this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Let's not turn this into what the Reddit subreddit of Piracy has turned into and that's an endless sea of questions that are all the same - "Do I need a VPN?".

And the loud and vocal answer to such a question is - yes. Yes you do need a VPN for pirating. Nobody gets a VPN for casual use and I'm under the impression that VPN services know a lot of people are going to be going to them for pirating and not just accessing content out of their country. And it's for that reason, is why I'm skeptical on entrusting my activity with the bigger VPN names available.

I use ProtonVPN myself, by the way.

Pirating under your raw IP address, only will set you up to get pegged by your ISP whether it's in a short time or a long time. I've only ever gotten one single ISP letter in my entire 26 years of pirating and it was simply because I downloaded without a VPN. Well I was also downloading off of someone else's network to take the fall, but I was confronted about it either way.

And I've gotten away with so much pirating because of my careful cautiousness when it comes to pirating. That and this applies to the United States, but the statue of limitations is 3 years when it comes to copyright infringement. So, good fucking luck to any ISP or so that wishes to try and nail me for something I downloaded 10 years ago, but I digress.

But a large part of me avoiding so much does contribute to having a VPN. So, yes, VPN is required. Please don't ask anybody in the pirating community 100 questions that are all just ways to ask whether or not you need a VPN. You do.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My torrenting level is very casual and (sry) I only leech. Also my ISP is a small one in the UK. Our Government seems to only force the big ISP to tattle on its users and block pirating sites. At least that's how it has been for the last 10 years.

I have qbittorrent and Plex on my server. It is tempting to setup a VPN just for qbittorrent just to be sure.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

So i see this alot and i understand it but at least in my country (canada) i have been torrenting for well over 15 years with out a vpn. The worst case is a 5k fine total but not before a letter from the isp forwarded to me on behalf of the copyright holder. Which i can ignore with out any issue since they have no idea who i am.

Issues will arise if you reply to them.

So is vpn required?

it depends on where you live and your confort with your risk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Which i can ignore with out any issue since they have no idea who i am.

Issues will arise if you reply to them.

This sounds like the scare tactics they use for TV licensing here in the UK and is telling by how they change the letters to "The Occupier" after no replies to their scam.

Knock knock knock through the day / evening when housewife's are about and they prowl like fuckers. I had the opportunity to scare one away when they didn't expect it (really didn't like the fact that however much they asked for "my name" they got a blank look) and they ain't been back for years :/

Fuck Capita for scaring old ladies and fellow sailors.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

UseNet over SSL?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I know 2 Germans. They prefer Usenet over VPN. USA gives you warning. Germans don't give warning.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

A "great" thing about copyright infringement in Germany is that the statue of limitations only starts after the copyright holder learns from the copyright infringement.

This means, even if I torrented a movie 5 years ago, and the copyright holder finds out my name only now, they'd still have another 3 years to sue me.

Anyway, there're private torrent sites in Germany. It's only public sites that don't exist.

DDL and streaming sites are really big in Germany. Usenet too, but until a few years ago I don't think there were Indexers with API's, so it's been either manual downloading or streaming.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Keep in mjnd that in the US, downloading isnt the illegal part, its providing the file to others (seeding).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Got to seed tho matey...

Wrap that rascal up

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

I don't need one, and you definetly dont need it for everything, maybe torrenting at the very minimum.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Amen to that!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

pirating without a vpn is like having a naked phone. sure it's great but at what cost.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago
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