I don’t live in the US, so my ISP doesn’t really seem to care what I torrent, but the megathread vehemently recommends to always use one. Since VPNs aren’t cheap and I’m on a strict budget (wouldn’t pirate otherwise), is it really that dangerous to torrent without one?

  • Felix Urbasik@ma.fellr.net
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    1 year ago

    @Alextheacceptable In Germany, there are lawyers specialised on torrents. They collect German IPs from the peers list and mass-sue them over distributing copyrighted material. They always ask for a settlement payment of more than 5000€. It can usually be escaped by taking it to court, but I recommend not going through that.

    So, depends on your location. Over here, download one movie without a VPN and you have a shit ton of legal crap coming your way.

      • SolOrion@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Would that really matter, though? Afaik, they could still just… ask your ISP who that IP was assigned to, which is what they’re going to do with IPv4 anyways.

        • Felix Urbasik@ma.fellr.net
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          1 year ago

          @SolOrion They don’t deal with ISPs outside the country, because they can’t sue them at a German court.

          So they need to know it’s a German ISP beforehand so they can request personal information accordingly. But maybe they could still figure it out from IPv6 address ranges… I’m not entirely sure.