This poor man, just wanted to run a dental company, host his bootleg Netflix or make websites for his family, but the sweaty hordes from the internet relentlessly tried to break into his website and ruin his fun
Internet: "it's a drug murder mafia ring from the pits of hell!" Owner: "I just want to watch movies in peace with my friends and family where ever we go ._."
Honestly when I first heard about the big sized, locked files and the FBI possibly being involved, my mind went straight to child p*rnography and other types of illegal and morally corrupt things, none of which were pirated regular movies, I'm a bit ashamed of how panicky paranoid that first reaction was lol
I'm sorry but the "hosting a network of ripped movies so they can stream them on a video player on the website and it was shut down by the FBI" is possibly the single most retarded "conclusion" you've ever come up with on this channel -- especially when you consider that you would have to literally download the file > re-upload it to the video player > be online to watch it. This would be possibly the most tedious, retarded, and impractical thing a single human could do. Also, you really think a "movie file" would be 25GB? A fucking movie file? What was it recorded in, 40K?
@@sirdamned9272 A "lossless" blu-ray rip would be about 25GB and those movies are only at 1080p. 4K UHD blu-ray movie rips are around 50GB+, but such discs weren't around at the time; let alone rips.
@@sirdamned9272 ...well, why not? Back in those days VHS was still fairly common. Dude just ripped his movie collection to a private website so he could watch anything from it while in a hotel somewhere, probably using a wired connection on an laptop of the time. Clunky and slow, but better than carrying a ton of videos around, and probably not much worse image quality (my "HD" movie ripper refuses to rip VHS to anything over 320x280
@@Dreamweaver_Skunkbag any evidence it wasn't the other way around? What if he was the first who posted the comment? What if they both had the same idea? You all "stealed comment" guys are nothing but clowns
@@staringgasmask Yes, if you scroll down there is a comment by a username Tensio from 1 year ago, 10k likes. It reads "ling is hiding a toothpaste 10/10 dentists reccomend..." and in that comment thread, Evan Radford comments "He is the 10th dentist that doesn't recommend other toothpastes". These comment are all from 1 year + ago. This posters comment is from 6 months ago.
This comment seems very forced, is there someone pointing a gun at your head? From the way you use commas I deduct that you have MS and a scar on your left middle finger while you wrote this. I will contact the police now at 5am to your house to send help
the reason why it's in terabytes is because its incredibally high quality sound and video. instead of taking it from the master they produced a very close copy of it, even going as far as getting rick himself to sing, in the highest possible quality. the video was either taken from film (if the original music video was created on film) or as the sound was completely re-created in the most incredible quality. Tom Ling is possibly one of Rick's ex wive's cousin's close friend's son. idk tho he might just be some random dude.
That's probably the whole idea here! Nobody seems to know the whole picture. Some people have different pieces of the same puzzle. Maybe, they could share notes and put it together. Thanks, Man..
Dude was a domain squatter and decided to put one of his domains to work for a bit. I'm not sure what's so mysterious about that, especially in the context of the land grab for common word domains in the late 90s
FYI: A "mortise" is a connector between the individual false teeth of a multi-tooth dental implant (AKA a "bridge"). Although I come from a medical background (in my field, "mortise" being a certain angle of plain radiographs of the ankle), this would make sense from a purely dental perspective if he was connecting individual clients (teeth) to web server/file sharing service.
Precisely. thank you Dr Z. Mortise (or Mortice) acts as a bridge between his video server and circle of family & friends. Speaking of Ling: the interior side of each tooth (closest to the tongue) is called the 'lingual' side..
@@SoulDuckling126 I suppose that's a possibility. But it seems like the genesis of the website occurred long before digital x-rays and electronic medical records (EMR) were commonplace. Medically speaking, the only thing that could realistically take up as as much data as the server was reported to contain would be tens of thousands of uncompressed, high-resolution digital radiographic studies. Seems well beyond the scope of a single dentist's practice. Regardless, what would be the upside for Ling to create a pirate EMR system? Convenience? Would definitely be outweighed by the insane number of man hours required to scan individual x-ray films into the system. And I doubt his office(s) had the tech resources to even make use of such a thing in practice at that point in time. Besides, I don't think anyone would be willing to risk their career for something that trivial. But, that's just my two cents.
Unrelated, but after seeing your username, I'm imagining that your MD (or DO) degree is printed out in all c̷̢͓̗̍u̸̗̓͗͑r̵̛̺̉s̴̩̰̊̅e̸̛̗̦̻̾d̷̛͎̈́͒ ̷̲̙̭̏t̵̯͇̎̓e̶͓̝͓̒x̶̘̅ẗ̶̪̺͕͌̂ and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.
Sean Yager there are a few channels that grow this fast and they’re all owned by YT...in other words, YT employee manning the channel so YT can reclaim the ad revenue it pays out...then they kill off other channels doing the same subject matter by issuing out citations on the basis of violating its policies...this way the channel has less competition...no way does a channel grow this fast organically.
Damn, imagine just creating a simple webpage so that you can stream movies on a home server, and you accidently put it online, and the whole internet are still on your case 25 years later!
@@isiahaf1359 Yea, that's a bitch of a word alright, it caused me some confusion a few times recently because the spell checker doesn't even flag it. accidentily (flagged) accidently (not flagged) accidentally (obviously not flagged) But I think I've got it down now!
There's actually an in-universe lore for Doctor Who that says The Doctor using the alias of John Smith everywhere over the course of the universe's timeline is actually why it's considered common. Most John Smith's are actually just him. Obv just fiction, but it's a very interesting mythos!
I met 1 his was white we went to 6th grade together. I only knew his last name was Smith because some is mine and whenever it came to name in order he was right b4 me
ぽぴぽろPopiporo Given the logical explanation provided, there are two logical reasons: (1) He was truly an HP Lovecraft fan and Mortis/Death is part of the morbid theming (2) if he, and others, were actually working on a Netflix type player / service they intended to one day go get capital funds for and such, it’s quite common to use a code name for such a project and such a code name could be personal, or mean something - in this case, if ambitious, “Death of the DVD industry” (i.e. he thought they were on to something so significant that it would spell doom for traditional industry).
Star Pillars - It does if it means this person is an entrepreneur. Some people have a million business ideas and start companies or start planning companies as a matter of course. It could have easily been a situation where he registered 10 domains - four for family, three for business, and three for hobbies. They may not actually have any connection to each other beyond the desire to start new ventures. Some probably sat stagnant while work proceeded on others. That’s the way some people work. You see this even in the patient space - get ideas, sketch them out, file patients, see what sticks, and let the others sit - then maybe one day a company actually produces something and you sue for patient violation. Point is, based on what’s been uncovered, it seems like he had some ideas, and didn’t want anybody snooping around his ideas.
I'm sorry but the "hosting a network of ripped movies so they can stream them on a video player on the website and it was shut down by the FBI" is possibly the single most retarded "conclusion" you've ever come up with on this channel -- especially when you consider that you would have to literally download the file > re-upload it to the video player > be online to watch it. This would be possibly the most tedious, retarded, and impractical thing a single human could do. Also, you really think a "movie file" would be 25GB? A fucking movie file? What was it recorded in, 40K? Was "Drive Angry" by Nicholas Cage 15 hours long?
@@sirdamned9272 An MPEG-4 1080p video with lossless audio encoding is 20+ gb. Most blu-rays are around that size. If it's 4K or particularly long you're looking at an even larger file size.
@@sirdamned9272 Srsly? 25GB is perfectly plausible for a movie unless you're only downloading low bitrate crap from public trackers. I have plenty of 20-30 GB pirated movies and some 40+ GB longer ones.
Remember the dentist offices that had the TVs in the ceiling you would watch as a kid and they would put head phones on you to distract you while your teeth were being cleaned? Maybe he just wanted more movies without paying and easy access to them all
Nah, they just told me to "say ah if hurts" then yanked my teeth out while I screamed. Fucking dentists... Well, I probably would have thrown the headphones away in the strugle.
When I first started watching and heard about the other things connected to Thomas Ling, I immediately thought snuff films hidden so him his and fellows can avoid the law but as everything started being pieced together, this is really the most likely situation. Dude probably had a shit ton of media on there, probably films and personal things. He probably saw people digging and didn't like people digging into his life, so he got rid of it.
Fyi “Dead, but dreaming” is a reference to “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P Lovecraft, one of the sayings in the book is “In his house in R’lyeh Dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”
Indeed, it is. I have the Donaldson version of the Necrononicin and that version goes into detail about this. The smaller, black version most people are familiar with doesn't. I have both. Something else - both versions are referring to the Ananakki. That's the reason I boeught them. I'm not a satanist. I was interested in Ancient Aliens and, one day came across it at BAM. Flipping through, I noticed the 'Book of 50 Names' and from reading Sitchen's 'The 12th Planet' knew exactly what it was. I had never made that connection before. It also connects them to the Tower of Babel - 2 other chapters contained within. You are correct! Some good comments and sharp people here! Thanks, Man..
@@derrick15 Really? I did not realize that fact. I should known that too because I'm..well, I thought I was pretty familiar with that case as it's as notorious as it was! That's a small tidbit only an in-depth read could provide. Do you remember what the name of that particular book was? Ya got my curiosity peeked now. What I, myself was referring to was a specific chapter of my 'Donaldson' version of the Necronomicon. That version talks about the underground/water location of the 'resting' place of Cthulhu himself, under the ruins of Babylon, if I remember right. The book's downstairs at the moment. But..he's described in detail in that iteration. Our local brick n mortar "witch's shop" has many versions which makes it confusing as to who is closest to Lovecraft's original script. I bought this one for it's story on the events of the completion (and activation) of the tower of Babel. Apparently, it was built by the Anannakki with men as slave labor. The account mentions 4 cornerstones made of a mineral not of this earth and engraved with strange symbols. These, obviously, were placed at it's base and it was 'alledged' to have been a portal..or, stargate. Upon activation, it glowed strange unknown colors..but, a white beam then shot straight down from the heavens directly into it, causing it to explode killing all the workers and their 'masters' too, like a nuclear detenation! Whether that story is true or not, I don't know but, it did put an interesting spin on this whole ordeal. Especially, when you consider places like Mohenjo-daro in the Indus valley in India. There's vitrofacation EVERYWHERE and bodies are still in the streets, frozen in time - like a nuclear blast took place! Trinitite is the name given to the 'glass' found at detenation site like the Glass Lake in Los Alamos. It's name comes from the project "Trinity".. digression, I know..but, it's needed to fill this picture I'm drawing for you. Back to the Necronomicon. The small, black, more known version I also have and that's only because I learned it contained "The Book of 50 Names". These were the 50 in charge of the 250 Anannakki that were alleged to have to come to Earth from Nibiru. Each one has its own symbol to represent it. Putting the dots together, it dawned on me that I'd seen these before - and NOT on Ancient Aliens either! These are the same symbols used to invoke or summon demons! That's all it is. The same old demons, playing the same old games, lying to humanity..only, today they now have a modern day paint job. Now, they're 'friendly space brothers' from Zeta Reticulie. Mm, hm. Sure. They got groovy new hotrods too..that defy physics and do impossible manuevers and everybody's happily waiting for their arrival - because they told ALL of those ancient cultures (Maya, Egyptian, Sumarian etc) that, one day they will return. Well, the way it's looking in this hell hole, they never left! Thanks for letting me talk you to death. I know. It's long. I'm famous for making commentary instead of comments. There's a huge (literally!) difference an I really should be doing this on a blog or somewhere more appropriate. For that, I do apologise. I do thank you very much for the cool piece of trivia. I learned something today already and I haven't been outta bed for a half hour yet!
@@duanemcclure8324 Ever heard the real reason why Iraq was invaded? I'm talking about the museum that held some type of energy source in the basement. Whoever invaded that museum whether it be Special Ops or some other affiliation, skipped all high price valuables such as gold and all sorts of gems and went straight towards the basement where this energy source was supposedly hidden. They got what they wanted and got out of there in a rush with black hawks
This might be reaching, but a mortise lock is a kind of robust door bolting system which is very difficult to break into without the key (it combines with a latch on the inside, so simply picking the lock doesn’t work). So it might also be a play on words. Mortis/mortise. Dunno.
Dead but dreaming is a reference back to H.P lovecraft’s ‘The call if Cthulhu’ the refrence was back to the description of the elder gods, who are ‘dead, but still dreaming’ and through their dreams can communicate with humanity, and Cthulhu is kind of baby-sitting them while they are dead, and can return when the stars align.
Mauve maybe he just really likes the book and decided to reference cthulhu for cthulhu.com and the dead people for mortis.com. Also maybe, (a fact stated in yhe video that im surprised was never mentioned again) him being an artist is what he references as the dream that is dead, ”but still dreaming. “
Speaking as a MASSIVE Mythos nerd here, the "Dead but dreaming" from the Cthulhu site refers to Cthulhu, the great old one created by H. P. Lovecraft, who's a god-like being locked in the sunken city of R'lyeh. Until the stars are right, he's in a death-like state, yet still very much aware in his dreams, from which he reaches out to corrupt the minds of mortals into worshipping and attempting to free him, it's not actually creepy or a riddle or anything. TLRD; Cthulhu is a god-like being who is dead and trapped under the ocean yet still has god-level dreams, that's what the "dead but dreaming" is referring to.
In the late 90s my dads buddy had a hookup for pirated movies. what he did with them was upload them to a private server and gave my dad access to it around the early 00s. best time of my life. This reminds me exactly of this. he had thousands of movies and music on the server and we had a lot of fun with the media.
Honest to god, I'm surprised this was a mystery at all. This might just be me and my past experiences, but when I heard private server, and TB's of information, its gotta be a media server. Throw in the whole embedded media player and references to usenet and then it is VERY clear what is going on. Furthermore, the dude being secretive because he could get millions in fines or years in prison for piracy if it is publicly traced back to him. Also the whole issue of the feds stepping in/him shutting it down would make sense for that very reason. It's extremely likely that he shut it down himself given that he still has a business going.
Yes, it seems to me like people on the internet really wanted this to be more than it is. As if a dentist with a family is going to be hiding terabytes of child porn on a website that can be linked to his name.
@@liyre4189 this website had no security features other than a login page. Considering the people trying to break in were just random Reddit users manually brute-forcing, it's not really surprising nobody got in. If you don't know, "manual brute-force" is literally just typing in random username/ password combinations until you get one right. Most people now have bots that do it, and it's very popular for phishing paid accounts, but I doubt any Reddit user has ever known how to make a brute-force bot. Brute forcing is a sure-fire way to get access to an account on a website like Netflix, with millions of users and lists of known emails associated with Netflix accounts. This website likely didn't have over 100 or maybe even 50 users, and nobody had access to even a single username associated with it. Considering the fact that random Reddit users were able to find file names of media that was uploaded to the website, it's safe to say this website's security was nothing to be amazed by. A simple answer to your question, no, the difficulty of breaking-in to the website was nothing out of the ordinary. As for why he had a login page and refused to let people into the website, he was probably storing terabytes of movies that he was pirating to a few customers under retail price, which is a federal crime.
@@liyre4189 Pretty normal. To put it simply, most code is only written once then reused. So any website safety features have been written for other professional uses, this guy (probably) just used that same base code that had good safety features.
Dead but dreaming is from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos). It refers to the Elder Gods, who are supposedly dead, but still dreaming.
@@ultimatewolfexists2378 Exactly, just 1TB can be up to 2000hours of footage(provided it's not great quality), or around 100hours if it's 4k HD with super crisp audio, which would still be more than 4 whole days of nonstop filming.
@@ultimatewolfexists2378 a terabyte in the 90s wouldve been like having multiple exabytes of data today, most pictures and videos had small file sizes because hd wasnt a thing
@@liyre4189 what’s more astonishing is that they weren’t videos. I’m no expert but I assume photos take up a fraction of what one video would. That would mean that they have thousands upon thousands of photos.
The 'weird names' on Usenet is standard fare for piracy on Usenet. Usenet has an extremely long history. It's actually older than email itself, to give you an idea. It's structured a bit differently than pretty much anything else on the Internet, too. Without getting into crazy amounts of detail (although if you have any questions, just ask, I've been using Usenet since the early 1990s and have followed all of its changes), there are several companies actively monitoring Usenet for anyone posting copyrighted content. In response, those posting such things have resorted to different methods to make it harder for things to get caught and taken down. Usenet posts are subject to DMCA takedowns just as much as RUclips is, especially now that every single Usenet service is essentially owned by a single company (Highwinds). Often posts on Usenet have totally cryptic names there, but there are separate websites or message boards where real names are used that point to the Usenet posts, so you need to be watching those sites and correllating the two to make sense of it. The one file they mentioned, the 'drive crazy 3d' thing, was also a par2 file. Par2 files are interesting and pretty much only found on Usenet. Because of the way Usenet works, you can often end up with little pieces of files missing. Par2 files make a set of files into sort-of a RAID array. The Par2 file can check the files you download to make sure they're complete, and if not, it can patch up any holes using the same techniques used to rebuild RAID arrays when a hard drive dies. It's really very cool. alt.binaries.hdtv actually was not dvd/blu-ray movies when I last looked. It was more typically raw mpeg-2 transport stream files often ripped from satellite broadcasts. It was popular especially back when HDTV was new and 1080i displays were still a thing and all that. Early 2000s. The files posted were indeed very large, as mpeg-2 doesn't offer that great of compression and satellite streams are quite high bitrate.
You said a lot of stuff I lack firsthand experience with, and it seems just convoluted enough to be real. I cannot be bothered to fact-check. I clicked the thumbs-up button.
@@yudosai Yes, I still use Usenet. There are not archives going back to the beginning for the newsgroups where files are posted because the sheer quantity of data is too large. Many terabytes of data is posted daily. For the text discussion groups, there are archives going all the way back. How far back a usenet service keeps things is referred to their 'retention' and its measured in days. I think 5000 days or so is common now for even the high-volume groups. To get started, you'll probably have to read up a bit. At a minimum you need an account with a Usenet provider. ISPs used to provide free usenet access for all users like they provide email accounts, but it got way too expensive and few were using it. So now you have to pay for an account, usually $10 a month or so. I use a company called Newshosting, but pretty much every company is the same in what they offer, although there's some differences like Easynews provides a good web interface while with most you will need a Usenet client application (a newsreader). Newshosting makes their own newsreader and its really good IMO. Once you have that, you might want to look for an 'indexer' which is a website that catalogs what gets posted where. Otherwise you won't be able to find the things with weird encoded names. There are many free indexers, and some private paid ones. Indexers usually offer NZB files you can download which contain a list of postings you select and then you load that into your newsreader and it will download the posts, decode them, join the files (they are posted very split up), repair any missing pieces, etc. It's really quite complicated compared to something like torrents just because it's so old and has been going for such a long time. The usenet servers themselves are basically peer-to-peer with each other, so things posted on one spread to the others after a few minutes.
You might be onto something but somebody in an earlier thread named doctors they said that in the dental industry there is the word mortise and it is probably short for that and it means a bridge ... such as a dental bridge .
The MP4 and MP3 codecs werent very common back in the late 90s, so there's a good chance that they are raw AVI files, which can take up a good deal of space.
Ento: The Chesnaut Knight people who downloaded torrents are usually internet dwellers. They probably would have come accross this mystery and die laughing knowing it was for torrents 😂
Nah dude. This theory is utterly retarded and makes 0 sense. Frankly, his speculation in this video is lazy and irresponsible. All he had to do was stop for 4 seconds to consider what he was saying. Literally, his entire theory about this was based around the name of 1 file that was TWENTY FIVE GIGABYTES. Good lord... you think a movie is going to be 25GB? Is the movie 15 hours long?
this was a really fun one, love that sudden salt mine at the end, really adds a zesty flavor to the whole thing. like a mic drop. a "private netflix" sounds dope as fuck tbh, props to mr. ling
"Dead but dreaming." is simply a reference to the C'thulhu lore. There is a mantra closely associated with C'thulhu that goes: “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”
A 39 GB file on the internet is absolutely massive for 1997. For example, the computer I had from 1997 had a 1.6 GB hard drive, and 28.8 Kb (kilo bit, not byte) modem. The 39 gigabyte file would have taken, at full speed without stopping, 17 days to download.
I think your math is off, it would take way longer to download 40gb on a 28K modem! 39Gb is 40894464Kb. 28.8 kilobits is 3.6Kbps. 40894464 / 3.6 = 11359573 seconds or ~131 days
The owner of Mortis was almost certainly hosting files for scene groups. When you consider how ridiculously tight his code was, along with the amount of data, it couldn't be just for friends and family. Another comment mentioned that the name Mortis pops up in regard to piracy, and I remember an old friend of mine in the early 2000's mentioning the name Mortis in relation to his scene group. If he is old guard, it's all the more reason not to bother him. The guy is deserving of respect. Edit: I checked with a friend of mine, and Mortis used to be a top site. So yeah, theory confirmed.
So the piracy community i'm assuming would give out the username and PW to access the site and download the ripped movies, music etc? Cause if that's the case why hasn't anyone who used that site for that purpose come forward about it, I mean its over 20 years later its not like they're gonna be getting in trouble for that now. But furthermore what about the security for the site, it was able to withstand hundreds of attacks and attempts to access it by hackers so i'm assuming it was pretty top grade security for the time so how/why would a dentist have any knowledge about that kinda stuff?
Matthew Combs tbf the piracy community is really tight knit-- you can't just pass info about certain sites or you get your invite revoked or you're basically not allowed to download anything anymore plus with the large gb files, and relations with usenet, it's probably more likely that the login screen wasn't even a real login at all just speculating, though
It's pretty obvious that this was just some early spoopy for spoopy's sake shenanigans by a horror fan (hence the Lovecraft references). A jet black home page and the name Mortis (death) are pretty obvious theatrical flourishes.
@@eriness It's not cheap, but it's not overly expencive either depending on the time it was being hosted, where the files are being hosted, etc. I would bet, if it wasn't movies, it was just a way to draw attention to the site in an effort to sell it off later. A popular site with the name "MORTIS" that has a pension for being creepy? Would rake in quite the dough.
I think people like the mystery more than knowing the real truth behind the mystery. That's why nobody bothers to do any research. It's more fun to speculate on all the weird possibilities behind it than to find out the (boring) reality of it...people would prefer to perpetuate the mystery. Once it's solved, all the fun is over.
Just a site with dudes family photos. It was also noted, that the man might be an artist, probably interested in professional photography. Terabytes of data may be explained, if he just stored a lot of .raw files, which may be very heavy (a lot of photos may take up tens of terabytes of space). Login form is to prevent access to the website by strangers, as photos are private, but give access to people, you want to share photos with. I think registration was curated by Thomas Ling himself and then he would give access to specific people, which explains why brute didn't work, as passwords may have been absurdly long. His other websites with names (including his family name), may be other albums for relatives or something. Making a homemade website with curated access secure is not horribly difficult as well, considering it was not built to be used by strangers. He might have an IT background or have friends with one. People really love to find mystery, where there's none. UPD: Pirated films website also works. This explains why he needed to cover it up from the public.
Honestly by your content I wouldn't guess what a relatively small channel this is. The quality is fantastic and it's really well thought out. I've seen other videos on Mortis but this is by far the best I think. I can't wait to see more from you.
Barely Sociable is like the only man with any common sense among hordes of conspiracy theorists; the adult in the room. This really shows up the quality of research your average reddit and chan user is capable of lol
Superstition feeds on stupidity. Most people with sense have a distaste for conspiracy theories due to that and steer clear, which means the communities end up concentrating those most likely to perpetuate them. It's refreshing to see Barely Sociable go in and clean house.
Honestly I feel like this guy was probably a lovecraftian fanatic and tried to hide his websites under a creepy facade. As to why those files can't be unlocked, things like encryption keys existed back then of course. Basically if had access to mortis you could download the films, then de-encrypt them back into a MPEG-2 file which you could then watch. This is just speculation obviously but it really just depends on what those large files were.
@@dentistguba The domain name just makes me think he was a goth at some point, or maybe into Norweigian goblin music and forgot that's two i's rather than one
Youre the only one to not blow anything over the top with random dramatic music and crazy visuals. You do your research and tell the story. You make it very apparent when you voice your opinion and you're amazingly aware of what you say. Thank you for being normal.
it's very clear to me that he just enjoyed making websites for himself and his family, and was pirating things on mortis so he locked it up tight to avoid being arrested. i know plenty of people who just make websites or buy domain names just for funsies. and seems like he was a dentist for a failed company. the internet really loves blowing things out of proportion lol
Yo, huge fan of mystery channels and overall dark content analysis videos. Your channel became and instant favorite for me. Found it today and binged all your videos. Great content.
wow, really great video. i like how you don't just regurgitate info from reddit or 4chan threads, you also investigate and do some research yourself. definitely subscribed.
Downloading a 30+gb file back in 1997 would take years. How fast was the Internet back then? lol This is a smart guy just looking out for the future of his kids. They will have their own website once they grew up. They can sell it or whatever. It's a good investment.
Broadband in the US was first available [not in all areas] by 1996. It was expensive; and only schools and big businesses could afford it. In 1997 you had somewhere between a 20k-to-30k internet connection. A 56k modem was invented at this time (which means 40k-to-50k actual speed) but wasn't widespread until at least 2000 then went dead on arrival as broadband took off. I'm more curious about the data center this guy had. Large hard drives weren't cheap I had an 800 mb harddrive. A 20 GB harddrive in 1997 probably would have set you back $500 and those were more than likely enterprise drives so it may have cost more than that. Whatever this guy had going on he had a lot of cash on hand to afford the disk storage space and broadband connection.
I have a self-hosted website that serves as a sort of private "social network" exclusively for me and my family members. It also simply displays a login screen when accessed, as only registered users can log in. I often wonder what people might think it is if anyone were to stumble upon it, as I think it would be pretty hilarious if someone were to find it, and thought that dark secrets lurked within it :P
Stumbled upon this channel today (lake city quiet pills was in my recommended) and I gotta say your videos are great. Your editing and narration is fantastic, and you don't leave stuff out! You clearly put effort into these vids and it pays off. Hope you blow up soon!
I remember as a kid anytime I had to get a cavity filled or other dental type thing that took awhile, they would let me watch movies using glasses or a screen. Perhaps they were ripping movies for that purpose and thus connecting it to the dental fillings business as well
The Cthulu site having the phrase "dead but dreaming" makes sense, as throughout much of Lovecraft's mentions of Cthulu/The Old Ones references them as sleeping, typically in conjunction with cultists attempting to wake them. Altogether, that's probably just a Lovecraft reference rather than something sinister.
I've been bouncing around your videos since the Algorithm has shined its light on you and it was the utter contempt you had for everybody else's sleuthing laziness at the end of this one that convinced me that you were worth a bell smash. I feel bad for Ling, who got caught in the trap of telling people what he was doing and having them say "No, that's too boring. What are you _really_ doing?"
Barely sociable : You just fascinate me. I have listened intently to so many of your videos. They keep me speculating and theorizing on, well, everything interminably.
@Jon Goat With that knowledge, I wonder if it might have been another case where he planned to flip the site and resell the domain name due to popularity (based on the opinion in the video), but it didn't bring in the attention or price wanted, or for some other reason he just decided to use it himself.
This poor man, just wanted to run a dental company, host his bootleg Netflix or make websites for his family, but the sweaty hordes from the internet relentlessly tried to break into his website and ruin his fun
It seems like the creepy names might have been a scare tactic to keep things on the down low
I was totally thinking he just had all Disney movies on that website
Miimikyu Idk Wouldn’t you want to instead have them be boring names so people don’t get interested?
That’s one way to think the guy who had the site might have thought differently
Yeah but, he was actually using it to pirate movies so you would think hey might want to keep it
Ling is hiding a toothpaste 10/10 dentists recommends, him included.
Explains the tyrabites
He is the 10th dentist that doesnt recommend other toothpastes
Lol
damn criminal
The dentist gave him a toothpaste that has 10% more fluoride then is allowed to be sold over the counter.
Internet: "it's a drug murder mafia ring from the pits of hell!"
Owner: "I just want to watch movies in peace with my friends and family where ever we go ._."
Honestly when I first heard about the big sized, locked files and the FBI possibly being involved, my mind went straight to child p*rnography and other types of illegal and morally corrupt things, none of which were pirated regular movies, I'm a bit ashamed of how panicky paranoid that first reaction was lol
I'm sorry but the "hosting a network of ripped movies so they can stream them on a video player on the website and it was shut down by the FBI" is possibly the single most retarded "conclusion" you've ever come up with on this channel -- especially when you consider that you would have to literally download the file > re-upload it to the video player > be online to watch it. This would be possibly the most tedious, retarded, and impractical thing a single human could do. Also, you really think a "movie file" would be 25GB? A fucking movie file? What was it recorded in, 40K?
@@sirdamned9272 A "lossless" blu-ray rip would be about 25GB and those movies are only at 1080p. 4K UHD blu-ray movie rips are around 50GB+, but such discs weren't around at the time; let alone rips.
@@sirdamned9272 ...well, why not? Back in those days VHS was still fairly common. Dude just ripped his movie collection to a private website so he could watch anything from it while in a hotel somewhere, probably using a wired connection on an laptop of the time. Clunky and slow, but better than carrying a ton of videos around, and probably not much worse image quality (my "HD" movie ripper refuses to rip VHS to anything over 320x280
480th like
He's Hiding the Identities of the 1/10 dentists that don't approve of Oral-B toothpaste
@@Dreamweaver_Skunkbag any evidence it wasn't the other way around? What if he was the first who posted the comment? What if they both had the same idea? You all "stealed comment" guys are nothing but clowns
Maybe he IS the 1/10 dentist
Underrated 🤣
Ok
@@staringgasmask Yes, if you scroll down there is a comment by a username Tensio from 1 year ago, 10k likes. It reads "ling is hiding a toothpaste 10/10 dentists reccomend..." and in that comment thread, Evan Radford comments "He is the 10th dentist that doesn't recommend other toothpastes".
These comment are all from 1 year + ago. This posters comment is from 6 months ago.
A Lovecraft nerd just wanted to pirate movies in peace and everyone's on his arse now, I feel bad for him.
Jesus I think you just might be correct about this.
“Not dead but dreaming”
Yeah I thought something similar lol
Folks forget how different the web was in the 90's. And life before torrents. Napster was king and you needed storage space for files.
@@masterluxu1 and it was on Cthulhu.net
@@johnnygreenface Yeah, it's like no one researching this mystery has ever read lovecraft. That reference was pretty on the nose.
He is hiding Victoria‘s secret
BHSFHDSCB
Hsjfndjsksmf
this is so underrated
NLSVEQNLNCKOEQNFIEQ CIWNFIRWNFIOENDOEQKXEQMKPCKRW
HJDKDOSODKNF
cant you just wayback machine the wayback machine to go to a version where they do have the website archived?
hm....
Harvard boutta offer you some fat scholarships
*The FBI wants to know your location*
My fav comment
That made me genuinely laugh, thank you!
A random person: "there is nothing more to look into, leave me alone"
Redittor: So you have chosen exposure
I've been on the receiving end of something like this, it was horrible.
This comment seems very forced, is there someone pointing a gun at your head? From the way you use commas I deduct that you have MS and a scar on your left middle finger while you wrote this. I will contact the police now at 5am to your house to send help
@@greenblood2313 lmao
@@drumslayer27 hmmmm would love to know more
West Dakota?
he's hiding a microwave that cooks through the middle
Someone hack the acCOUNT NOW NOW NOW NOW
@@divastarz5039 WE NEED TO GET THAT MICROWAVE! WE NEED PERFECTLY COOKED DUMPLINGS WITH NO COLD CENTERS!
Jude Keirt J it’s time I don’t use a steamer for my steam buns because of my lazy ass
Finally a worthy opponent for my Hot Pockets
I dont remember making this comment.
Imagine we finally crack it and we just get rick rolled
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down
LMAOO, terabites of information which is just the link over and over, thats actually hilarious
Or it could be the video edited to make itself play about a million or so times.
the reason why it's in terabytes is because its incredibally high quality sound and video. instead of taking it from the master they produced a very close copy of it, even going as far as getting rick himself to sing, in the highest possible quality. the video was either taken from film (if the original music video was created on film) or as the sound was completely re-created in the most incredible quality. Tom Ling is possibly one of Rick's ex wive's cousin's close friend's son. idk tho he might just be some random dude.
That's probably the whole idea here! Nobody seems to know the whole picture. Some people have different pieces of the same puzzle. Maybe, they could share notes and put it together. Thanks, Man..
“Why’d you call it mortis? It’s Latin for death.”
My thinking: It’s a cool name.
*Exactly*
I guess it just aint for all of us
It sounds like a dad name
Dude was a domain squatter and decided to put one of his domains to work for a bit. I'm not sure what's so mysterious about that, especially in the context of the land grab for common word domains in the late 90s
@Alexander Supertramp no u
FYI: A "mortise" is a connector between the individual false teeth of a multi-tooth dental implant (AKA a "bridge"). Although I come from a medical background (in my field, "mortise" being a certain angle of plain radiographs of the ankle), this would make sense from a purely dental perspective if he was connecting individual clients (teeth) to web server/file sharing service.
So there's also probability ling store his patient info (illegally)? Like tooth formation and stuff
Precisely. thank you Dr Z. Mortise (or Mortice) acts as a bridge between his video server and circle of family & friends. Speaking of Ling: the interior side of each tooth (closest to the tongue) is called the 'lingual' side..
@@SoulDuckling126 I suppose that's a possibility. But it seems like the genesis of the website occurred long before digital x-rays and electronic medical records (EMR) were commonplace. Medically speaking, the only thing that could realistically take up as as much data as the server was reported to contain would be tens of thousands of uncompressed, high-resolution digital radiographic studies. Seems well beyond the scope of a single dentist's practice. Regardless, what would be the upside for Ling to create a pirate EMR system? Convenience? Would definitely be outweighed by the insane number of man hours required to scan individual x-ray films into the system. And I doubt his office(s) had the tech resources to even make use of such a thing in practice at that point in time. Besides, I don't think anyone would be willing to risk their career for something that trivial. But, that's just my two cents.
Interesting!
Unrelated, but after seeing your username, I'm imagining that your MD (or DO) degree is printed out in all c̷̢͓̗̍u̸̗̓͗͑r̵̛̺̉s̴̩̰̊̅e̸̛̗̦̻̾d̷̛͎̈́͒ ̷̲̙̭̏t̵̯͇̎̓e̶͓̝͓̒x̶̘̅ẗ̶̪̺͕͌̂ and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.
Maybe the real mortis was the friends we made along the way
This is an underrated comment.
cicada is calling me
@@luxotiica4223 CICADA
😁
Wtf
Ever seen a RUclips channel with under 10000 subs that you have a feeling is about to blow up ? Yeah that's this channel right now
I agree. Really enjoy his content.
Here before this channel blows up
Absolutely agree 100%
Sean Yager there are a few channels that grow this fast and they’re all owned by YT...in other words, YT employee manning the channel so YT can reclaim the ad revenue it pays out...then they kill off other channels doing the same subject matter by issuing out citations on the basis of violating its policies...this way the channel has less competition...no way does a channel grow this fast organically.
its happening, hes gaining subs rapidly
Damn, imagine just creating a simple webpage so that you can stream movies on a home server, and you accidently put it online, and the whole internet are still on your case 25 years later!
"Accidentally"
@@isiahaf1359 Yea, that's a bitch of a word alright, it caused me some confusion a few times recently because the spell checker doesn't even flag it.
accidentily (flagged)
accidently (not flagged)
accidentally (obviously not flagged)
But I think I've got it down now!
@@JoeBob79569 Well... Ling was dentally challenged! 😉
Yes. I think it may be considered having 2nd thoughts [sic]. Oops.😶
Me when I trip and fall and accidentally code up bootleg Netflix
Know whats strange? John Smith is a very common name right? I've never actually met or even heard of a real guy named John Smith. Have you?
i think it was a very common name a hundred years ago but less so now. apparently the most popular guy's first name now is liam
only one I know of is that dude from pocahontas
There's actually an in-universe lore for Doctor Who that says The Doctor using the alias of John Smith everywhere over the course of the universe's timeline is actually why it's considered common. Most John Smith's are actually just him. Obv just fiction, but it's a very interesting mythos!
I met 1 his was white we went to 6th grade together. I only knew his last name was Smith because some is mine and whenever it came to name in order he was right b4 me
It isn't a common name, it's a generic name used by many companies and businesses
He’s hiding the Krabby patty formula.
xD no he's hiding the finished product to Bubble Bass's order
this one. yes this one
Chemical x from powderpuff girls
Ravioli ravioli, give me the formuoli
Original ans underrated
So you’re telling me that this dude made a whole Internet mystery surrounding a website that he simply used to download movies
yea. A family man ahead of his time just trying out the interwebs for movies, dentist biz, and personal websites for each family member
ぽぴぽろPopiporo it’s just a ”cool” word.
ぽぴぽろPopiporo Given the logical explanation provided, there are two logical reasons: (1) He was truly an HP Lovecraft fan and Mortis/Death is part of the morbid theming (2) if he, and others, were actually working on a Netflix type player / service they intended to one day go get capital funds for and such, it’s quite common to use a code name for such a project and such a code name could be personal, or mean something - in this case, if ambitious, “Death of the DVD industry” (i.e. he thought they were on to something so significant that it would spell doom for traditional industry).
Richard Ludwig okay... doesn’t explain the other websites though, like crossfitdiet lol
Star Pillars - It does if it means this person is an entrepreneur. Some people have a million business ideas and start companies or start planning companies as a matter of course. It could have easily been a situation where he registered 10 domains - four for family, three for business, and three for hobbies. They may not actually have any connection to each other beyond the desire to start new ventures. Some probably sat stagnant while work proceeded on others. That’s the way some people work. You see this even in the patient space - get ideas, sketch them out, file patients, see what sticks, and let the others sit - then maybe one day a company actually produces something and you sue for patient violation. Point is, based on what’s been uncovered, it seems like he had some ideas, and didn’t want anybody snooping around his ideas.
Poor ling just wanted to pirate movies and y’all thought he was doing some bad shit and got the fbi on him bro that sucks ling is a real one
I'm sorry but the "hosting a network of ripped movies so they can stream them on a video player on the website and it was shut down by the FBI" is possibly the single most retarded "conclusion" you've ever come up with on this channel -- especially when you consider that you would have to literally download the file > re-upload it to the video player > be online to watch it. This would be possibly the most tedious, retarded, and impractical thing a single human could do. Also, you really think a "movie file" would be 25GB? A fucking movie file? What was it recorded in, 40K? Was "Drive Angry" by Nicholas Cage 15 hours long?
@@sirdamned9272 "most tedious, retarded, and most impractical thing a person can do" have you seen what people do to get their kicks.
@@sirdamned9272 An MPEG-4 1080p video with lossless audio encoding is 20+ gb. Most blu-rays are around that size. If it's 4K or particularly long you're looking at an even larger file size.
@@sirdamned9272 Srsly? 25GB is perfectly plausible for a movie unless you're only downloading low bitrate crap from public trackers. I have plenty of 20-30 GB pirated movies and some 40+ GB longer ones.
Ryan Pants it could be a bunch of movies all thrown together in one file
He is hiding the man who let the dogs out
Crazy funny
LMAO 😆!🤘🍃
audibly kekd
🐕🐕. 🐕🐕
Lmfao 🤣
Relax, it's just his "homework" folder
Lol, true true
Damn no replies for 4 months tho hmm or maybe some ppl just got their replies deleted
This was one of the few comments that was clever and made me laugh, thanks
"Homework"?! For what? Quantum physics? The comments are better than the video itself. Funny as shit! Thanks, Man..
@@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache Probably right. I've seen some of mine vanish. Good point!
"Dead but dreaming" is a Cthulhu reference
shut up
@@yourboyedsel5803 Chill out.
TheTimoprimo shut up
@@FylMarite Chill out
@@jbrown59 shut up
Remember the dentist offices that had the TVs in the ceiling you would watch as a kid and they would put head phones on you to distract you while your teeth were being cleaned? Maybe he just wanted more movies without paying and easy access to them all
Ohhh makes sense. The dentist i went to had no tv though. Just a bright lamp and some piano music lol
Nah, they just told me to "say ah if hurts" then yanked my teeth out while I screamed. Fucking dentists... Well, I probably would have thrown the headphones away in the strugle.
The website must be full of the Lorax and the Ice Age movies
This is exactly what I thought
When I first started watching and heard about the other things connected to Thomas Ling, I immediately thought snuff films hidden so him his and fellows can avoid the law but as everything started being pieced together, this is really the most likely situation. Dude probably had a shit ton of media on there, probably films and personal things. He probably saw people digging and didn't like people digging into his life, so he got rid of it.
Fyi “Dead, but dreaming” is a reference to “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P Lovecraft, one of the sayings in the book is “In his house in R’lyeh Dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”
That's what I was thinking too, I knew it was a Lovecraft reference
Indeed, it is. I have the Donaldson version of the Necrononicin and that version goes into detail about this. The smaller, black version most people are familiar with doesn't. I have both. Something else - both versions are referring to the Ananakki. That's the reason I boeught them. I'm not a satanist. I was interested in Ancient Aliens and, one day came across it at BAM. Flipping through, I noticed the 'Book of 50 Names' and from reading Sitchen's 'The 12th Planet' knew exactly what it was. I had never made that connection before. It also connects them to the Tower of Babel - 2 other chapters contained within. You are correct! Some good comments and sharp people here! Thanks, Man..
Dead to eyes, But ever dreaming is from The Black Dahlia Murder
@@derrick15 Really? I did not realize that fact. I should known that too because I'm..well, I thought I was pretty familiar with that case as it's as notorious as it was! That's a small tidbit only an in-depth read could provide. Do you remember what the name of that particular book was? Ya got my curiosity peeked now. What I, myself was referring to was a specific chapter of my 'Donaldson' version of the Necronomicon. That version talks about the underground/water location of the 'resting' place of Cthulhu himself, under the ruins of Babylon, if I remember right. The book's downstairs at the moment. But..he's described in detail in that iteration. Our local brick n mortar "witch's shop" has many versions which makes it confusing as to who is closest to Lovecraft's original script. I bought this one for it's story on the events of the completion (and activation) of the tower of Babel. Apparently, it was built by the Anannakki with men as slave labor. The account mentions 4 cornerstones made of a mineral not of this earth and engraved with strange symbols. These, obviously, were placed at it's base and it was 'alledged' to have been a portal..or, stargate. Upon activation, it glowed strange unknown colors..but, a white beam then shot straight down from the heavens directly into it, causing it to explode killing all the workers and their 'masters' too, like a nuclear detenation! Whether that story is true or not, I don't know but, it did put an interesting spin on this whole ordeal. Especially, when you consider places like Mohenjo-daro in the Indus valley in India. There's vitrofacation EVERYWHERE and bodies are still in the streets, frozen in time - like a nuclear blast took place! Trinitite is the name given to the 'glass' found at detenation site like the Glass Lake in Los Alamos. It's name comes from the project "Trinity".. digression, I know..but, it's needed to fill this picture I'm drawing for you. Back to the Necronomicon. The small, black, more known version I also have and that's only because I learned it contained "The Book of 50 Names". These were the 50 in charge of the 250 Anannakki that were alleged to have to come to Earth from Nibiru. Each one has its own symbol to represent it. Putting the dots together, it dawned on me that I'd seen these before - and NOT on Ancient Aliens either! These are the same symbols used to invoke or summon demons! That's all it is. The same old demons, playing the same old games, lying to humanity..only, today they now have a modern day paint job. Now, they're 'friendly space brothers' from Zeta Reticulie. Mm, hm. Sure. They got groovy new hotrods too..that defy physics and do impossible manuevers and everybody's happily waiting for their arrival - because they told ALL of those ancient cultures (Maya, Egyptian, Sumarian etc) that, one day they will return. Well, the way it's looking in this hell hole, they never left! Thanks for letting me talk you to death. I know. It's long. I'm famous for making commentary instead of comments. There's a huge (literally!) difference an I really should be doing this on a blog or somewhere more appropriate. For that, I do apologise. I do thank you very much for the cool piece of trivia. I learned something today already and I haven't been outta bed for a half hour yet!
@@duanemcclure8324 Ever heard the real reason why Iraq was invaded? I'm talking about the museum that held some type of energy source in the basement. Whoever invaded that museum whether it be Special Ops or some other affiliation, skipped all high price valuables such as gold and all sorts of gems and went straight towards the basement where this energy source was supposedly hidden. They got what they wanted and got out of there in a rush with black hawks
He's hiding the words that rhymes with Orange
Sporange: the part of a fern that produces spores
That’s it.
orange
4 inch
door hinge
Eminem already have the answer.
Listen to Eminems Brain Damage, Brainless and Buisness
This might be reaching, but a mortise lock is a kind of robust door bolting system which is very difficult to break into without the key (it combines with a latch on the inside, so simply picking the lock doesn’t work). So it might also be a play on words. Mortis/mortise. Dunno.
It could also easily be a misspelling.
It could also be mortice, as in mortice and tenon joinery
AKA a deadbolt lock?
Jase Sandefur same thing, different spelling (US vs U.K.)
Mortis is also latin for dead
The idea of a decades old internet mystery turning out just to be a huge server for pirating movies is really freaking funny to me
Dead but dreaming is a reference back to H.P lovecraft’s ‘The call if Cthulhu’ the refrence was back to the description of the elder gods, who are ‘dead, but still dreaming’ and through their dreams can communicate with humanity, and Cthulhu is kind of baby-sitting them while they are dead, and can return when the stars align.
Mauve maybe he just really likes the book and decided to reference cthulhu for cthulhu.com and the dead people for mortis.com.
Also maybe, (a fact stated in yhe video that im surprised was never mentioned again) him being an artist is what he references as the dream that is dead, ”but still dreaming. “
@@kimquat_ cthulhu did target artists most of all
@@lordtoademort8124 yes that too i overlooked that part D: man, mr. ling must have been driven to insanity too
Kim Elaydo cuh lulu
@Ryan Dupee s t o p
Ling - surname. Dentist - profession.
Did anyone try Phil_Ling?
sorry, couldnt resist.
Don't apologize for art.
It is he who couldnt Dentist
Loui I just laugh spit milk all over my shirt...it came out my nose... thank you...
Phil_ling sound like filling?! That's something to try
@1 2 shitdick im crying
I love how freaky this starts out as, because it really is just funny in the end
Speaking as a MASSIVE Mythos nerd here, the "Dead but dreaming" from the Cthulhu site refers to Cthulhu, the great old one created by H. P. Lovecraft, who's a god-like being locked in the sunken city of R'lyeh. Until the stars are right, he's in a death-like state, yet still very much aware in his dreams, from which he reaches out to corrupt the minds of mortals into worshipping and attempting to free him, it's not actually creepy or a riddle or anything.
TLRD; Cthulhu is a god-like being who is dead and trapped under the ocean yet still has god-level dreams, that's what the "dead but dreaming" is referring to.
The Cthulhu site refers to Cthulhu
@@calliecalamity8787no shit.
"Please leave the dentist alone."
Reddit neckbeards: "NOOOOOOOO I WANNA PLAY DETECTIVE"
He probably took it down and took his photos somewhere people won't try to steal
almost as if 4chan was leading the investigation not reddit but ok funny man
@@theclitcollector That's the joke he was saying that Reddit likes to play detective even though they don't know what they're doing.
@@zacharyturner2944 actually ye, that might be it
I hate that I laughed at this
In the late 90s my dads buddy had a hookup for pirated movies. what he did with them was upload them to a private server and gave my dad access to it around the early 00s. best time of my life. This reminds me exactly of this. he had thousands of movies and music on the server and we had a lot of fun with the media.
My dad did the same thing.
Jake Hankins My dad used to come into my room at night for ‘special time’
Maybe you all had a same dad. But you never knew.
@Jafet_iv statue of limitations for piracy is five years. I'd say we are pretty safe for that.
@@justamanofculture12 and he's hiding under Thomas Ling.
Honest to god, I'm surprised this was a mystery at all. This might just be me and my past experiences, but when I heard private server, and TB's of information, its gotta be a media server. Throw in the whole embedded media player and references to usenet and then it is VERY clear what is going on. Furthermore, the dude being secretive because he could get millions in fines or years in prison for piracy if it is publicly traced back to him. Also the whole issue of the feds stepping in/him shutting it down would make sense for that very reason. It's extremely likely that he shut it down himself given that he still has a business going.
Yes, it seems to me like people on the internet really wanted this to be more than it is. As if a dentist with a family is going to be hiding terabytes of child porn on a website that can be linked to his name.
I don't know much about hacking into things, so would the difficulty in breaking into the website be an anomaly or is that normal?
@@liyre4189 this website had no security features other than a login page. Considering the people trying to break in were just random Reddit users manually brute-forcing, it's not really surprising nobody got in. If you don't know, "manual brute-force" is literally just typing in random username/ password combinations until you get one right. Most people now have bots that do it, and it's very popular for phishing paid accounts, but I doubt any Reddit user has ever known how to make a brute-force bot. Brute forcing is a sure-fire way to get access to an account on a website like Netflix, with millions of users and lists of known emails associated with Netflix accounts. This website likely didn't have over 100 or maybe even 50 users, and nobody had access to even a single username associated with it. Considering the fact that random Reddit users were able to find file names of media that was uploaded to the website, it's safe to say this website's security was nothing to be amazed by.
A simple answer to your question, no, the difficulty of breaking-in to the website was nothing out of the ordinary.
As for why he had a login page and refused to let people into the website, he was probably storing terabytes of movies that he was pirating to a few customers under retail price, which is a federal crime.
@@liyre4189 Pretty normal. To put it simply, most code is only written once then reused. So any website safety features have been written for other professional uses, this guy (probably) just used that same base code that had good safety features.
Cracked it!
He's hiding the original meme, how to out pizza the hut, and the true identity of Florida Man
For such an unoriginal comment, I’m surprised you don’t have hundreds of likes!
Duckroll
@@croquemaster314 Thank You!
@@croquemaster314 He has now
Florida man is not one person, he is a Hivemind stored in multiple persons
Might be a knight chess piece because the knight moves in an L shape. L for Ling lol
Damn, didn't thought of that!
Big brain moment
@@archer-sh BIG BRAIN
You’re smart dude
Smart comment son
Dead but dreaming is from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos). It refers to the Elder Gods, who are supposedly dead, but still dreaming.
I really like HP Lovecraft, he's just a hard read sometimes.
@@Ironwind1972 Agreed he's a VERY hard read. Most of the time he's worth the wade, though.
Don't google the name of H.P. Lovecraft's cat.
Yeah, that's common knowledge, but it's do kinda spooky to find that randomly on a mysterious website with literally no other text on it.
Thank you. I was a little put off by the fact that he didn't look it up and it definitely rang as Lovecraftian to me.
He's hiding all the creativity of this comment section.
>has an old pfp of pewdiepie
>implies everyone is being uncreative
Zaiko LeBolsh ok
@@zaikolebolsh5724 Its OG Loc!
YOUVE BECOME THE VERY THING YOUVE SWORN TO DESTROY
Oh, Bikini Bottom, we pledge our hearts to you, As faithful, as deep, as true, as blue, Bikini Bottom, we love you!
he was hiding the formula to make a pillow with a permanent cold side.
That man needs to be found
Those are readily available though?
@@justinlast2lastharder749 No, humanity is far from achieving such levels of forwardness.
People are SLEEPING on this comment. Cheers man.
Imagine cracking this site and finding a folder with a bunch of fetish videos about dentists and lawyer
poor guy was just trying to store his wedding photos online
We wanna see some spicy wedding photos dawg
Imagine having TERABYTES of wedding photos. I know a photographer and they don’t even have that many photos.
@@ultimatewolfexists2378 Exactly, just 1TB can be up to 2000hours of footage(provided it's not great quality), or around 100hours if it's 4k HD with super crisp audio, which would still be more than 4 whole days of nonstop filming.
@@ultimatewolfexists2378 a terabyte in the 90s wouldve been like having multiple exabytes of data today, most pictures and videos had small file sizes because hd wasnt a thing
@@liyre4189 what’s more astonishing is that they weren’t videos. I’m no expert but I assume photos take up a fraction of what one video would. That would mean that they have thousands upon thousands of photos.
The 'weird names' on Usenet is standard fare for piracy on Usenet. Usenet has an extremely long history. It's actually older than email itself, to give you an idea. It's structured a bit differently than pretty much anything else on the Internet, too. Without getting into crazy amounts of detail (although if you have any questions, just ask, I've been using Usenet since the early 1990s and have followed all of its changes), there are several companies actively monitoring Usenet for anyone posting copyrighted content. In response, those posting such things have resorted to different methods to make it harder for things to get caught and taken down. Usenet posts are subject to DMCA takedowns just as much as RUclips is, especially now that every single Usenet service is essentially owned by a single company (Highwinds). Often posts on Usenet have totally cryptic names there, but there are separate websites or message boards where real names are used that point to the Usenet posts, so you need to be watching those sites and correllating the two to make sense of it.
The one file they mentioned, the 'drive crazy 3d' thing, was also a par2 file. Par2 files are interesting and pretty much only found on Usenet. Because of the way Usenet works, you can often end up with little pieces of files missing. Par2 files make a set of files into sort-of a RAID array. The Par2 file can check the files you download to make sure they're complete, and if not, it can patch up any holes using the same techniques used to rebuild RAID arrays when a hard drive dies. It's really very cool.
alt.binaries.hdtv actually was not dvd/blu-ray movies when I last looked. It was more typically raw mpeg-2 transport stream files often ripped from satellite broadcasts. It was popular especially back when HDTV was new and 1080i displays were still a thing and all that. Early 2000s. The files posted were indeed very large, as mpeg-2 doesn't offer that great of compression and satellite streams are quite high bitrate.
I think you got it dogg
You said a lot of stuff I lack firsthand experience with, and it seems just convoluted enough to be real.
I cannot be bothered to fact-check. I clicked the thumbs-up button.
do you still use usenet? and are there usenet archives dating back to the very beginning? how does one start a usenet service?
@@yudosai Yes, I still use Usenet. There are not archives going back to the beginning for the newsgroups where files are posted because the sheer quantity of data is too large. Many terabytes of data is posted daily. For the text discussion groups, there are archives going all the way back. How far back a usenet service keeps things is referred to their 'retention' and its measured in days. I think 5000 days or so is common now for even the high-volume groups.
To get started, you'll probably have to read up a bit. At a minimum you need an account with a Usenet provider. ISPs used to provide free usenet access for all users like they provide email accounts, but it got way too expensive and few were using it. So now you have to pay for an account, usually $10 a month or so. I use a company called Newshosting, but pretty much every company is the same in what they offer, although there's some differences like Easynews provides a good web interface while with most you will need a Usenet client application (a newsreader). Newshosting makes their own newsreader and its really good IMO. Once you have that, you might want to look for an 'indexer' which is a website that catalogs what gets posted where. Otherwise you won't be able to find the things with weird encoded names. There are many free indexers, and some private paid ones. Indexers usually offer NZB files you can download which contain a list of postings you select and then you load that into your newsreader and it will download the posts, decode them, join the files (they are posted very split up), repair any missing pieces, etc.
It's really quite complicated compared to something like torrents just because it's so old and has been going for such a long time. The usenet servers themselves are basically peer-to-peer with each other, so things posted on one spread to the others after a few minutes.
Wow great to see I am not the only "old-timer" here on the web ... I joined Usenets way back in fall of 90 (first year of university)
Mortis could be a misspelling of mortice/mortise - a type of lock. Would seem an appropriate name for somewhere you would want to keep files secure.
You might be onto something but somebody in an earlier thread named doctors they said that in the dental industry there is the word mortise and it is probably short for that and it means a bridge ... such as a dental bridge .
As soon as you said "A 38 GB file!" my mind immediately went to it being someone's pirate stash.
38 gigs being a very common file size of a full HD uncompressed file
@@Tential1 he was ripping 4K Blu-Ray back in 1998??
@@salvatronprime9882 i was doing that in the 50s
@@BeeHatGuy Thee fool! I hast been doing so since the 1500's!
The MP4 and MP3 codecs werent very common back in the late 90s, so there's a good chance that they are raw AVI files, which can take up a good deal of space.
Honestly? This seems like it could have been an early piracy site.
Piracy sites have been there from the start
Ento: The Chesnaut Knight people who downloaded torrents are usually internet dwellers. They probably would have come accross this mystery and die laughing knowing it was for torrents 😂
@marsxo prolly
Nah dude. This theory is utterly retarded and makes 0 sense. Frankly, his speculation in this video is lazy and irresponsible. All he had to do was stop for 4 seconds to consider what he was saying. Literally, his entire theory about this was based around the name of 1 file that was TWENTY FIVE GIGABYTES. Good lord... you think a movie is going to be 25GB? Is the movie 15 hours long?
@@sirdamned9272 It's 1997, movie files in a good quality back then were generally storage eaters.
So it's just a dentist who liked movies and enjoyed HP Lovecraft's writing lol
+ a family man lol weirdly wholesome
this was a really fun one, love that sudden salt mine at the end, really adds a zesty flavor to the whole thing. like a mic drop. a "private netflix" sounds dope as fuck tbh, props to mr. ling
"Dead but dreaming." is simply a reference to the C'thulhu lore. There is a mantra closely associated with C'thulhu that goes: “That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
Or "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming"
@@rykehuss3435 Glad someone posted about it, I was about to.
“Dead But Dreaming” sounds like an emo band album name.
"In his house at R'lyeh, *_dead_* Cthulhu waits *_dreaming."_*
That's the source of it.
But yeah, it still sounds pretty edgy.
"Dad But Dreaming"
@@boxcarz yep. Cthulhu is often referred to as dead but dreaming
Dead but Dreaming sounds like a song you’d hear in MCR’s Black Parade album
Dibs on band name.
He’s hiding the coordinates of area 69
And the anime guys
It's somewhere down south.
90-60-90 gotcha m8
r/sep20
They’re holding the Kyles hostage
A 39 GB file on the internet is absolutely massive for 1997. For example, the computer I had from 1997 had a 1.6 GB hard drive, and 28.8 Kb (kilo bit, not byte) modem. The 39 gigabyte file would have taken, at full speed without stopping, 17 days to download.
That's when he got the domain, not when the files were there.
I think your math is off, it would take way longer to download 40gb on a 28K modem! 39Gb is 40894464Kb. 28.8 kilobits is 3.6Kbps. 40894464 / 3.6 = 11359573 seconds or ~131 days
Bro running a disney live servucw before disney everyblearn tehy need a live service
Piracy my dudes
Back in the day multiple dump websites looked similar to this
@@stonksmcmeme All due to its name being the Latin word for death.
@@aerospherology2001this. If it had been ling family stuff or something similar no one cares.
The owner of Mortis was almost certainly hosting files for scene groups.
When you consider how ridiculously tight his code was, along with the amount of data, it couldn't be just for friends and family.
Another comment mentioned that the name Mortis pops up in regard to piracy, and I remember an old friend of mine in the early 2000's mentioning the name Mortis in relation to his scene group.
If he is old guard, it's all the more reason not to bother him.
The guy is deserving of respect.
Edit: I checked with a friend of mine, and Mortis used to be a top site.
So yeah, theory confirmed.
I’m sorry, I’m not very into the scene culture so could you explain what a old guard is?
@@ChapoChaos it's just another term for a veteran, meaning he's been doing it for a long time
Yep, came to the same conclusion.
So the piracy community i'm assuming would give out the username and PW to access the site and download the ripped movies, music etc? Cause if that's the case why hasn't anyone who used that site for that purpose come forward about it, I mean its over 20 years later its not like they're gonna be getting in trouble for that now. But furthermore what about the security for the site, it was able to withstand hundreds of attacks and attempts to access it by hackers so i'm assuming it was pretty top grade security for the time so how/why would a dentist have any knowledge about that kinda stuff?
Matthew Combs tbf the piracy community is really tight knit-- you can't just pass info about certain sites or you get your invite revoked or you're basically not allowed to download anything anymore
plus with the large gb files, and relations with usenet, it's probably more likely that the login screen wasn't even a real login at all
just speculating, though
He shouldn't have called it mortis..thats the reason why people are so interested
The "dead but dreaming" quote is a famous quote of the Cthulu mythos.
It's pretty obvious that this was just some early spoopy for spoopy's sake shenanigans by a horror fan (hence the Lovecraft references). A jet black home page and the name Mortis (death) are pretty obvious theatrical flourishes.
Hosting 39Gb of files is NOT cheap, there is definitely something there. The movie theory makes the most sense with what we are presented here
@@eriness It's not cheap, but it's not overly expencive either depending on the time it was being hosted, where the files are being hosted, etc.
I would bet, if it wasn't movies, it was just a way to draw attention to the site in an effort to sell it off later. A popular site with the name "MORTIS" that has a pension for being creepy? Would rake in quite the dough.
Nah, it was a piracy site
Roderick storey
Probably not. Mortice is an extremely rarely used word. The Latin “Mortis” (meaning death) really fits here.
According to the other comments here, this theory is pretty bs.
"Early days of the internet."
*Shows Commodore 64*
C64 BBS boards, while not the earliest, were pretty common pre-www internet domains
I’m so proud of both of you
Frank LoTurco I’m pretty sure Epic Games uses Commodore 64s as its servers for Fortnite.
I think people like the mystery more than knowing the real truth behind the mystery. That's why nobody bothers to do any research. It's more fun to speculate on all the weird possibilities behind it than to find out the (boring) reality of it...people would prefer to perpetuate the mystery. Once it's solved, all the fun is over.
Yup. I love wanting to know the truth about these things more than actually knowing it :)
That's the charm of it,as the saying goes
"It's not about the destination,it's about the journey"
This reminds me of Geedis. That turned out to be so anticlimactic after everyone found out what is was.
Basically, conspiracy theories in a nutshell. Especially the obvious ones, like Bigfoot. Many love that creep-down-your-spine feeling
I like the feeling of knowing. Something about the journey tbh
Just a site with dudes family photos. It was also noted, that the man might be an artist, probably interested in professional photography.
Terabytes of data may be explained, if he just stored a lot of .raw files, which may be very heavy (a lot of photos may take up tens of terabytes of space). Login form is to prevent access to the website by strangers, as photos are private, but give access to people, you want to share photos with. I think registration was curated by Thomas Ling himself and then he would give access to specific people, which explains why brute didn't work, as passwords may have been absurdly long. His other websites with names (including his family name), may be other albums for relatives or something. Making a homemade website with curated access secure is not horribly difficult as well, considering it was not built to be used by strangers. He might have an IT background or have friends with one.
People really love to find mystery, where there's none.
UPD: Pirated films website also works. This explains why he needed to cover it up from the public.
makes sense, my friend's dad is a photographer and when i went to his house there was a shit ton of sd cards
Honestly by your content I wouldn't guess what a relatively small channel this is. The quality is fantastic and it's really well thought out. I've seen other videos on Mortis but this is by far the best I think. I can't wait to see more from you.
Plot twist: There is no working password and the login screen is the only thing in the whole website’s code
*that gives me an idea*
@@yuricock wtf what’s the idea?????
@Mathspiracy Admittedly not a very good one; but I'm pretty sure that was a joke
39 gigabytes? I think not
@Mathspiracy They could just put a login form that always fails
I can hear a creepy voice saying
"M oRtiS"
I can make that voice
Mørtîs
Bortis
SMØRTeeS
@Propelli that's from _Faith,_ right?
In addition to being a dental term, a mortis is also a type of lock. Fits the whole "you must log in to use my special movie website" thing.
Barely Sociable is like the only man with any common sense among hordes of conspiracy theorists; the adult in the room. This really shows up the quality of research your average reddit and chan user is capable of lol
Superstition feeds on stupidity. Most people with sense have a distaste for conspiracy theories due to that and steer clear, which means the communities end up concentrating those most likely to perpetuate them. It's refreshing to see Barely Sociable go in and clean house.
As explained in an earlier thread by Dr Z , it was probably short for the word mortise which is a dental term which means Bridge
Ok
nexpo.
Except he doesn’t know the difference between owning a business and incorporating.
Honestly I feel like this guy was probably a lovecraftian fanatic and tried to hide his websites under a creepy facade. As to why those files can't be unlocked, things like encryption keys existed back then of course. Basically if had access to mortis you could download the films, then de-encrypt them back into a MPEG-2 file which you could then watch.
This is just speculation obviously but it really just depends on what those large files were.
mpeg-2 is the real horror story here
@@helloofthebeach it truly is lol
@@yugimumoto1 it's not mpeg 2 it's mpeg 1 audio layer 2.. just like mp3 is mpeg 2 audio layer 3
The domain name woukd lead you to think it's snuff films but finding terabytes worth of those in the late 90's seems a bit of a stretch lol.
@@dentistguba The domain name just makes me think he was a goth at some point, or maybe into Norweigian goblin music and forgot that's two i's rather than one
Reddit user with gold:
“A seemingly mysterious individual named Thomas Lang to which little is known about”
Are you sure about that sir?
Good video!
Youre the only one to not blow anything over the top with random dramatic music and crazy visuals. You do your research and tell the story. You make it very apparent when you voice your opinion and you're amazingly aware of what you say. Thank you for being normal.
it's very clear to me that he just enjoyed making websites for himself and his family, and was pirating things on mortis so he locked it up tight to avoid being arrested. i know plenty of people who just make websites or buy domain names just for funsies. and seems like he was a dentist for a failed company. the internet really loves blowing things out of proportion lol
"Dead But Dreaming" = "Hey There, This Website Is Currently Under Construction"
Yo, huge fan of mystery channels and overall dark content analysis videos. Your channel became and instant favorite for me. Found it today and binged all your videos. Great content.
I love how you stress the truth and your research even if the conclusions aren't super exotic. Thanks
wow, really great video. i like how you don't just regurgitate info from reddit or 4chan threads, you also investigate and do some research yourself. definitely subscribed.
Downloading a 30+gb file back in 1997 would take years. How fast was the Internet back then? lol
This is a smart guy just looking out for the future of his kids. They will have their own website once they grew up.
They can sell it or whatever. It's a good investment.
I was thinking the same thing. I remember mp3s sometimes taking hours to download a single song on a 56k modem. On my 120mb hard drive.
Broadband in the US was first available [not in all areas] by 1996. It was expensive; and only schools and big businesses could afford it. In 1997 you had somewhere between a 20k-to-30k internet connection. A 56k modem was invented at this time (which means 40k-to-50k actual speed) but wasn't widespread until at least 2000 then went dead on arrival as broadband took off.
I'm more curious about the data center this guy had. Large hard drives weren't cheap I had an 800 mb harddrive. A 20 GB harddrive in 1997 probably would have set you back $500 and those were more than likely enterprise drives so it may have cost more than that. Whatever this guy had going on he had a lot of cash on hand to afford the disk storage space and broadband connection.
I still don't get why the site was so unhackable if it was just this.
Makoto Itoshi THIS
It’s filled with bootleg movies, and that’s illegal actually.
Its actually quite hard to bruteforce the site if it has a huge random password with numbers and symbols in it.
just dont ask me why I know it and were friends xd
I have a self-hosted website that serves as a sort of private "social network" exclusively for me and my family members. It also simply displays a login screen when accessed, as only registered users can log in. I often wonder what people might think it is if anyone were to stumble upon it, as I think it would be pretty hilarious if someone were to find it, and thought that dark secrets lurked within it :P
Stumbled upon this channel today (lake city quiet pills was in my recommended) and I gotta say your videos are great. Your editing and narration is fantastic, and you don't leave stuff out! You clearly put effort into these vids and it pays off. Hope you blow up soon!
He’s hiding Justice League the Snyder cut. Only the inner circle know the login creds to view it
Nonono, he's hiding the Cats _Buttholes_ Cut. C"mon now, get it right.
Hail Zack Snyder 🤘🏼
He's hiding the KFC, Coca Cola and Krispy Kreme recipes.
Ling is the 1 out of 10 dentists that doesn't recommend THAT toothpaste
I feel like it’s his own personal archive of pirated movies. Lol
finally the youtube algorithm recommending me something i actually want to watch
Do you have any relation with Thomas Ling??
He's hiding Half Life 3
Rise and shine mr pit, rise and shine.
wake up future reader
You mean Alyx?
He was just selling all the n-word passes
"Dead but dreaming" is a reference to Cthulu.
Shut up
shut up
Shut up
seems I upset the bots.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die."
Yess another video love watching you blow up go crazy bro
You got me
I have dark mode you fool
Fuck sake man I spent like 5 minutes trying to get that hair. Man I'm an idiot
wow im retarded, this got me despite the white background not even being the same white as the website background
you made me laugh a lot nice name and pic.... and yeah you got me till I scrolled, that made me double take
I remember as a kid anytime I had to get a cavity filled or other dental type thing that took awhile, they would let me watch movies using glasses or a screen. Perhaps they were ripping movies for that purpose and thus connecting it to the dental fillings business as well
Using glasses? What sci-fi world are you living in?
That guy: this domain is short and cheap. Let's grab it.
Many phone calls and harrassments later: My worst decision ever.
but what about the ad revenue
The Cthulu site having the phrase "dead but dreaming" makes sense, as throughout much of Lovecraft's mentions of Cthulu/The Old Ones references them as sleeping, typically in conjunction with cultists attempting to wake them. Altogether, that's probably just a Lovecraft reference rather than something sinister.
I've been bouncing around your videos since the Algorithm has shined its light on you and it was the utter contempt you had for everybody else's sleuthing laziness at the end of this one that convinced me that you were worth a bell smash.
I feel bad for Ling, who got caught in the trap of telling people what he was doing and having them say "No, that's too boring. What are you _really_ doing?"
He's hiding the stash of anime
Hentai*
Cat Pictures*
Area 51 anime cat girls*
Solaris Clips anime cat girl hentai*
Area 51 Cat girl anime Hentai*
Barely sociable : You just fascinate me. I have listened intently to so many of your videos. They keep me speculating and theorizing on, well, everything interminably.
This is a great deep dive. Sheesh… it's hard to remember what the web was like in 1998 anymore.
First vid that came up when I searched Internet Mysteries ! Hooked.
Does The Gamer from Mars have a series titled this? Yes, but it isn't as good as this one!
Great video! I'm so happy I found this channel, topics like this are so interesting to me.
I love this channel. You’re so no BS and explain things so well!!
"that's really pathetic"
Yup. That's the internet.
I thought you meant to say *i’m I was going to say...yup
That's the people.
Maybe Mr. Ling was a fan of professional wrestling. There was a wrestler named Mortis from WCW in the late 90s.
do you even know what "mortis" means?
@Jon Goat With that knowledge, I wonder if it might have been another case where he planned to flip the site and resell the domain name due to popularity (based on the opinion in the video), but it didn't bring in the attention or price wanted, or for some other reason he just decided to use it himself.
SLIT YA WRIST
Maybe I shouldn’t assume but you sound really pretentious
@@koromoro6682 Give him some slack. He just studied some Latin at the local community college and needs to show his superior intellect.
SLIT YA WRIST
First of all: who cares with regards to what they’re talking about?
Secondly, who the fuck are you, even?
"In his house in R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming." - HPL
imagine being a web developer and one of your sites just become a huge mystery of the internet
He was just selling all the n-word passes
Painfully unfunny
ViscerΔ My head hurts
*cringe*
Lmaoooo
Shit was corny I laughed at jokes harsher then this
Imma be heated if this mans doesn’t have 500,000+ subs by December
Rip the dream
You're fucking heated now boi
First timer on his video here. Already can't stand his vocal fried voice