this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Is there a "torrenting for absolute tech illiterate morons" guide out there?
The absolute basics:
Always use the VPN when searching and downloading.
There are lots of steps to make it more convenient - things like using a Virutal machine so the vpn and torrent do their thing while you do whatever else you want on your PC, or setting up a docker Servarr stack to make things more convenient, or setting up a Raspberry pi / other device as a servarr stack. But for the basics all you need is a torrent client, a VPN and a Web browser.
All the extra advanced stuff is just quality of life, like being able to leave it downloading securely 24hours a day or organising your downloads better.
PSA: you may not need a VPN at all, depending on your country or your ISP.
Edit: I know that torrent clients are a well-established paradigm—and that people are resilient to change—which is probably why you downvoted me. But Debrid services are some serious game changers, so needless to say I'm disappointed in you for just blindly downvoting without even giving them a try. You have no idea what you're missing out on. 😔
If you're going to pay money to pirate, you might as well skip the VPN and qbittorrent and just get a Debrid service instead. This gets you direct downloads to any torrent at gigabit speeds, without having to wait for seeds. Debrid takes the torrent client completely out of the picture.
All you do is copy and paste the magnet link into the Debrid site, and then directly download the torrent from your browser. It's cheaper and much faster than a VPN + torrent client. And safer too because your ISP doesn't see you sharing any illegal content (seeding the files is how they get you) nor using a VPN, so you can still pirate in places where VPNs are illegal. They just see you downloading large files from the internet. And since you're not distributing anything (seeding), you're staying within the law in most jurisdictions.
The threatening letters from my ISP stopped completely after I ditched qbittorrent and switched to Debrid. More people need to know about this. It's so much better than putting up with torrent clients, dealing with DNS/IP leaks, and waiting for seeds. Just copy/paste and download.
All that, plus the fact that if you're gonna pirate, private trackers are better and safer. And in that case you need to seed. And besides, if everyone switches to debrid and nobody seeds anymore, who are you going to leech from?
Do they really say "Users personal data's"?
I'm guessing you don't seed then.
Of course not, because there's nothing to seed when you're downloading a file directly from a server. I thought I already explained this.
I'm not "paying money to pirate". I'm paying money for privacy, and filesharing is part of that. I would still be using a VPN even if everything I downloaded was public domain.
Start out simple and stick with a basic BitTorrent client. Figure out where you want to download from and get a torrent client configured. I use an ISP that frowns upon piracy so here's a quick overview:
If/when you want to try Lidarr, you'll be much better off knowing the basics of BitTorrent because *arr software is confusing in its own regard. Lidarr is just a tool to organize your music library folders and also automatically queue downloads. It is not a requirement to enjoy downloading music.
Usenet and soulseek are other alternatives.
For music, soulseek is a great resource too
VPNs are only needed in some countries (e.g. France). They're not needed in every country (i.e. Italy doesn't give a fuck about piracy, unless it's football matches).
i personally use a provider for that. i just download torrents to their cloud and get it at maximum speed from there. so I don't have to worry about p2p risks or being online a lot. I'm with premiumize, but there are others I guess.
The problem is those companies (premiumize, debrid, whatever) are entities that make profits from filesharing and give nothing back to artists. That's not morally defensible.
Filesharing itself is perfectly morally defensible, and in fact sharing culture is good for society (including artists).
So while they might be convenient, they also shouldn't exist in the first place. Parasitic companies shouldn't be rewarded for their patristic behaviour.
you are not wrong, but this also applies to VPN services. (their defense is as good as the sharehosters are useful for downloading Linux ISOs) and without using any of those proxy services, the lawyers get rich on my money, not the artists either
VPNs would still be in business if illegal filesharing didn't exist. I don't think you could say the same for sharehosters.
true. because they scam people into thinking they would add privacy.