EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number and they say piracy is going to receive a huge blow. Obviously I have no intention of stopping but now I'll have to start using a VPN, if I want to continue my way. However, I do not trust VPNs a lot and I do not like the idea of paying for them (I could just pay for the movie in the first place)

I looked into using Tor network to torrent but it seems like it'd be a hindrance to the network itself, which is going to be a huge inconvenience for other users. Additionally I know that even if I found a way to throttle my bandwidth to remove this problem, Tor isn't exactly made for this sort of thing anyways.

Now, obviously it doesn't have to be torrenting, but I would gladly hear any suggestions on how to avoid paying and getting movies and shows without being caught doing it. Truthfully I was only streaming from websites for many years, so I do not know a lot about torrenting vs direct downloading either. Thanks in advance for any responses.

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[–] Nuxleio@lemmy.ml 25 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You need to pay for a VPN. It's like a condom for the internet. Frankly, stop trying to avoid something that you should already be using.

Mullvad is a good start. Go purchase it.

[–] Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Didn't mullvad stop port forwarding? That ain't great for seeding.

[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yes, Proton VPN is a better option if you require that feature.

[–] Kumikommunism@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or AirVPN.

[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I believe Private Internet Access also offers this feature if people need a cheaper alternative, although it comes with tradeoffs regarding trust and ethics.

[–] Paula_Tejando@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What tradeoffs? I can confirm PIA works fine with torrenting.

[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

As the other person said, the owners of PIA also own several other VPNs and their history prior to this was pretty bad. One of the biggest selling points for PIA, the "no logging tested in court" claim, also occured before these new owners took over so it's questionable whether that is as believable today. A big part of trust in privacy-related software comes from financial incentives and motivations driven by the business model, and the parent company does not have a good track record in terms of prioritising security and privacy above financial gain.

[–] Kumikommunism@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The parent company is Israeli-owned (and by an especially genocidal Israeli, and that's saying something), they have had several data loss/breach/sales controversies, injected malware through customers' browsers on purpose, and much more. Look up Kape Technologies.

[–] Paula_Tejando@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 1 day ago

Oh shit.

[–] rehydrate@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Proton only allows port forwarding on their paid tiers, and you still need to enable it and select a server that allows port forwarding.

I would simply use something a little less fishy and cheaper AirVpn you can pair over there also with montero and some other crypto

[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The majority of their servers support port forwarding. "Only available on paid tiers" is a completely meaningless crticism, because a) you wouldn't use a free VPN for torrenting unless you were an absolute moron and b) very few VPNs support torrenting in the first place because it requires so many resources. If you want a good VPN with port forwarding, you need to pay for it. Nothing about this makes Proton VPN "fishy".

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You can keep on seeding after downloading and your torrenting program will still manage to upload to any member of the swarm for that torrent that it connected to (even if only to check their status) during the download phase.

This should be enough to get you consistently above a 1:1 upload to download ratio for any popular public torrents, though for those with very few leechers you might never get there.

The lack of port forwarding is only a problem for remote machines your program has not connected to during the current session for a torrent (i.e. not yet seen machines that try to connect to your client), which means you can't seed at all in a purely for seeding session or upload to machines that joined the swarm after your download was done in a mixed session.

If your pattern of usage is that of mainly a downloader of public torrents who tries to give back to the communy at least as much as they took and whose not mainly into obscure stuff, it works fine.

[–] Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You are not exactly right, but going in the right direction. Not having a forwarded port means you aren't 'connectable' by peers as your firewall will block incoming traffic. What this means is that only 'connectable' peers will be able to connect to you (your client can reach out to them as their port is forwarded). You are however invisible to peers that also aren't 'connectable'. You might also experience some degradation in time to connect as people can't reach out to you.

To sum it up:

Not connectable =X= not connectable (impossible)
Not connectable =>= connectable (degraded time to connect when seeding)
Connectable === connectable (perfect)

[–] Nuxleio@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Perhaps? It works just fine for me but I'm a bit of a filthy casual who doesn't torrent all that much

[–] Banana_man@reddthat.com -3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Unless this condom has a pocket dimension inside that absorbs all the "genetic information" that's in there and gives it up to someone else to put it in your partner anyways...

[–] Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Iirc Mulvad doesn't save *any" information since they use a RAM only infrastructure. Yoy can also pay for them with either crypto or by sending them a letter with the money. There's your pocket dimension

[–] Banana_man@reddthat.com -4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Well, by pocket dimension I meant some way to access and store my personal data without me knowing or consenting. There's merit to what you say but how can you be sure that mulvad doesn't save anything at all. Would someone be able to prove it if they did? If they randomly see one day the company is going under and decide to sell everyone out to make a quick buck before abandoning the ship for good?

Truly I may be a little paranoid but its why I'd like to find an alternative with a bit less gambling if it is possible. Especially since the fines will be pretty big if I am caught.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

they have been publicly audited multiple times, their stack is open source, they require no info about you at all (paying cash is possible), their architecture is tor-like in that connections bounce around inside their network before leaving for a destination.

[–] Banana_man@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago

This is actually convincing enough! If I end up with a VPN its very worth considering, my thanks.

[–] Nuxleio@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

So the solution is to what... ? Raw dog it?

mutually assured destruction: if a VPN starts leaking network activity it's suicide for their business model
distribution of concerns: VPN services as a rule don't give a shit about your torrent traffic the way a copyright holder might care about your IP

If you're out here creampie-ing the whole internet you don't have either of those barriers but you still carry all of that risk.

Even condoms very rarely break that doesn't make them in general useless. Perfection is the enemy of progress.

[–] Banana_man@reddthat.com -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My solution is currently an under-construction project lol. It isn't like I'm not considering a VPN at all, its just that I have it more as a last resort. I need to exhaust all other options first since sure, leaks would hurt their business model but life is long and in the long run they could leak a lot of the activity of their users if they store it somewhere (something no one can guarantee they do not do). Obviously if I come to no other better options I'll look into making this bet.

The condom analogy here works too, because I'm sure you'd agree that safe sex should be free for everyone. Same with internet security and privacy.