISP does not keep historical logs...which all of them do.

[Thales of Miletus]

Which VPN are people using?

I like IPVanish.

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by Thales of Miletus
Which VPN are people using?

I like IPVanish.

IPVanish is fast and I looked at them. But they only use TLS 1.0 on their registration site and have insecure elements on the payment page (ads) as well as some dead links. Looks suspicious. If they can't secure their registration page with current recommended standards what else are they doing wrong that you can't see? So I stuck with PIA.

[Thales of Miletus]

Originally posted by frizzlefry


IPVanish is fast and I looked at them. But they only use TLS 1.0 on their registration site and have insecure elements on the payment page (ads) as well as some dead links. Looks suspicious. If they can't secure their registration page with current recommended standards what else are they doing wrong that you can't see? So I stuck with PIA.

Well if you haven't been busted yet, I might as well give PIA a try.

[SmAcKpOo]

Use newsgroups.

/thread

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by SmAcKpOo
Use newsgroups.

/thread

Did for a month. Bad selection, 3 viruses, poor community review. Multiple false files. It was faster if you wanted the avengers but much of the stuff that wasn't a major release didn't exist. Found myself constantly going back to torrent sites.

Newsgroups are beyond overrated. FAR BEYOND overrated. Newsgroups were a solution to the anonymity issue and torrenting back in the day. Now that you can easily get 80Mb/s with many paid VPN services newsgroups are just a waste of money. Fast, yes. But with 20% of the content as torrent sites and a good amount of fake crap why bother?

I have never not been able to find something on torrent sites if it existed. Newsgroups was 5% downloading, 95% looking for crap. It was a pain in the ass.

Kick ass or torrentz...type what you want, there it is, click the magnet download, you have it, never got anything other than what I wanted. Newsnet etc is a fucking minefield.

[Khyron]

Yep, I'm on torguard now and it's fine - with kickass or tpb. I've been hit once where Hulu said "We detect you're behind a paid proxy" but I just switched to another point and it was fine.

Speed is the virtually the same as straight Telus (did a speedtest from a point in California and it was 50/8). I have had some slower ones but it's not like it drops to dialup.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by frizzlefry


Did for a month. Bad selection, 3 viruses, poor community review. Multiple false files. It was faster if you wanted the avengers but much of the stuff that wasn't a major release didn't exist. Found myself constantly going back to torrent sites.

Newsgroups are beyond overrated. FAR BEYOND overrated. Newsgroups were a solution to the anonymity issue and torrenting back in the day. Now that you can easily get 80Mb/s with many paid VPN services newsgroups are just a waste of money. Fast, yes. But with 20% of the content as torrent sites and a good amount of fake crap why bother?

I have never not been able to find something on torrent sites if it existed. Newsgroups was 5% downloading, 95% looking for crap. It was a pain in the ass.

Kick ass or torrentz...type what you want, there it is, click the magnet download, you have it, never got anything other than what I wanted. Newsnet etc is a fucking minefield.

Interesting, in many years I have not had even one single problem you describe with viruses or false files, nor have I not been able to find something I wanted (not just mainstream stuff). I think a lot depends on the indexer. The good ones are invite only or paid. Newsgroups have been night & day better than torrents from my experience, as I have yet to experience a single issue with newsgroups whatsoever. The only virus scares I've ever had have been from torrents haha. Funny how the experience is so opposite. That being said, I've never heard anyone who is set up properly complain about newsgroups before, and pretty much every person I know complains about torrents haha.

There has been the very odd thing I couldn't find, but any time I can't find something, it's not available with either method so it's a wash.

[blairtruck]

Originally posted by frizzlefry


Did for a month. Bad selection, 3 viruses, poor community review. Multiple false files. It was faster if you wanted the avengers but much of the stuff that wasn't a major release didn't exist. Found myself constantly going back to torrent sites.

Newsgroups are beyond overrated. FAR BEYOND overrated. Newsgroups were a solution to the anonymity issue and torrenting back in the day. Now that you can easily get 80Mb/s with many paid VPN services newsgroups are just a waste of money. Fast, yes. But with 20% of the content as torrent sites and a good amount of fake crap why bother?

I have never not been able to find something on torrent sites if it existed. Newsgroups was 5% downloading, 95% looking for crap. It was a pain in the ass.

Kick ass or torrentz...type what you want, there it is, click the magnet download, you have it, never got anything other than what I wanted. Newsnet etc is a fucking minefield.
you were doing something wrong i would think.
i love usenet. and been using it for 10+ years.

[schocker]

I use usenet for new stuff and torrents for popular things older than a few days. Usenet lets you set up sickbeard and couch potatoe. I am going to get those running once I grab hard drives for my new nas.

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by blairtruck

you were doing something wrong i would think.
i love usenet. and been using it for 10+ years.

I was on giganews. Yeah I had high expectations but was really underwhelmed. I got a couple that got flagged as containing a virus. Never happened with a verified torrent ;) But the biggest hurdle I hit was a lot of "visit this site to get the compressed file password" after I had downloaded it, wasting my data usage. Also price, 18 bucks a month vs 8 with PIA and with PIA I get all the other advantages of having a VPN service (netflix etc)

I dunno, just really didn't seem worth it when compared to torrents.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by frizzlefry


I was on giganews. Yeah I had high expectations but was really underwhelmed. I got a couple that got flagged as containing a virus. Never happened with a verified torrent ;) But the biggest hurdle I hit was a lot of "visit this site to get the compressed file password" after I had downloaded it, wasting my data usage. Also price, 18 bucks a month vs 8 with PIA and with PIA I get all the other advantages of having a VPN service (netflix etc)

I dunno, just really didn't seem worth it when compared to torrents.

I think you needed to be using a better NZB indexer. I have literally never once seen a password locked file (Torrents seems to have those ALL the time, even the ones "verified" or with lots of positive feedback). That's really strange. With torrentz you could usually pick out the file names with the password locked files and avoid them though, after a while.

Also the best provider I've found is $11 for unlimited everything, so you can definitely do it cheaper than $18.

What site were you using for searches?

Either way, doesn't really matter, so long as you have a method that works for you :thumbsup:

[Yuubah]

Originally posted by schocker
I use usenet for new stuff and torrents for popular things older than a few days. Usenet lets you set up sickbeard and couch potatoe. I am going to get those running once I grab hard drives for my new nas.

you can use torrents with sickbeard and couch potato. I'm doing that right now, using kickass torrent, and tpb as my search provider. i get tv shows within the hour it is released.

[sputnik]

Originally posted by SmAcKpOo
Use newsgroups.

/thread

DMCA takedowns have killed USENET.

[M.alex]

Originally posted by frizzlefry


Did for a month. Bad selection, 3 viruses, poor community review. Multiple false files. It was faster if you wanted the avengers but much of the stuff that wasn't a major release didn't exist. Found myself constantly going back to torrent sites.

Newsgroups are beyond overrated. FAR BEYOND overrated. Newsgroups were a solution to the anonymity issue and torrenting back in the day. Now that you can easily get 80Mb/s with many paid VPN services newsgroups are just a waste of money. Fast, yes. But with 20% of the content as torrent sites and a good amount of fake crap why bother?

I have never not been able to find something on torrent sites if it existed. Newsgroups was 5% downloading, 95% looking for crap. It was a pain in the ass.

Kick ass or torrentz...type what you want, there it is, click the magnet download, you have it, never got anything other than what I wanted. Newsnet etc is a fucking minefield.

sound like you're just a noob.

I've been with giganews for like 15 years and almost never run into any of those issues. Most good search sites will tell you if a file is passworded or crap.....i end up having to re-grab something less than 5% of the time.

You sound like the type of person who googles "windows 7 cracked exe" and then acts all surprised when their machine gets hijacked from the 30kb .exe they just downloaded

[pheoxs]

Originally posted by sputnik


DMCA takedowns have killed USENET.

Not at all. many nzb clients support using backup accounts. Most newsgroups take down part of the file due to DCMA takedown requests. Get a second block account at a different high level provider and you can download any file even if it's taken down on both your groups

[codetrap]

.

[schocker]

Originally posted by codetrap
Can this thread title be changed? Maybe to "Newsgroup pirating tips."...

Well as I posted on the first page, the title was never correct to begin with. It is not illegal at all :rofl:

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by M.alex


sound like you're just a noob.

I've been with giganews for like 15 years and almost never run into any of those issues. Most good search sites will tell you if a file is passworded or crap.....i end up having to re-grab something less than 5% of the time.

You sound like the type of person who googles "windows 7 cracked exe" and then acts all surprised when their machine gets hijacked from the 30kb .exe they just downloaded

:rolleyes: Yeah I had to re-grab about 5% when I tried it and it was a pain in the ass. I have had to re-grab 0% with good torrent sites. Soooo...why would I use usenet? If you have something that you like, great, but it just seems that usenet people are the pushy old corner drug dealers of the internet. "Try it! Do it! Oh, you don't want to? Well fuck you man!" :rofl:

[schocker]

Originally posted by frizzlefry
:rolleyes: Yeah I had to re-grab about 5% when I tried it and it was a pain in the ass. I have had to re-grab 0% with good torrent sites. Soooo...why would I use usenet? If you have something that you like, great, but it just seems that usenet people are the pushy old corner drug dealers of the internet. "Try it! Do it! Oh, you don't want to? Well fuck you man!" :rofl:
Usenet is easier to get better speeds, has content first and very easy to use :D

I still use a private tracker for other things when I miss the nzb or older stuff and or things not available on usenet. Generally I never have to re-grab because I guesstimate if it will be available or not.

[frizzlefry]

Originally posted by schocker

Usenet is easier to get better speeds, has content first and very easy to use :D

I still use a private tracker for other things when I miss the nzb or older stuff and or things not available on usenet. Generally I never have to re-grab because I guesstimate if it will be available or not.

I'm always open to new ideas and haven't used usenet in over a year but from what I can gather people are sticking with usenet because of sickbeard/couchpotato as they snag stuff before the takedowns happen. I never tried those when I used usenet. But, I can still get thrones or walking dead within an hour and a half of airtime via torrent over vpn. Works for me.

Whatever works for ya'll, the only reason I'm talking about it is because the thread started on VPNs and torrenting and, as per usual, someone posts "usenet, close thread" and its gets a little old as usenet is not that amazing anymore. Its great for the folks who use it and are used to it but its not "drop the mic end discussion" good like it used to be. :)