I hope mods don’t take this post down as I’ve been looking for info about my *particular* situation and I haven’t been able to find info on this sub or elsewhere for that matter.
I know the rule - don’t torrent without a VPN, but hear me (my friend) out.
I live in America and I know someone from here that torrents his games without a VPN. He apparently avoids notices from his ISP nowadays by not seeding anything. The only time he got a notice was because he left auto-seed on after the torrent finished downloading.
Can anyone verify if this is true?
Thanks in advance!
When you are downloading a torrent, you are automatically sharing a file (uploading) because there is no way to set your upload limit to 0 in Qbittorent for example. Maybe he got lucky so far, but he might get a letter from an ISP or a lawyer working for the copyright holder.
When you connect to the tracker you’re sharing your IP address with the rest of the swarm.
The lawyers who sue just connect to the tracker and record all the IP addresses that are a part of the swarm and filter the ones with jurisdictions (USA, Western Europe & Australia) that have ISPs who have to comply with DMCA lawsuits.
Connecting to a tracker with an IP billed to your name or a family member is just begging for a problem.
You cannot, repeat cannot, torrent without uploading…. that’s how torrenting works.
It’s precisely that uploading that reveals your ip address, and that’s why you need a vpn to obfuscate the ip you broadcast.
However, not everything that’s torrented has a copyright that’s aggressively protected.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Untrue.
Torrenting means always uploading as well as downloading. Uploading cannot be disabled or prevented. “Seeding” is only when you have the 100% of the torrent. You are still potentially uploading as a downloading peer in a swarm. If you are an attractive peer to another peer, they can potentially download from you at any time.
Torrents are segmented into pieces. If you have any pieces, you can potenitally share/upload them at any time. Just one piece of a torrent can be used against you. You do not have to be 100%.
Your friend is lucky they havent been caught in the US so far. They are playing with fire.
I was on Verizon DSL and ran Torrents for years (2005 - 2020) without a VPN and never got a notice. Prior to that on dial up I got a phone call from my ISP for downloading T3 on LimeWire . After I got rid of the DSL I switched to Xfinity and was playing around with free VPN’s none of which you could Torrenet with. I shut down the VPN before I shut down Bittorrent and got a email almost Immediately. Not sure why I got away with it so long on DSL but now if I Torrent I use a VPN and it is bound to Qbittorrent . He may get away with it for awhile but sooner or later it will catch up with him again.
As others have already pointed out, you just have to be lucky not to connect to an IP hunter in the swarm.
Copyright protects the underlying IP of the product. They do not need to prove that you downloaded the product to hit you with a notice.
In fact, due to the nature of torrenting, it’s actually not really possible for them to prove that you stole the product. You’re actually not being accused of that. They can only prove that you, without permission, were involved in the transfer of copyright protected material. That copyright protected material could just be a single module or frame.
That means that the person in the swarm whose purpose is to send out notices only needs to confirm that you transferred a small piece of data, which you undoubtedly will regardless of your upload limitations.
Total BS, you should not be friends with someone so stupid and careless.
Could you get away with it if you were using a well respected private tracker?
So that’s how it works. I see thank you.
Must have been very lucky then, he’s been doing it for years. Weird
Ohh that’s very detailed thank you.
Hope nothing bad happens then. Nothing bad’s happened so far atleast…