this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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I've noticed many people promote VPNs for torrenting to evade legal troubles in some places. But I wonder how do VPN companies get away with legal complaints? Especially if their servers are located in Germany or Japan, where piracy is heavily penalized.

p.s. I have never used a VPN for piracy, and I have never received any DMCA emails.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Who do you send the complaint to?

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can't comply with a request for something you're not logging.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can be ordered to log however.

Zero-knowledge protocols are important.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I have never heard of a government forcing a company to implement logging. Which one did?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 weeks ago

Why do you think you'd hear about it?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Appeal to ignorance

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (6 children)

If you are just torrenting and using it for downloading some stuff and nothing more, use the cheapest as NordVPN or Cyber ghost these are good for this, BUT NOT FROM A PRIVACY POINT OF VIEW

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

Just use mullvad. Pay for it with Monero if you're super paranoid.

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

Mullvad semi recently closed it's port forwarding service. Afaik AirVpn is (one of) the only ones remaining that allows you to expose ports through there service

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

I'm completely okay with that but you can find cheaper alternatives if you just want to do torrenting stuff, do not need this extra level of privacy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Pretty good. They don't log and I don't think there's been a case where they've released info on anybody.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago

Proton is great but you don't really need privacy when torrenting

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

PIA is the best for torrents. It is $79 for 39 months which is $2.03/mo and they have port forwarding. That's less than half of pretty much every other provider.

I have had 3 clients (one for a specific tracker, one for everything else, and an extra seedbox) going 24/7 for years with no problems. No complaints about the speeds either. I frequently saturate full gigabit on both downloads and uploads.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I have 4 seed boxes I run on pia. My only issue is that the port changes from time to time. I have to check on them every week or so. It's also one of the only court tested Vpns, though it did change hands after that

Edit: Turns out the pia client has a bash accessible command to get the active port. And Qbittorrent has a curl-able target to set the value. One bash script and a crontab... and now I don't ever have to deal with the port changes anymore. You're welcome leechers!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

This seems to be great as it should works

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

FWIW, at least Nord and Express explicitly put on their terms and conditions that you're not allowed to use their services illegally, Nord mentions a few usages including unblocking content that should not be available in your region.

They also give influencers like YouTubers and Twitch streamers scripts telling them to show how you can unblock content, but apparently the T&C weighs far heavier in court.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Great comment. Here is an excerpt from Nord VPN's TOS

8.2 You agree that you shall not yourself and/or enable others to: •use, assist, encourage, or enable others to use the Services/Websites for any unlawful, illicit, illegal, criminal, or fraudulent activities, including ... digital piracy ... which might negatively affect provision of our Services to other users;

A Snippet from Express VPN"s TOS:

In using our Services, you agree not to: ... Send, post, or transmit over the Services any content that is illegal, hateful, threatening, insulting, deceptive, or defamatory; infringes ExpressVPN or third parties’ intellectual property rights; invades privacy; or incites violence or any unlawful behavior.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I feel like that's a lot of boiler plate stuff. It reminds me of Tom Scott's video on VPN sponsorships not admitting they can be used as tools for piracy

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

you could live in a 3rd world country that doesn't care if individuals pirate. eg New Zealand

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

If NZ is a 3rd world country then my country probably categorized in 10th world country

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I actually live in the US. And New Zealand is not a third world country.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And New Zealand is not a third world country

No, but the US is.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

We don't know if you may be too stupid to have good reading comprehension, but here you go.

Show us where in there it says any North American country? We'll wait.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

ISPs turn off connectivity out of fear from lawsuits. Cox is contesting this, saying it's too much of a burden (which it is) for both them and customers to turn off internet.

Its also fucking dangerous to do that in this day and age.

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

Very dangerous because at that point you could see trolls connecting to any network and getting it at minimum temporarily shut down due to them deciding to do illegal stuff. I imagine they wouldn't care what damage they cause until they get arrested, too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Medical emergencies and devices are more important than protecting shittily-protected systems.

[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 month ago (2 children)

DMCA is an American law with American jurisdiction.

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

And America controls all of the fucking Internet. Especially all main social networks and search engines.

Americans, especially after 9/11 happened, feel entitled to catch criminals (or at least what they deem so) all around the world and beyond.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Okay ... All of that could be true, and then some, and it still wouldn't give the DMCA any legal jurisdiction in Germany, or Mexico, or anywhere else that isn't America..

Is this thread about some moral invective? Or is it about the DMCA?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

In a just world where everyone minds their own business, it would be true.

It's the fault of people who live there for not fighting for abolishment of this hellhole of a law.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

But America is the world?

Every time the spaceships come, it's defending the white house, which is the most important house on the planet.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm sorry, is this about Independence Day? Or the DMCA?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Its simple really. If you have an IP address on a torrent network, contact its owner. The owner of the IP will then be forced to contact the user... But if the owner doesn't keep logs... Then they don't know who the user is... And the claim can't progress any further. But not all VPNs are created equal. Some keep logs. And that's not good for privacy.

For you not getting DMCA, you may use private trackers only. If not, maybe you got lucky, or you just ignored the emails from your provider or your provider doesn't follow up with complaints.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

How come private trackers are considered secure, wouldn’t the same approach to IP logging work once you obtained access to a tracker?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Private trackers are no more "secure" than public aside from the barriers to entry... However, it's not like someone working for the MPAA couldn't pass an interview or whatever it is they do these days...

I'd still use a VPN if I were still on private trackers.

That said, I use a VPN always, so... 🤷🏻

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The barrier to entry into private trackers is high enough that it's not worth it. Soon after they started sending DMCA letters the admins would be alerted and it would take about 5 minutes to identify the preparator and ban them, and whoever invited them, and their whole invite tree. People complain about it being difficult to join private trackers, but it's really a security feature.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

~~But it's VPN providers who rent the servers that have downloaded the torrents. So they can basically say it's not done by us, but the users of our service, and thus they don't bear any consequences? It seems like such a good business model.~~

VPN providers do not bear any responsibilities for providing services for piracy.

The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copyright is the exemption from direct and indirect liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries.

So technically if VPN providers do not keep logs, you are fine. But since it's impossible to know how VPN providers servers are implemented, still there are risks.


I mostly use public trackers. Maybe it's just my ISP doesn't care.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Correct. That's also why it's important to find providers thatchave passed many independant audits. Like ProtonVPN or Mulvad.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Plot twist: RIAA and MPAA own all the major VPN providers, and/or the data centers they rent from.

/ConapiracyTheory