brainw0rms

Even then, that setting doesn't unhide the ".lnk" file extension, that requires a registry edit: https://www.askvg.com/tip-how-to-show-file-extensions-of-shortcuts-lnk-url-pif-in-windows-explorer/

Although shortcuts are pretty easy to spot in the first place unless you just double-click things without paying attention lol

Gonna be real, I doubt there are hundreds of people on lemmy that would even join a random "lemmy specific tracker", let alone hundreds of devs that have the necessary skills and are willing to put in tons of work for free. Sounds doomed to fail.

Real

76 years*

Some crimes are unforgivable.

firefox always and forever, anything else is almost nearly certain to be a honeypot.

clearly, freedom and easy access to information has nothing to do with the issue at hand, which is enforcement of copyright law.

so long as they don't plan on violating russian or chinese (or whatever country's) copyrights (and other applicable laws), why should those countries care at all? archive.org is hosting material copyrighted in a country where said copyright can be enforced (the US). it's really that simple. while china or russia may not be the most suitable option (I imagine they also host plenty of content that those countries would find to be inflammatory or illegal but not for copyright reasons), they'd be an improvement overall.

What does this have to do with piracy

At the risk of sounding contrarian/lame, you should probably not be doing any of this especially if you don't own the hardware you're using (as mentioned by another commenter).

You don't specify if this is university or middle/high school, but either way you are not entitled to and should not expect any privacy on a network you don't control. Even if you are able to set up a VPN to mask your internet activity, your school's network administrators almost certainly can tell that you are using a VPN, which itself sounds like it would be a violation of your school's network policy and will most likely land you in trouble. Indeed, your repeated attempts to access blocked sites have likely already raised some flags.

Even the workarounds that others here have mentioned (like routing VPN traffic over port 443) are inadequate for a network that is being actively monitored. Believe me, it is very easy to tell when someone is connecting to a VPN this way.

I would quit while you're ahead until you can afford your own hardware/internet connection, and then maybe worry about any notion of privacy. Use your school's internet for what it was intended.

"I wish they hadn't gone and made Star Trek political!"

Bespoke: Involve random people on the internet in whatever weird exhibitionist fetish this is supposed to be