Hi all.
I’ve pirated before, but on my own independent network. For reasons I won’t get into I’ve gone from living independently to living with roommates, and while I personally don’t have anything against piracy myself, my current concern is that because things are on a shared network, I don’t want them to get dinged by our ISP should I get caught in the act.
Beforehand, because it was my own network, my actions, my consequences to face in the rare circumstance that I do get caught (which hasn’t happened yet), everything was smooth sailing.However, even if the likelihood of this happening is low, I don’t want others facing consequences for my own actions.
What are some ways I can generally mitigate this issue? I mostly just pirate movies, and was curious if using streaming websites from FMHY or using SoulSeek would have the same risk as torrenting.
Edit: My region is Canada to help.
You don’t need a VPN (yet, c-22, different reasons) in Canada. Look up our copyright law. Fines are capped so low that it’s malicious compliance on behalf of our government. It’s so low that it’s not worth taking you to court and they cannot sue per item like they can in USA, only for everything at once. Nobody gets sued in reality for piracy in Canada unless they are profiting off of their piracy by selling pirated material. Or web hosts. Basically, don’t be the owner of Demonoid or sell hard drives full of game ROMs on eBay and you’ll be okay.
What you need to actually consider is your ISP. Don’t use any of the major telecom mafia corps directly like Rogers, Telus, Shaw, Bell, etc. They’ll have strike systems and refuse service potentially. They have conflict of interest running streaming sites, making their own TV shows and such. Use pro end user/net neutrality supporting reseller ISP like Oxio and Teksavvy for example. They exist, just look. Park Power is another local to me. Research your local options.
You’ll still get sp00ky copyright infringement letters from 'muricans forwarded to you. Don’t respond, reseller ISP don’t care either. Print them out on toilet paper and wipe your ass with them.
I keep them like trophies. I have 36 infringement emails from Comedy Central from torrenting South Park episodes alone over the years, lmao. Those are all old since I use Debrid for TV/Movies for a long time now. DDL FTW.
It depends on the laws in your country. In some countries the owner of the contract with the ISP is liable for everything that happens on the network, in some countries they are not.
People answer things like I2P, but they will not shift the blame away from the network owner if you get caught - your only choice really is a commercial VPN with a kill switch, so if you get caught, you will be singled out via the VPN contract and not via the ISP contract.
You could also get a SIM card with best case unlimited traffic and use that for your piracy, because that would also end up in your hands as you own the contract.
VPN. End of thread.
Even if you were living on your own you should only be torrenting through a VPN.
VPN with a working Killswitch or network binding.
I used to have a VPN where their “network lock” feature treated “reconnecting” the same as “connected”. Meaning that every time the connection dropped, everything was being sent in the clear.
Seedbox is also an appropriate answer.
This is why I keep a dedicated VM on its own subnet for torrenting, with the VPN handled by pfsense.
Can’t get out on the wrong IP if your NAT and Firewall rules only work for the VPN Gateway
You’re in Canada, you’re fine to be naked pirating whatever you want. The worst you’ll get is a copyright infringement or some letter telling the residence to delete the files. Nothing happens after that. You’re fine. But if you really want be secure then just VPN.
VPN or I2P.
I’m in camp seed box, or go the Real Debrid/Stremio route and don’t actually host any files on your network. Usenet, maybe with SoulSeek, is also a good route to go.
Otherwise, as others have said, get a VPN. Spend the money you’re not spending on streaming sites on a good one, like Mullvad.
Don’t use Mullvad, not because they aren’t good but because they don’t have port forwarding which is necessary to properly connect to others in the swarm.
Are there any good alternatives now? I havent kept up to date with VPN’s in a few years.
Also Mullvad money goes to Nazis
if you use torrents without a VPN it can cause problems. For general streaming websites i dont think there would be any issue. soulseek also would not be an issue. The ISP reports usually come when you seed/leech a public torrent and there are bots that automatically send IP notice to the ISP of the IP they see (since its public). Therefore using private trackers is a bit more secure in this manner but for the best solution use a VPN.
Does this require port forwarding or is that different usecase entirely?
Torrenting requires at least one side (either seed or leech) to have an open port. If you don’t have an open port, you’ll be able to torrent but will only be able to leech from seeds that have their ports open. So it will potentially limit your torrenting speed and/or completion. For instance, what if there are 10 seeds, but none have open ports? You’ll sit there being able to see 10 seeds, but your client won’t ever actually connect to them. So you’ll be stuck with a torrent that looks like it could finish but never will because you can’t connect to the available seeds.
Of course, if you’re only torrenting popular content with thousands of seeds, you’ll probably be fine. The chances of some of them having an open port are pretty good. But for smaller torrents with only a few seeds, you may find yourself stalled even when seeds are available.
This explains so much. Thank you.
Port forwarding would be preferable, but it’s not required. If you don’t have an open port, you will only be able to connect to peers that do.
I thought soulseek was peer to peer, why would you not use a VPN for that?
like others mentioned, using vpn is best.
unfortunately free ones don’t usually allow torrents because of the huge traffic burden. but there are cheap plans and sales.
also to prevent leakage of torrent traffic:
- bind the torrent client¹ to the vpn connection in the torrent client settings. there are detailed guides on the webs for each major torrent client. some even on the vpn provider website’s help section
- enable kill switch² in the vpn client (…unless maybe you have other apps that absolutely need to stay connected regardless of vpn status)
- check the news site torrentfreak³ from time to time
footnotes
-
client is another word for an app that connected to something/someone else
-
this cuts off all internet access to the device if vpn disconnects
-
a site for news affecting piracy and torrents, including govt crackdowns on piracy and torrent site trust rankings
private trackers
Private trackers don’t really do much to improve P2P security, nor will they stop you from getting angry letters from your ISP. If you, a relative Joe Nobody, can get an invite to a private tracker… You really think a multi-billion dollar industry can’t get an invite too? They have entire teams of people whose entire job is getting accounts on private trackers and then quietly reporting back to copyright owners while they act like good little users.
Use private trackers for day one uploads, better upload quality, curated content, more reliable seeds, an established request system, etc… But don’t use them for security. Because the P2P part works exactly the same as a public tracker, which means anyone connected to the swarm can see your IP. Use a VPN if you’re torrenting.
i have used 5 different private trackers for years
going back to what.cd
0 reports from them
i got 2 from the pirate bay
you are right that nothing trchinically stops it but i’ve not ran into it either
Why would they waste money and effort infiltrating private trackers when they can just monitor all the DHT swarms that are vastly larger
Seedbox
VPN is the tried and true.
If you want to have them even less involved than that use your mobile phone data plan as a hot spot.
These kinds of questions need to mention the region they are about.
Thanks, added I’m in Canada.
Canadian laws and/or enforcement is pretty weak in Canada. The worst thing you’ll get is a scary email or two but that’s it. That being said I pirate a lot so I just use a VPN.
Would you say it’s similar in the US? I’ve never heard of anyone getting anything more than a nastygram from their ISP.
(People profiting from downloading excluded of course)
I have no idea, I’ve never lived in the US.
All good thanks anyways ✌️
To add on to what others have said, case law has pretty much settled on the point that streaming isn’t a legal issue, provided no money is involved. Downloading can still be an issue, but not as bad as it can be in the US. If you’re using free streaming sites and don’t use the download option, you shouldn’t have any legal issues. I have been using free streaming sites for years on a few different providers, and the only notice I’ve received in the last decade was when my kid pirated a game without VPN.
