Hello. I have now recently set up an i2p torrenting system connected to jellyfin. The upside is that I pay zero to vpns and i2p actually has a pretty awesome selection of movies and tv shows (postman ftw). For real, i feel like i2p is where it’s at right now in the torrenting world, as it completely bypasses the need to trust vpns. And torrenting over i2p doesn’t hurt the network like torrenting over tor. The downside is that download speeds per torrent is way lower, but i just wait a couple of days for torrents to finish.
Now, I seed and I give back to the community, but I feel like i need to do more and apply my skillset. I believe in piracy as an idea. Democratizing access to information is a noble pursuit, and seeders are the backbone to piracy and the idea of free access to information. But i want to do more. I want to learn how to crack drm, how to be at the source of information. As companies put in more complicated drm and enforce draconian copyright laws, i fear it might not be enough to just be a seeder. To win this ongoing war, we need more crackers.
I am but a humble foot soldier, looking for recruitment and training. I have a mathematics background and some flexible coding knowledge, but nothing deep. I like playing wargames like in overthewire and know the basics of gdb and a patchy knowledge of binary exploitation.
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Start with doing simple disc rips, like cd’s(Exact Audio Copy), dvds(MakeMKV, DVD decryptor, eac3to), blurays(MakeMKV, eac3to).
Figure out how to encode and compress video so that it still looks good, you can still find some old scene rule nfo’s to have a better idea on what settings to use to encode. I use a gui called qvs to do encodes, theres also another one called staxrip, you can also learn how to just use command line arguments and just use x264 or x265 from the command line.
If you’re not just wanting to just make remuxes with makeMKV, you’re probably going to want to use mkvtoolnix to put everything back together as a video file.
You can use SubtitleEdit to convert PGS or VOB subs into the plaintext format SubRip(SRT) which has more compatibility with media servers like jellyfin.
Consider trying to find some obscure titles which may only have dead torrents, no torrents, or only low quality ones (old ~700mb VCD rips) to track down a physical copy to make a new torrent from.
Pick out some dead torrents to camp indefinitely. A seeder may one day return. Also, if you’re on a private tracker, a lot of the time you can download the same torrent that also exists as a dead public torrent, and bring the public one back to life. This can be a bit tricky sometimes.
If you have a beefy computer, you could consider making encodes in the new AV1 codec, which is really good at preserving quality but is rather intensive to encode in.
If you join a private tracker, a lot of the time their forums will have some educational resources on making rips yourself.
Actually cracking new drms requires skill, and the skills you need are called reverse engineering. You’re going to have to learn the ins and outs of assembly language, specifically decompiled binary represented as assembly language. Theres a site which has simple tutorial programs called crackme’s for dipping your toes into this sort of thing. Theres not going to be any public tutorials on how to crack xyz drm because if those existed, the drm would just be patched. Speaking of that, if you’re doing software cracks you’ll need to learn how to obfuscate your crack to keep the origin company from figuring out how you did it, or else it will just get patched before you do your next one. That doesn’t really apply to audiovisual drm since that is all about extracting a stream, and is a bit more straightforward.
I may update this post if anything else comes to mind, good luck to you!
Edit 1: Make your own ascii art NFO’s with PabloDraw
Drink rum at 8am
If ye be wantin’ to drink rum at 8am, ye best be a pirate! For it be the only way to drink rum at such an ungodly hour. So hoist the Black and let’s get started!
Arrr, matey! I’ve been a fearsome pirate all me life, sailin’ the seven seas, discoverin’ new lands, and quaffin’ grog all day long! Yo ho ho
