I just want to torrent a little HQ music with metadata man.
I used to pay for streaming music but due to current affairs and financial instability… I wont pay for that shit anymore.
I was thinking doing the whole shenanigans with an old laptop, a fresh VPN account, scanning with clamav, moving everything to my cloud drive etc.
But is it even worth the extra steps if I won’t get in any trouble for raw dogging the torrents from my main workstation and my everyday VPN account?
I did some research and found many people recommend some level of opsec. Does it matter?
I’m not US based but I am close with many people that is, both professionally and personally.
I got in trouble in Germany, for torrenting a single movie.
Iaccidentallyallegedly let the torrent run until it uploaded the whole movie again.
Got a letter from a law firm specializing in file sharing offenses who demanded 1200€ in damages and fees.
I had to apply for financial legal aid from the government, so I could consult with a lawyer myself and write some specific legalese letters to deny the other law firm’s claims on time, and force them to actually take me to court to pursue them.
Then wait, hoping they won’t, until the statute of limitations had passed.
The whole process cost me 60€ and took 3 years.
The movie was Hurt Locker. It wasn’t even good (allegedly).Wow in Canada you’ll maybe get a letter from your ISP telling you that they got a complaint and that they’re legally obligated to tell you to stop but that’s as far as it’ll go. If you keep torrenting without a VPN, you’ll just receive the same letter again but they don’t actually care
I don’t know if it’s still this strict in Germany today.
But I’ve got to say, it was an effective deterrent.
I haven’t torrented anything since then. Instead, I just download my movies directly now.
Even considering this amounts to premeditation. Asking your cohorts on Lemmy just escalated it to conspiracy.
The predator drone is enroute to your home as we speak.
It’s too late for me, I’ll leave my electronic devices behind and live in the forest from now on.
It depends on the country you reside in here’s a map visualizing where its legal and where it isn’t https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Download_legal_status.png this is however for downloading and not seeding if you bind your VPN to your torrent client you will be fine
In france you get an angry letter the first time you get caught seeding. Ask me how I know lol.
Get a vpn, I guess even a free one might be better than no one, for downloading some songs. Can be wrong though.
Downloading without sharing is illegal in some countries??? That’s ridiculous. If you visit a site that has an image, it gets downloaded to your disk in order for the browser to display it. Same for audio/video files if you play them on a website. People break law in the UK, France, Germany, US etc. for watching YouTube or visiting basically any website?
I’d think it’s obvious that downloading isn’t illegal in every case, otherwise you’d never be able to watch/listen to any media online.
A differentiation is necessarily made between authorised and unauthorised downloads, such that buying and downloading an album on iTunes is legal while torrenting that same album is not.
Music on YouTube is authorised via licensing. That’s why videos get routinely flagged for using copyrighted music without permission (and sometimes even with permission due to overzealous or malicious DMCA claims, but that’s a separate argument).
That’s actually a legal gray area in Germany. It’s unclear whether the browser cache legally counts as downloading. In any case, it’s not enforced. It’s only torrenting/uploading that gets people into trouble.
I live in a green state 😁 and using P2P since the release of GNUtella. 25 years sailing the high seas.
Hug of death, anyone got a screenshot?
Just buy mullvad vpn, turn it on and make sure leak protection is on, then do whatever
I’ve had Xfinity /Comcast for like 15 years.
I pirate stuff all the time on bit torrent.
Every now and then I get a letter, text, or email saying something like “We have a report you illegally shared a file. Please don’t. No actual consequences will happen”.
It’s always been some popular TV show. Always. Like game of thrones episodes. Westworld (back in the day). Maybe rick and morty. ? I can’t recall for sure. I do know it’s been TV shows only. And popular ones.
I’ve probably gotten about a dozen in the 15 years.
Nothing ever done.
I have qbittorrent and PIA VPN. I need to switch VPN providers but that’s a separate topic. Qbt is on a kill switch so if the VPN goes down, no torrents flow. I’ve never received a letter when running VPN but have a few times in the past when not.
I have a Plex library over 40TB in size, and the vast majority has been torrents. I love in the US for geographical context. If you also are in the States, a simple VPN will be enough.
You shouldn’t rely on the kill switch, because it can allow leaks before the kill switch enables.
Luckily, qBitTorrent supports interface binding. By default, qBT will attempt to use any network interface that has an active connection. In the advanced settings, you can tell qBT to bind directly to the PIA network interface. This means it will only be able to connect when the PIA tunnel is connected. No chance of leaks, because qBT will only ever use your VPN tunnel.
what’s wrong with PIA? I’ve been pretty pleased with it, is there something I’m missing?
Admittedly it’s worked fine for me, and this is my only use for it, but they were bought out by a company with history if malware based ad injection. PIA still maintains no logging and since they can’t really feed ads to my torrents, it probably doesn’t matter. I’ve known this for years and still haven’t switched, but it wouldn’t be my first choice for a VPN I use for web browsing or other online activities.
ah. that’s a shame. I’m with them till 2028 as I bought a decent length package, but I’ll probably switch away after that or sooner if they enshittify. I only use it for p2p and torrent search so I’m not super worried about it for now but that’s good to know.
what’s wrong with PIA
Israeli company.
Depends on the country. Also “can” is different to “will”. In most countries it is unlikely anything will happen if you use a good VPN.
A VPN should have you covered.
Beyond that you can check the fmhy guides or the piracy megathread (on !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com) for some tips and sources. There are options for direct download, which is generally safe from legal issues (for downloaders, not for the uploader) even without VPN.
I’m torrenting for years now with my home ip. My gov dont give a shit .
Your interner service provider can detect torrents and send you a warning. That’s about as far as that goes in my experience.
Highly depends on where you are. I live in Hungary, here downloading is legal, uploading is not, making torrent use illegal. However in practice nobody gives a fuck about it, especially on a user level.
Yes, this shit is way more automated than ten years ago. Consider the legal frustrations of IP holders and how relentless they are despite lack of success. This means in order to show that they are trying to fix the impossible problem, they will go after you within 30min for a single download. Use a VPN!
No offense but it is unlikely your musical taste isn’t under the umbrella of protection
Soulseek is still alive
This is not legal advice, and I cannot speak if this applies to the country you live in. Most of the time, you will only receive a notice in the mail if you are uploading content, not downloading. Look into a program called Soulseek, it’s essentially what replaced Limewire, and it gives you the option to search for files without sharing anything back. You will likely run into issues grabbing full albums as leeching (not sharing files while downloading) is frowned upon
Posting to frown on this, do the kids these days not have any concept or reciprocity? In what sick mentality is not having to give back a selling point?
I never said I agreed with leeching, but if you’ve ever used soulseek you would know its a rampant issue on the platform
I use it enough to resent you recommending it on the basis that seeding isn’t mandatory. This is why we can’t have nice things
yep
