this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

In Linux, if you run games with Lutris, you can have them sandboxed with your sandboxing app of choice (personally I use firejail) by changing the "command prefix" option in the configuration for the game (or setting it as the default in the global Lutris configuration).

Also Lutris defaults to a different Wine instance per game, so Windows-specific malware would only ever affect the wine instance of that game.

So if you're worried about pirated Windows games might contain Linux specific malware meant for when the game is running under Wine (as Wine is just an adaptor, not an emulator or sandboxing layer) you can go as crazy as you want in blocking what that executable can access, all fully under your control.

[–] Harry_h0udini@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Ever since, fitgirl and Dodi repacks came the fear of malware were completely removed - well atleast for me!

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

It also protects your machine from any spyware in the original game, as it's very easy to have the sandboxing deny network access beyond localhost.

Personally I run everything inside the sandbox with networking disabled.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Back in my day, we didn't use VPN!!! We would download unfiltered!!! /J

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 138 points 2 days ago (8 children)

the most important thing to have when pirating is common sense

the second most important thing to have is a vpn

third most important is a good torrenting application

[–] curry@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago

Dunno man. Common sense for us in IT is different compared to layman. For example, I thought it was common sense to treat incognito mode only as a shortcut so I wouldn't have to clear browsing history and local cookies everytime. Then I read about users thinking incognito mode actually protected them against snooping or fingerprinting.

[–] ghen@sh.itjust.works 1 points 23 hours ago

Verizon sends me a letter every time I pirate something newer than a year old. Congratulating me I guess because they never do anything else.

[–] Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 1 points 23 hours ago

You don’t need a VPN if you have a good enough private tracker.

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 68 points 2 days ago (27 children)

Still don't know why I'd need a vpn. My country doesn't go after individuals pirating (yet). That's the only reason, as far as I understand, to have a vpn for pirating. So until they start to take come after individuals, I'm gonna save my money.

[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 73 points 2 days ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

You only need a VPN in very few countries, some countries where it is needed to avoid fines/getting your internet connection cutoff from your ISP are the US, Germany and a few other countries somewhere in western Europe, also don't pirate polish films without a VPN if you live in Poland, the rest of the world doesn't care about people downloading movies online.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In Germany they won't cut off your Internet connection. They'll send you a cease and desist for a few thousand euros.

That's even worse 😳

[–] VitabytesDev@feddit.nl 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I am in Greece pirating without a VPN, and even after the new anti-piracy law passed, I haven't received a notice (yet).

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[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (14 children)

the most important this to have when pirating is common sense

We disagree actually, it's to have well written tutorials and not to rely on the idea that people can just know things from nothing.

We get the frustration in this meme but honestly, we never liked this kind of attitude in tech spaces, it's exclusionary, gatekeepy and harms people. We understand not wanting to answer every single question but some well written tutorials etc to link to are better than having everyone starting in ignorance and getting in trouble or being harmed for it.

Especially if said tutorials keep up to date and add more answers to people's questions over time.

After all, being helpful actually helps the pirate community in that more people seed, so helping others is actually win-win. There's really no downsides whereas expecting others to know everything or being rude stops this from happening and thus is a loss for all of us.

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[–] Harry_h0udini@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why no one is speaking about Dodi-Repacks 😔

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 1 points 16 hours ago
[–] theonetruedroid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This meme is older than Dodi.

[–] Uiop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 84 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I pirated this meme in the highest quality I could but lemmy compresses the image to 60-70% of its original quality, that's why it's so blurry 😅

[–] yoriaiko@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 2 days ago

Fat girl bad, noted.

[–] AccountMaker@piefed.social 41 points 2 days ago (8 children)

A serious question: what's wrong with pirate bay? I have been using it to download movies, shows and language learning content for over a decade, and I never had any problems.

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 49 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Those aren't typically risky media. When you're downloading games though, you're downloading executable programs. You can do some serious damage if you execute the wrong things. You're not executing a mkv or a pdf, you're only reading it.

[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 79 points 2 days ago (5 children)

You're not executing a mkv or a pdf

You're half wrong and half right, .mkv files are completely safe but the same can't be said about .pdf files, attackers can embed malicious code, such as JavaScript or hidden executables, within a PDF file.

People really underestimate the capabilities of this .pdf file format. I remember some time ago, someone managed to run doom inside a .pdf file.

[–] zenitsu@sh.itjust.works 2 points 22 hours ago

The worst pdf file is epsteins best friend

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 33 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Theoretically, there could also be a MKV file that exploits a bug in the video player to get execution.

Far less likely, but definitely possible.

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[–] Unknown_0671@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

chrome, mcaffee, pirate bay, utorrent. am i back in 2010

[–] teft@piefed.social 40 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This seems like a meme about piracy for script kiddies. These issues don’t really exist for anyone who knows what they’re doing.

[–] Blurntout@lemmy.ca 61 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Hence the “starter pack” lol they do indeed not know what they are doing

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[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 2 days ago

{intitle:game I wanted}{infile:*torrent}

This was how I used to format my piracy searches. 13 years later I recognize that forcing the search engine to generate direct links to the torrents instead of handing me pages I could get was probably where those viruses came from 😅

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