If you are fine with torrenting using your real IP, then yes. However, here this can easily lead to high legal bills as rightholders can demand pay for damages even if a tracker just returned your IP as a participant of a swarm. There is no first strike here where you just get a mean letter. It goes into the thousands straight away.
Personally, I wouldn’t do that, especially here with law firms that specialize in that kind of behavior. I rather pay some bucks for that rare case where I want to get something from BitTorrent than risk all that hassle.
Where is “here”? Germany? Italy?
Most other EU nations don’t give a fuck though. I’ve been torrenting straight from tpb proxies for over two decades without a single hitch.
feddit.org is a German instance. The fact that they’re on that instance makes it pretty safe to assume they’re German, just as my instance makes it safe to assume I’m Australian.
(And incidentally, torrenting is pretty safe here in Australia. A court case years ago heavily restricted the ability of copyright owners to go after torrenters, requiring them to have reason to go after one individual in particular, blocking them from the sorts of mass attacks that make it commercially viable in the US and, seemingly, Germany.)
If you’re only interested in torrenting don’t use a VPN, just get a seedbox. You can get one with minimal stats (1TB storage, 2TB/mo upload on a 50Gb connection) for like $6/mo. You use it to run all of your torrents and handle seeding (handy for getting access to private trackers) and then just download everything via SFTP/rsync/whatever. Or, you can spend a bit more and have them host the *arr suite and Plex/Jellyfin so you have your own private streaming service. Split between a few family members, this is a very affordable alternative to commercial streaming services.
If you’re looking for a VPN for privacy concerns, don’t use a US-based provider. You have no guarantee of privacy, just a flimsy ‘guarantee’ from the company. Use a provider located in a place that has strong privacy and secrecy laws, like Switzerland.
The seedbox I looked into requires you to provide VPN details, it did not allow using it without one.
Edit: also as far as I know Switzerland doesn’t have that strong privacy laws as providers claim in advertisements, but they’re not a member of five eyes.
Of course, any traffic leaving the US is going to be hoovered up by the NSA for their SNDL program so make sure your VPN is using something quantum resistant. That being said, I wouldn’t be too worried about law enforcement from the perspective of pirating digital media for personal use. As long as you’re not selling pirated media then LE has more important things to worry about.
If you’re in a country that has criminal ‘contempt of corporation’ laws where they actively pursue personal-use piracy, yeah you’d probably want both a VPN and a seedbox. Of course, now you have the problem of paying for it without linking it to your person. Unfortunately, a big part of the online digital surveillance push in western countries has been expanding KYC and AML laws that make it much harder to pay anonymously without linking your identity to a seedbox.
Yes and no. A lot of VPN ads are full of lies and misleading garbage, and they’re also often pretty overpriced, but they can be a genuinely useful service for a lot of people as well. Just don’t get the ones in the ads.
some vpns are scams, yes, but that happens in every industry. Ignoring illegal shit, my Internet speeds are faster when I use a vpn vs not, and that’s reason enough to have one.
I used mine for a similar case because my previous provider had shitty peering which caused YouTube etc to not work well, especially Saturday evening (search for Telekom peering of you want to know more). VPN circumvented this. However I have since switched to a better provider
VPN is a scam~ 🥰🥰🥰
they’re misleadingly advertised, but still provide a useful service at a decent price
If you are fine with torrenting using your real IP, then yes. However, here this can easily lead to high legal bills as rightholders can demand pay for damages even if a tracker just returned your IP as a participant of a swarm. There is no first strike here where you just get a mean letter. It goes into the thousands straight away.
Personally, I wouldn’t do that, especially here with law firms that specialize in that kind of behavior. I rather pay some bucks for that rare case where I want to get something from BitTorrent than risk all that hassle.
Where is “here”? Germany? Italy? Most other EU nations don’t give a fuck though. I’ve been torrenting straight from tpb proxies for over two decades without a single hitch.
feddit.org is a German instance. The fact that they’re on that instance makes it pretty safe to assume they’re German, just as my instance makes it safe to assume I’m Australian.
(And incidentally, torrenting is pretty safe here in Australia. A court case years ago heavily restricted the ability of copyright owners to go after torrenters, requiring them to have reason to go after one individual in particular, blocking them from the sorts of mass attacks that make it commercially viable in the US and, seemingly, Germany.)
Germany, but also Spain AFAIK.
Sweden also, in some cases
anytime “here” is not defined, it’s the us. Hope this helps!
That doesn’t happen in the US, at least, not yet. OP said they were referring to Germany.
VPN, as it is sold by YT sponsorships, is a scam.
All the big VPN companies advertise on YouTube
If you’re only interested in torrenting don’t use a VPN, just get a seedbox. You can get one with minimal stats (1TB storage, 2TB/mo upload on a 50Gb connection) for like $6/mo. You use it to run all of your torrents and handle seeding (handy for getting access to private trackers) and then just download everything via SFTP/rsync/whatever. Or, you can spend a bit more and have them host the *arr suite and Plex/Jellyfin so you have your own private streaming service. Split between a few family members, this is a very affordable alternative to commercial streaming services.
If you’re looking for a VPN for privacy concerns, don’t use a US-based provider. You have no guarantee of privacy, just a flimsy ‘guarantee’ from the company. Use a provider located in a place that has strong privacy and secrecy laws, like Switzerland.
The seedbox I looked into requires you to provide VPN details, it did not allow using it without one.
Edit: also as far as I know Switzerland doesn’t have that strong privacy laws as providers claim in advertisements, but they’re not a member of five eyes.
Not being five eyes isn’t nothing :P
Of course, any traffic leaving the US is going to be hoovered up by the NSA for their SNDL program so make sure your VPN is using something quantum resistant. That being said, I wouldn’t be too worried about law enforcement from the perspective of pirating digital media for personal use. As long as you’re not selling pirated media then LE has more important things to worry about.
If you’re in a country that has criminal ‘contempt of corporation’ laws where they actively pursue personal-use piracy, yeah you’d probably want both a VPN and a seedbox. Of course, now you have the problem of paying for it without linking it to your person. Unfortunately, a big part of the online digital surveillance push in western countries has been expanding KYC and AML laws that make it much harder to pay anonymously without linking your identity to a seedbox.
Big brother is always expanding his reach :/
Yes and no. A lot of VPN ads are full of lies and misleading garbage, and they’re also often pretty overpriced, but they can be a genuinely useful service for a lot of people as well. Just don’t get the ones in the ads.
some vpns are scams, yes, but that happens in every industry. Ignoring illegal shit, my Internet speeds are faster when I use a vpn vs not, and that’s reason enough to have one.
I used mine for a similar case because my previous provider had shitty peering which caused YouTube etc to not work well, especially Saturday evening (search for Telekom peering of you want to know more). VPN circumvented this. However I have since switched to a better provider