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.

  • Xianshi@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    The providers are not going to shoot themselves in the foot by ratting on their users. So as long as you are not whistleblowing or criticizing Israel then you will be left alone. They dgaf about piracy.

  • moreeni@lemm.ee
    50·
    6 days ago

    Not everyone lives in the so-called first world. Here the ISPs don’t care about pirating.

  • DontAtMe@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    7·
    5 days ago

    I’ve been using private trackers for the past 16 years. I’ve never gotten any notices from my ISP, or been involved in any legal related issues since a lot of those sites have now been raided or shut down. The only time I use a VPN is for anything public tracker related. Obviously a VPN is good practice but I haven’t seen the need for it since a lot of trackers require you to sign up with your home IP address anyways.

    Edit: Forgot to mention that my downloads are about a 50/50 split between downloading locally and on my seedbox.

  • gazter@aussie.zoneEnglish
    244·
    6 days ago

    I think you are giving an overly simplistic answer, to the point of being misleading.

    Stating that you need a VPN for pirating is blatantly false. It’s perfectly possible to pirate without one. You can assume that people are asking if they should have one, but it is helpful to draw the distinction- including the why you believe they should use one. What does a VPN do, how is it helpful, what could happen if they don’t, etc.

    Teach people, don’t just give them blind rules.

    • RBG@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      Yep. I am not a strong media consumer. For my purposes, something that I think is called scene release page with links to new episodes or movies that just came out posted on one click hoster pages, as well as streaming sites where I find ways to download the video instead of just streaming, is enough. For neither I use a VPN and probably never will.

  • thefluffiest@feddit.nlEnglish
    391·
    6 days ago

    Starting an AI company will also allow you to infringe copyrights on a massive scale without punishment

  • Gorusnor@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    221·
    6 days ago

    Rants about not going to a big vpn because of privacy concerns, yet brings up one of the largest vpns still that their uses. Btw a vpn is only subjective to what you are doing, torrenting or any p2p activity you will need a vpn. Direct downIoads from datanodes, 1cloudfile or streaming from a site aka broflix, primeflix you dont need a vpn. Ive gone years without getting any notice from my isp with this information. Of course the websites will change over time but the info still stands true to this day.

    • RBG@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      I am not sure there is an argument of big vs small vpns. Small vpns certainly do not have the resource to fight media companies.

      • GrindingGears@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        It’s a numbers game for me. I think it really does depend where you live, and what you are downloading. 30+ years for me for the record, but I’m generally pretty low on the arrrrrr scale. Basically I’m guilty for like suburban house wife levels of pirating, downloading albums not yet released, the odd movie and maybe one to two PC games a year. Actually I’m a pretty big book pirate too, and I guess I do have IPTV, but my point is it’s all for super-micro levels of personal consumption, I’m not wholesale uploading, I’m not resharing it, nor am I dealing in anything weird or gross. So wasting your time on me isn’t going to be very fruitful, zero impact to the greater world and economy. Hence I don’t waste much time with VPNs and all of that, I just don’t think there’s much reason to. Plus I don’t fully trust that the NSA or whatever bureaucrat-org doesn’t have a way to front run your traffic out of the ISP even before it hits the VPN.

  • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
    261·
    6 days ago

    I don’t have to worry about any of this because I live in Denmark! It is not possible for me to pirate stuff because it implies that I did not pay, which I did as there is a special piracy tax!

    We call it ‘blankmedieafgiften’.

    we call it ‘kulturarvsafgiften’ and apparently you can’t google it which I’m not gonna imply any conspiracies about but yknow

    • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      I don’t know about your piracy tax specifically, but there’s also a tax on any storage media, printers etc. in Germany.

      The “Urheberrechtsabgabe” (copyright duty) is not about paying for pirate copies, but it’s a compensation for the loss due to the right to a private copy. A private copy is e.g. a copy of a CD I own in case the original gets destroyed. It’s explicitly not allowed to share them.

      Sadly the right to a private copy gets canceled as soon as it’s necessary to break a “working” copy protection. CD copy protection has been broken for decades, but it still counts as a “working” copy protection. Thus a private copy is practically not possible legally, but we still pay this tax on any storage media… I really hate the copyright lobby.

      • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        is not about paying for pirate copies, but it’s a compensation for the loss due to the right to a private copy.

        Sounds an awful lot like a piracy tax… We pay this tax on any device which can store bits, it’s not just some storage mediums. If you buy a phone, you’re paying this tax to a “”“non-profit”“” org called CopyDan whose sole job is to make sure a few select fat cat copyright holders get paid. If I don’t break their copyright, I still have to pay as if I did. Therefore, it’s a piracy tax.

        • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          Sounds an awful lot like a piracy tax…

          It’s pretty similar. The difference is that it only exists for legal private copies, not for generally illegal piracy.

          We pay this tax on any device which can store bits, it’s not just some storage mediums.

          That’s also the case in Germany (and likely most of Europe). The actual rate depends on the product category.

    • antipiratgruppen@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Do you know, is this another tax additional to “blankmedieafgiften” (“blank media tax” or “private copying levy”), or is it the same tax under a different name?

      • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Actually it might be blankmedieafgiften, that sounds far more correct. I was having trouble finding the exact term and ChatGPT was very confident (I know…) when I eventually gave up and asked it.

        • kungen@feddit.nuEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Private copying levy. In Sweden, it’s called privatkopieringsersättning.

          • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
            3·
            6 days ago

            That’s semantics. They’re charging it because they’re afraid you’re copying copy-protected materials, which is piracy. It’s a piracy tax.

            • kungen@feddit.nuEnglish
              3·
              6 days ago

              No, it’s ackshully a private copying levy. I get what you mean, but it’s a “good” thing, because otherwise 12 § upphovsrättslagen probably wouldn’t exist anymore:

              Var och en får för privat bruk framställa ett eller några få exemplar av offentliggjorda verk. Såvitt gäller litterära verk i skriftlig form får exemplarframställningen dock endast avse begränsade delar av verk eller sådana verk av begränsat omfång. Exemplaren får inte användas för andra ändamål än privat bruk.

              • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
                2·
                6 days ago

                I don’t get it. You think laws will stop existing if we stop paying some fat cats for sitting on some copyrights?

                I also don’t care what I’m allowed to do, I don’t believe in copyrights, so you can’t really argue in favor of it to me.

                • kungen@feddit.nuEnglish
                  1·
                  6 days ago

                  Think like this: for our sooo beloved politicians and legal systems, everything in life is seen as a transaction. Due to the fact that I’ve paid my “private copying tax” or whatever you want to call it, I therefore have the right to make private copies and share them with limited groups of people. If they want to restrict those rights that I have paid for, they would “need” to remove the tax – but they will never do that because it’s tons of free money.

                  But if they did get rid of the tax, there’s no longer that “transaction”, and therefore there’s nothing hindering them from criminalizing private copying. Sweden is already USA’s lapdog in all other regards, so you can bet it’d be repealed quickly.

                  I don’t support copyright laws either, nor follow them, but I can appreciate how it’s currently set up here, simply because it would otherwise become much much worse. At least here, normal people can do what they want without worrying about getting a legally binding order to pay 700€+ in damages like the Germans get.

  • pipes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    241·
    6 days ago

    Not everyone is US based, but ofc it’s an understandable assumption since it’s a very populous and well Internet-connected country (plus we’re discussing in English).

    To save one’s behind when torrenting (pirating is a bit generic), a VPN is a great tool, but falling into the privacy/security and legal nightmare of a cheap service installing malware (or getting their proprietary app hacked) and/or stealing residential connections is a big risk (like with those services where a huge budget is spent on predatory marketing on youtube); paradoxically having that unrestricted VPN app installed might mean that a lot more people are torrenting with your residential connection. This point is not a deal breaker, just a “beware”, do your homework and isolate that connection within your OS or even better within your network.

    Other counterpoint: within a country where they haven’t started to really crack down on it, you are protected by the impossibility of fining / suing / arresting millions of people at once. More people sign up for VPNs and torrent from outside the country, the more their connationals will also need protection.

    Sorry for the wall of text…