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(Opinion) Even TorrentFreak Gets ‘Pirated’ On a Daily Basis


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We all know that movies, TV shows, music, and games get pirated almost as soon as they're released, but copying isn't only restricted to those content areas. Over the past couple of years, TorrentFreak articles have been regularly 'pirated' by a large number of sites, many in the 'Kodi news' niche, despite everything we offer being entirely free and open to all. This gives us food for thought - but certainly not to distraction.

tf-logo-1.pngSince 2005, TorrentFreak has been a fairly popular source for file-sharing, piracy, and copyright-related news. It’s a project that takes up most of our lives and many hundreds of hours every month.

We love what we do and we’re grateful to every single one of our readers who help us by taking the time to read our articles and send us tips. Thanks folks, it really means a lot and we couldn’t do it without you.

As is obvious, everything we write is available on our website, for free, with no intrusive advertising, under a consumer-friendly Creative Commons license. Or, if one prefers, everything can be obtained via our regular mailings.

Over the past couple of years, however, TorrentFreak’s news has been made available via a couple of dozen other websites. Many operating in the relatively new ‘Kodi news’ niche, these sites take our articles the second they’re published and present them on their own platforms for the benefit of their own readers.

Under our CC license, anyone can do this for non-commercial purposes providing they link back to the source, but the vast majority are doing so for business reasons. Oddly enough, most of these are happy to link and politely quote the source.

In some cases, however, sites remove all references to TF from our articles while deliberately passing them off as written by their own “authors”. One site even goes as far as to run our pieces through word-replacement filters that chaotically obfuscate both the news and the source. That, admittedly, is really, really irritating.

This type of ‘piracy’ (we’ll use the term for convenience) presents an interesting thought exercise for us. Effectively, TorrentFreak wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for piracy. Indeed, if the piracy issue was solved tomorrow, we’d have nothing left to report.

So, with that being said, it’s ‘fun’ to have a little taste of what the entertainment industries have been dealing with for the past couple of decades. But, how we deal with this, is far removed from many of the popular strategies.

More than anyone and particularly in view our daily reporting, we know that there is plenty that can be done when people take your work and copy it online. Perhaps more importantly, however, just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should.

Lawsuits solve nothing other than making lawyers rich. Trolling and settlement strategies are generally disgusting while acting tough on the Internet isn’t attractive for branding or image. And takedown notices – well – that game of whac-a-mole isn’t something we’d even consider as a solution.

What we do know, however, is that most people like to do the right thing. When people politely ask if they can use our content, the answer is always ‘yes’. We also know that when people take our pieces and place them on their own sites, we reach a wider audience – whether or not the operator of that site has linked to the source as we humbly request. Getting the news out there by any means has always been our number one priority.

But, more importantly, we would never like to be viewed in the same light as those who threaten and posture in order to get what they want. Piracy is here to stay and there is little to nothing anyone can do about it. Whether its movies, music or news articles, someone, somewhere will clone it and offer it to the public.

So, despite this article briefly focusing on what it’s like to be on the ‘other side’ of the piracy world for once, we can let everyone into a small secret: this article took longer to write than the whole time we’ve spent ‘worrying’ about the ‘piracy’ of our articles.

Sure, there are some objectionable sites republishing our stories that we would prefer our content not to be associated with, period, but life is too short for these kinds of distractions.

Our advice to people troubled by low-level piracy is to focus on what you do best and get on with it. Every second spent worrying about piracy is time that could’ve been spent creating something new. Sure, some people will come along and take a few views here and there but is it really worth kicking up a huge fuss over when it only distracts from the job?

Hardly.

 

RzSTYls.gif Original Article.
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Too much fake news on the internet.  Better to only believe those things you have first hand knowledge of because everything else can be half-truths, outright lies,  and photoshopped.  Very little fact checking is ever done as evidenced by events such as the recently outed journalist at Der Spiegel,  Claas Relotius.  

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On 12/27/2018 at 5:50 PM, straycat19 said:

Very little fact checking

 

one guess at where you propose to check for the facts :pos:  

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On 12/27/2018 at 1:50 AM, straycat19 said:

Too much fake news on the internet.  Better to only believe those things you have first hand knowledge of because everything else can be half-truths, outright lies,  and photoshopped.  Very little fact checking is ever done as evidenced by events such as the recently outed journalist at Der Spiegel,  Claas Relotius.  

What the hell  are you talking about?  it has nothing to do with what TF  is talking about in this article  there bitching because sites are copy and paste there news for profit  , like TV addons  and other kodi addon blogs do. Stuff like this shows posting  news in general  is considered  piracy  and you could be sued for it and it don't matter if the news is fake or not if its in there terms of service not to copy it . TF  unlike most sites don't care if you copy it as long as you dont do it for profit. But this article has made me think  is it even worth  copy and pasting the news here ? Sites like reddit.com i can just post a news link and   its not considered  piracy .

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5 hours ago, Rickta said:

 

one guess at where you propose to check for the facts :pos:  

The thing about the fact checkers  they never work unless  a story has been debunked  this could be years latter  or never .. Even the USA Government  themselves has leaked faked news to the press like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq .. They are several  USA government ran news sites considered to be propaganda . If you live in the USA  any news agency  funded by any government is listed as such on YouTube  but the problem is its still in beta and its not done in no other countries  yet.  Plus on social media there is no  warning of such.

 

You can go here  and see  if a site is biased or not

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

 

if i  post the news if its general world news   i mostly only post  news from  center news sites anymore  because i'm and independent  and don't like right or left winged bias ...:lmao:

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This is why Lite came up with the rule that all the news need to have a source link on them. Source links are important, not only they give the author their rightful views, but also gives readers an idea whether the article is worth trusting.

 

On 12/28/2018 at 8:08 PM, steven36 said:

You can go here  and see  if a site is biased or not

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

 

Even though I myself support the above site. I have some problems with it. For example, this is said to be center-right, in which they are quoting, guess what, a propaganda article which was written because the said media they feel, is not left enough. But the truth is, having deep knowledge of the articles the said media posts, it actually, not center-right, it's actually far left. As visible in the votes on the link there.

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1 hour ago, DKT27 said:

This is why Lite came up with the rule that all the news need to have a source link on them. Source links are important, not only they give the author their rightful views, but also gives readers an idea whether the article is worth trusting.

 

 

Even though I myself support the above site. I have some problems with it. For example, this is said to be center-right, in which they are quoting, guess what, a propaganda article which was written because the said media they feel, is not left enough. But the truth is, having deep knowledge of the articles the said media posts, it actually, not center-right, it's actually far left. As visible in the votes on the link there.

 There is right wing news sites and left wing  news sites  then this is center news sites  here in the USA. Not sure how it is there in India  but  the thing that concerns me more than the fact there left or right  that Quint media is rated  Factual Reporting: MIXED   witch means there known to post fake news so i would never post nothing from them at all. 

 

You can use this site  for sites in the  USA and it post news from all 3 sides . You can look and see sites from the right and the left have to much fluff and say unneeded things .

https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

 

Sometimes sites changed  like bloomberg  use to be considered right now they were changed to center  because they worte some stuff dissing the right as well.  most rightwingers in the USA don't  consider Fox  News to be a true right wing news site anymore there more center than right but the masses of left wingers consider them right winged lol  .

 

Quintillion Media has this other site were they partnered Bloomberg

 

Quote

In April 2016, The Quint's parent company Quintillion Media partnered with Bloomberg News to create BloombergQuint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quint

 

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

 

The thing is  like many parent companies  they may own more than one news site lol,

 

 

 

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On 1/2/2019 at 3:35 AM, steven36 said:

 There is right wing news sites and left wing  news sites  then this is center news sites  here in the USA. Not sure how it is there in India  but  the thing that concerns me more than the fact there left or right  that Quint media is rated  Factual Reporting: MIXED   witch means there known to post fake news so i would never post nothing from them at all. 

 

You can use this site  for sites in the  USA and it post news from all 3 sides . You can look and see sites from the right and the left have to much fluff and say unneeded things .

https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

 

Sometimes sites changed  like bloomberg  use to be considered right now they were changed to center  because they worte some stuff dissing the right as well.  most rightwingers in the USA don't  consider Fox  News to be a true right wing news site anymore there more center than right but the masses of left wingers consider them right winged lol  .

 

Quintillion Media has this other site were they partnered Bloomberg

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quint

 

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

 

The thing is  like many parent companies  they may own more than one news site lol,

 

Well, it's highly polarized here. The most famous one is more centrist but everyone loves and hates it together. :P Probably because it supports the government whoever is in office.

 

Thanks for the link. Probably something like it exists too.

 

Yes, I know, both of them have joined hands are together center-left / far left. The parent media source of the two here even if it posts independently, is center-left and not right / center-right as people say.

 

Here, no matter which foreign media is, whether the official British broadcaster or world's most famous news agency they all are full of leftist or center-left editors. My problem is not their leanings. My problem is that they purposely hire people who have single minded agenda, to show the country in bad light worldwide. They purposely hide good news about the country and magnify - by thousands the bad things about it - no matter which political party in power here.

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This article reminds me about the time when Nsane Forums content were being copied word per word on another site :tehe:

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