The Death of Torrenting: A Tale of No Options

[JackReacheround]

I spend two long hours this morning looking for a public wireless location that allowed the Bittorrent protocols.  I

didn't find one.
Knowing the only other viable option was a VPN, I started researching the VPN options from home.  I'm not talking about hypertext-based VPNs; I mean a service-based VPN for any protocol or transmission type.

The problem with a public VPN service is that they can't be trusted.  Even if you are paying, they can't be trusted.
VPNs as governmental honeypots to capture IP addresses or track hackers.  VPN dropouts or poor protocol encryption can lead to VPN transparency and your ISP can see what you are doing.  Of course, the packets themselves, encrypted or not, are passing through your ISP's routers and they can track your activity.  They know you are using a VPN, they know you are torrenting, but that just means you'll wind up on some FBI list.

So what is the goal?  I just want to illegally download a few movies and/or TV shows.  I'm the guy who is looking for a couple joints for the weekend, not make a life-long blood oath to some drug dealer.  So what not just buy the few things I'm trying to download?  Well, that is a good point, but at 15 to 25 USD for a single DVD, it is hardly worth it for the average movies they release these days.  You know the kind, you want to see it; but once you do, you have wished you hadn't wasted your time.

So I don't want to pay for it.  And it seems pointless to pay for a VPN for something I wouldn't want to pay for...
So, I can't torrent from home because I'll get sued.  I can't use a VPN from home, because it isn't safe enough.  That is, the VPN knows who I am because of my IP.  Even if I pay with an anonymous credit card.  There isn't enough to keep the VPN company from revealing my illegal torrenting(because it is surely against their usage agreement).  So I can't VPN from home.
So, that leaves public wireless.  Open public wireless that allows the torrent protocols seems very hard to find.  So that leaves a VPN through a public wireless location.  Free sounds good, but most free VPNs(or trial versions) block peer to peer protocols.  The few that don't block torrenting have very limited downloading capping(around 500Mb to 2Gb per month).  For some people, free is also a red flag as the VPN company needs to try to get their money somehow.  Perhaps through advertisements, perhaps through your future business, but it could also be culling your data or your identity off of your computer through their VPN program.  All they could get from me is the list of what I torrented. Big deal.  You'd be a fool to do anything private or banking on the same computer you connect to the internet.  Especially with internet-facing programs.  If you are that dumb, you deserve to be hacked.

I *could* pay for a "respectable" VPN provider that allows torrenting, but I just don't torrent that much to make that cost effective.    So that leaves me with no options.
I still torrent and seed things of extreme low risk. Most of which are more than 25 years old.  But it looks like I'll never see Rogue One or play Far Cry Primal...


Jesus WEPPED.  Judas used WPA2.

[Moe]

Your problem is that you are overly paranoid. There is no option that will be secure enough for you except to not download at all.

Your ISP does not care what you are doing. The FBI certainly does not care what you are doing. You are not on a list. No one is getting sued.

[JackReacheround]

Your problem is that you are overly paranoid.  There is no option that will be secure enough for you except to not download at all.

Your ISP does not care what you are doing.  The FBI certainly does not care what you are doing.  You are not on a list.  No one is getting sued.

I was sued for 13.000 USD.  And that was plea'd down from the initial charge.  I can't risk it again.
I hope it doesn't happen, but if you get sued for 13K, it will make you think twice about P2P sharing again.

The reason I posted was because there is very little information on the internet about the specifics of VPNs and torrenting.
The flaw in your logic is that you are trusting the VPN service.  You cannot verify that your connection is adequately VPN'd or that they don't share the logs that they obviously keep.  There is a reason why the VPN services have a usage agreement -- and it isn't there to protect you.

You are right that I'm left with two possible options:
- Legally buy the products I wish to download illegally.  (which isn't worth it because the products aren't good enough to warrant their price -- also, this is a complicated answer because there is an advantage to torrents.  Properly cracked games, for example, don't require internet activation.  I will never pay for a game that requires internet access.)
- Purchase a VPN from a reputable vendor with an anonymous credit card and use a non-traceable OS at a public location to torrent (but as I said before, I don't see the point of paying to download something for free -- and I don't torrent very much to make this worthwhile; other users may have different needs.).

[Sid]

You take a risk every time you get out of bed in the morning. And if you chose to stay in bed instead, that would be taking a risk too. Life itself is nothing if not a continuous exercise in risk management.

When it comes to torrenting, the risk of being sued is only ever extremely low. The risk of being sued when you're using a VPN is even lower. But it is never zero.

Even if you give up torrenting entirely (or had never even torrented in the first place) the inherent unreliability of the automated IP harvesting technology used to "catch" pirates means it is still possible you will be sued for torrenting. Google: there are multiple stories in reputable news media of people being sued for things they have definitely not downloaded.

If you really were sued then it is natural that your sensitivity is heightened. You should stop downloading because you will never feel safe.

For everyone else, there really is very little to worry about; and if you are worried then get yourself a VPN. You won't ever be perfectly safe, but you will easily be safe enough.

[Moe]

The flaw in your logic is that you are trusting the VPN service.  You cannot verify that your connection is adequately VPN'd or that they don't share the logs that they obviously keep.

I am not trusting the VPN service. I am trusting that the end game of the copyright racket is to make the most money while spending as little as possible. Just using a VPN, regardless of how trustworthy, increases the effort they will need to expend to track down their target. You can most certainly verify your connection is properly routed through your VPN. Whether or not they keep logs is a matter of law in some jurisdictions. Of more interest is whether or not they will give them up without a fight.


All that is still rather basic. The average downloader is not going to be sued. You did something above and beyond torrenting to be worth the effort to drag into court.

[freeartem]

I spend two long hours this morning looking for a public wireless location that allowed the Bittorrent protocols.  I
didn't find one.

=-==
That seems very odd to me, I am not seeing this problem at all.  Perhaps the "Bittorrent protocols" you are relying on are the problem...
=-==

Jesus WEPPED.  Judas used WPA2.

=-==
Jesus didn't use encryption...
=-==

[RobertX]

I like the spirit you guys have in torrenting, but I think we need to heed some warnings even if what JackReachAround seems to be rambling, and take some precautions.

That said, I never had those any problems either, save an occasion legal warning that amounted to nothing.

[RonthePirate]

Watch out crossing city streets. A bus may hit you
Don't go under bridges. They may collapse.
Don't fly. That plane is doomed from the start.

All absurdities of course. If we were to do these actions, we would never get anything done.
I have a VPN, PIA. Had it since I was modding on KAT, back maybe 6 years ago. Love it!
I have never gotten one nastygram while it's been on. And I have never been even questioned by my ISP, Suddenlink.

My advice is, get one. You won't regret it either. Check around. There are some safer than others.
IMO, PIA is the safest I can get. And my sanity and safety is well worth $39.00 a year US.

And I was sued once for $4000.00 for Internet Piracy. Way before I got my VPN.
Luckily, I made such a plea they dropped it.
I did the things we're all told to do: Deny, deny, deny, deny.
I also let them know I had an attorney working on it.
I did a bit of fibbing here. I told them it was the Attorney General of The State of California.

[freeartem]

and now for something completely different, the actual cause of "The Death of Torrenting: A Tale of No Options".

The Death of Torrenting:
The MPAA has infiltrated the community.  One example;
90% of 0hr. torrents have the ending cut off, true just the credits, but credits almost always contain original content, guest stars, tunes, etc. 
5-10% of 0hr. torrents now are clipped off in the middle of the last sentence of a show.
1-5% of 0hr. torrents clip off a whole segment.
All of these quality reducing elements have increased radically over the last year, and perhaps even exponentially over the last few months.  I believe the often quoted 10.5.1 rule that allows this atrocity was changed in 2016.
All of these quality reducing elements have been sponsored by the MPAA to introduce distrust into the torrenting community.
It will be the Death of Torrenting if it continues, or atleast as it applies to current media distribution [0hr. torrents].


A Tale of No Options:
over 90% of tpb's primetime content comes from one place --> tvteam ie. www.torrenting.com.
while I applaud 'Mr. ting.com' for taking up the slack, once MPAA puts Mr. ting.com in jail with artem Vauln, there won't be nothing left.
I'm not sure how this happened, what to do about it, or wether it is even a bad thing, but it does seem to lead to "A Tale of No Options"

I fear both/either of the above Far more than a letter from my ISP. 
Hell, if I ever got a letter I would march right down to the ISP office and demand to know
A] Have you been spying on me?
B] Are you accusing me of breaking the law?
C] Who in this office wants to be sued for slander?


But then, should the worst happen, I suppose I can look forward to having alot more seeders available to seed the old un-copyrighted blackandwhite tv stuff that I love so much [and which will be all that is left]...
And hey!  Mebbe BBS's will rise again to take torrenting's place! Woohoo!!