Is it as easy as…lets say I find someone who got the screener on the internet of Avengers: Doomsday. I torrent from him. Once download I condec or enhance the file rename it to something like fDon_Dickle Avenger’s Doomsday and my name will be put as the uploader or however it does using qbittorrent?
It’s not really complicated: they just include their name in the filename(s), whether it’s in the readme or the installer or the media files. Upload enough releases named something like “Some.Show.S01E01.Pilot.1080p.x265-AverageJoe.mkv” and people will start recognizing AverageJoe and their work.
Pretty much this.
I was part of the piracy scene in the early 00’s, and it pretty much went like this:
- Be early. It gets people’s attention when you’re among the first to provide something fresh.
- Be prolific. It builds a brand when you have a lot of scene releases to your name.
- Provide quality. It causes people to prefer and redistribute your releases.
Pretty much nailed it, but for anyone out there thinking “hey I can do that”…
Point #1 is hard to do these days as a solo effort. A lot of these piracy groups have massive manpower backing them up, whether it’s a paid business or just a bunch of like-minded enthusiasts.
Point #2 is a little more doable, but you’ll spend all your time doing that to keep up with the release schedule of these groups. That or you’ll have to rubber-stamp your releases without much quality checking, which will affect #3.
However, Point #3 is where small enthusiasts can absolutely shine. A great example (though possibly on the more involved side) would be Adywan, who made their name focusing entirely on releasing maximum quality Star Wars releases, recuts, remakes, and remasters. There’s maybe a few dozen releases to their name, but mention that name to any piracy-aware Star Wars nerd and they will know it.
For as much content as the big names cover there’s lots of stuff that falls through the cracks, whether it’s entirely absent or just present with sub-par quality. Despite how large the Star Trek fanbase is there’s basically one copy of the non-remastered version of The Original Series floating around out there, and it’s a rather ancient encode.
- If you score a re-pack, slag the original releaser for their unfathomable incompetence in the nfo
Consistency and quality. That’s where fitgirl and yiffy get it. If you show up and repave a road every time someone mentions a pothole, eventually you’ll get a reputation for it.
Consistently uploading stuff and then posting to piracy forums at first, until enough people know you’re not interested in spreading malware and then word of mouth spreads about your wesbite. You’ve made it when there’s a bunch of fake websites pretending to be you to spread malware and the USA starts trying to ruin your life.
Was FitGirl not an average Jo(sephine?) at some point? Do something consistently well that benefits those who can’t do the same, and you can build a “brand” if that’s what you’re after.
I guess I was asking how do these people, make the torrent say their username? And how do peers know it comes from them?
I guess I was asking how do these people, make the torrent say their username?
You just name the torrent with your username when you make it. They mostly follow an agreed common format to include all the relevant information in the torrent name like: Name.Of.Movie.Year.Resolution.Source.Audio.HDR.Codec-Group
And how do peers know it comes from them?
This is usually by trusting the tracker that indexes the torrent, which is usually only possible with private trackers.
PTs have scrict requirements for publishing torrents on their tracker and will tie torrents to a user on their website so that it’s impossible for other users to impersonate a group/user release name.
On public trackers, people can just lie since there’s no limits on publishing torrents and its up to the mod team to handle fake/bad torrents. Piratebay used to actually be pretty good at this with verified usernames but now I’m not so sure.
The easiest way is to join a PT which will report the same torrent hash for the same torrent on a public tracker. If it’s identical to the PT torrent, that means its from the genuine group/user.
Every torrent starts with somebody. Someone repackaged the goods, or ripped the stream, or whatever. The original uploader can call the file(s) whatever they want.
On the list of things that are bad ideas this is right up there with them. The last thing you want to do is identify yourself as a source of pirated content.
No fame there. Just pretending
