Thread: Seedbox/Server Questions? Questions?

I've got this all figured out. I've got my anonymous seedbox with reverse DNS and I VNC it with VPN paid by Western Union while I'm war riding a ten-speed. They'll never get me. But I still have a few questions....

A seedbox is a virtual private server that comes with a cool interface and a bittorent client pre-installed. Do the seedbox vendors actually own stuff? Do they own their own server farms filled with seedboxes? with their own location, rent, ac, racks, wiring, and backup generators? Or do they just lease from the people who do, like Cisco and IBM, install the software, re-rent the space to torrenters a few gigabytes at a time, and sit there and collect checks?

When the RIAA or MPAA or NCAA, sends a registered letter to the actual owner of the the computer in the rack, whether it's a sublet or not, demanding to know who the hell is the evil uploader at 92.x4b.211.lmno, so they can sue them in civil court and win another one of those 2.2 million dollar judgments, what happens? Do they fold like a triple-A roadmap immediately and give you up? Do they say,"Where's your subpoena?" Do they say,"We don't need no steeenking letters." Or how about,"We no habla?" Does the seedbox guy even warn you when bad things are about to happen? Or does he just shred his office, print out a new ID, fax himself to Switzerland, and find a new host, new clients, and new renters, and leave you and the poor schlump who really does own the metal holding the bag?

In a small town, anyone who rats out their renters isn't going to be in the landlord business long. But in the whole wide world, there are a lot of bridges to burn. Maybe seedboxes are like trackers? They start off small - they get good - they get fast - they get big - they get noticed - they get hooked - they get booked - they get cooked.

Now that the music nazis are going after the ISP's and suing someone with deeper pockets than little Sally Singlemother, it has the providers running scared or acting like the popo. My ISP put filters on my freakin' broadband last month, not because of any letter - but because they are proactively filtering "suspected pirated software" on their system. They don't care if it's the Ubuntu-Server Overnight release or my brother's Christmas Home video or the latest free 30-day software trial or the Mastering Service I paid to transcribe my precious vinyl to digital. Anything that they can see that goes much past 3-4mB and might be, possibly, maybe, copyrighted, they throttle. My download speed drops to 3-4kB/s after 4MB. I'll fool them. I can pause and restart the download, and get 4 more MB before that damned filter kicks in again. How many times do I have to pause and restart to get a double cd in flac? About 150.

Most of last month's 25GB download was from rapidshare and not p2p (sshhhhhh), but there was that Janet Jackson album on waffles. Assholes. Who ratted me out? But I live so freakin' far out in the boonies, there is only one ISP with his antenna on the hill 9 miles away, so moving to another who isn't so nosy is not an option. I could have driven down the canyon four or five miles for Janet. There's this wifi spot just right in the middle of kinda nowhere called "Linksys" with all ports forwarded and 20Mb down. But the last time I parked there, I actually got rousted by the sheriff. What's up with that? What? a guy can't park here? Can't a guy just get a little peace?

I'm chilling out a while. Now I surf much of the time through a VPN proxy with an Ip from Dallas or Amsterdam or Atlantis or one of the moons of Endor, and as far as they know, all this broadband traffic is just me making my living on the FOREX trading drachmas for dinars and gold-pressed latinum? yea right. My ISP is actively looking for downloads all on their own without much prodding from anyone. So does that mean that they would throttle a download from my own seedbox too if they saw it? Probably. But you know what really pisses me off? Why are they doing it all on their own anyway? Who made them Walker Texas Ranger?

OMG! What happens when the trunk providers, like ATT or Verizon or Cox, start filtering suspect traffic all on their own too? You know that the web-wide autofilter is coming soon, just as soon as the bean-counters working for the cable owners realize that they can delay infrastructure investments for several years if they just filter bittorent traffic. The web would be half empty without it. A seedbox can download 25GB in an hour, something your home connection might take days to do. So that means one seedbox = 137 customers @ $56 per month = real$$$$. Screw Mr. Seedbox, we need more guys at home paying their cable bill.

My website has been shut down and dumped by web hosts twice in the last year, once by a wimpy web host who didn't like one forum poster calling another a dirty word, and the second time by a web host/"free speech advocate" who crumbled like a potato chip in a fat chick's back pocket riding in a jeep in corn field when he got a single stupid registered letter from M.A. Dipstick, Esq. I should have paid those web host guys more. I know they would have been on my side for $15.95 a month. Well, after the extended hiatus, my website is up and running again. It was a thoughtful, deliberate process. Me and my buddy, Dr. Cuervo, got really drunk the other night and used our best judgment and some rock-paper-scissors and found the perfect new web host. This time, I moved the site offshore... way... way... offshore, where they "no habla." Even I can't translate what they're saying without Google, 5 tequila shots, 2 Vicodin, and a beer. The next time a threatening letter comes complaining about me or the forum or my drinking, whether it's regular mail from some whiney anti-profanity puke, or very official-looking registered mail from a barrister or counselor or lawyer or some other kind of witless legal hack with nothing better to do, I hope the girl in middle Asia who's driving the inbox that day tosses it directly into the round file and goes back to her bowl of yak curds, because she no habla.

I got sidetracked there. I'm sorry. Being forced by a puke lawyer to move the site to Turkmenistan or Catchcanistan or wherever it actually is (I sort of remember throwing darts at the map that night), sort of made me mad. The point really was supposed to be that if a webhost throws a paying customer off his server for using the f-bomb and the c-word a half dozen times - what's to make you think a webhost isn't going to pee himself when the US Government or worse, the Goldwyns and the Mayers come knockin'? Those guys got Uzis ya know.

Everyone seems to want a US address on their seedbox. Why? Wouldn't Ukraine or Uganda be a better physical location for your seedbox? I wouldn't want it to be anywhere near the USA. I don't want them to know English. I don't want them to use the same alphabet. That's it. I want Klingons to run my seedbox!

Now I know everyone wants to join NATO or the EU or some other acronym, and they all seem to be sucking up to the West, but WHY? It must be our great cheeseburgers? First Bush, now Obama, there isn't much difference. Our privacy rights have been trampled into a greasy stain in the dirt. The FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SPCA are reading all your mail, your email, your text, your posts, and your palm, listening to every home phone, cell phone, radio phone, and bat phone, watching you from parking lot cameras, bank cameras, mall cameras, space cameras, and toilet cameras, collecting your bank records, credit card records, library book records, and even monitoring what you buy at the supermarket thanks to those stupid discount cards. I already know they can turn on my cell phone by remote control and listen to me anytime, anywhere. They turned on my webcam and are right now watching me type this! The final insult was the cameras that they put in the wall right next to the handle of every public urinal and toilet in the world. They want you to think that those things just make it flush when you walk away, but noooo.... those are cameras too cataloging personal details just as unique as fingerprints or iris scans, except this time, below the waist. It doesn't matter anymore who's in charge of the White House. Uncle Sam is watching you everywhere. There must be better locations, safer locations, much better than in the USA, for a seedbox.

France? Australia? Puhleaseeeee... France has some of the most restrictive p2p laws in the world and has made retreating an art form, and AFACT is finishing off suing iiNet in Australia this week! Maybe Zimbabwe or Iran or Myanmar or one of those other places on the State Department's no-no list. Or how about my own satellite in space? Maybe a couple of us could get together and share one? That's it. I'll sublet seedboxes on Satcom22.

So call me paranoid, or afraid, or whatever - but I'd like to know how and why a seedbox vendor or web host can handle all this heat? How is he going to react when the black helicopters land on his roof, the Surete machine guns his pitbull, Delta breaks down the door, and the Guardia Civil blackjacks him stupid. When ATT tells the ISP to disconnect the VPS with the VPN through the VNC or else, Do not pass Go, Go directly to Jail, will Mr. Seedbox step up to the plate and defend my life, limbs, privacy, and freedom for that $15.95 I'm paying him every month, or will he crumble like a Little Debbie Coffee Cake, point the finger and give them my home phone, address, and credit card number, and say,"He did it." Beaten bloody with all those acronyms, Mr. Seedbox doesn't stand a chance.



Tunneling to Saint Louie or Saint Pete, I think, just gives me a false sense of security. I want more than a virtual tunnel. I want a real tunnel, one that comes up about 200 yards from the house, so that when they beat down my door, I can pop up like a mole in the desert with a Groucho moustache and Buddy Holly hornrims, ready for my new look, a new life, a new name, a whole new start, where no one knows so much about me. Damn, there's those government toilet photos. I forgot about that. Pass the Extenze so I've got the Dirk Digler shwanze too. The devil is in the details. We need a new definition of "trustworthy." Maybe it means someone who won't serve you up on a platter at the first sign of trouble. I'm not worried. Really. I have a half-literate secretary in Kazakhstan watching my back.

Do you think anyone will notice the antenna on my bicycle helmet?

Wow that is some post u have there. I enjoyed reading it a lot. To keep it short, seedbox vendors usually rent straight from the server companies like OVH, server.lu, etc.. Then install all the software and resell the servers to people who either cant afford, dont know how to set it up themselves or cant buy directly due to where they live.

About those letters > Yes seedbox companies still get them just like everybody else. Depending on who your provider is they will either notify u and tell u whats going on and tell u to just take down the torrent that caused the letter or u will never hear from them cause they just ignore letters like everyone else does. Ive been using dedicated servers or seedbox's the last year now and have never once received a letter or heard anything about letters. Frankly i dont care about it either and if i did get one i use it as toilet paper.

The reason u see people wanting U.S seedbox's is due to the routing to other peers and FTP speeds. If u live in the U.S and have a server located in Europe the speed for File Transfers will be a little slower then say a seedbox from the U.S. To me it doesnt matter and i rather have a seebox located in France or wherever besides the U.S. I never seen a difference before, but i read all the time about why people switch to U.S servers instead. I have 3 current dedicated server's as we speak all located in Europe and there all great server's and wouldnt trade them in for nothing.

Oh yeah and your ISP may throttle FTP speeds if they are that strict, but u may want to ask them about it. I did hear about ISP's throttling FTP before, but i get pissed if they ever did that to me as that wouldnt be right. Its only File transfer and not illegal and plus they shouldnt have a clue what your transferring anyway except u are using the File transfer protocol.

This was supposed to be short but i guess i just couldnt stop talking. All in all seedbox's are safe and u shouldnt have anything to worry about. I never heard of anyone yet getting in trouble that was using a seedbox, but u never know these days.

Loved that from the bottom of my heart ,,
For more security , don't use ur credit card when paying for Mr.Seedbox , *use your girlfirend's*

:001_tongue:

I have an OVH seedbox (France) and I live here in the US. I've never had a problem maxing out FTP transfers using my home connection (8mbit down).
As a general rule, you will usually get more for your money when renting seedboxes in Europe vs USA. That's what attracted me to the one I have right now.