this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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If you don't want to pay for an account anywhere (VPN/Usenet/Debrid/...), then you might want to try out Torrent + I2P. I haven't used it myself, but from what I know it's a slower but completely provider-less alternative to VPNs for anonymization, and Torrents are free ofc.
That being said, you'll have a much easier time if you pay for a seedbox for example. It's just a small server in a datacenter somewhere, that happens to be better connected and more private than your typical home internet connection, and that you can use however you like.
Thanks, that's a good idea to try.
Regarding the seedbox... I have a VPS and also a NAS at home. I can use any of that. But both are tied to my name and bank account. How do you people operate seedboxes? Are there providers that do that anonymously? Do you pay in crypto currency? Or how does that provide any benefit over using something that has my name and address on the contract?
You mainly depend on the fact that the providers don't keep logs and don't have to disclose your info. It's not 100% safe, but nothing really is. The risk of misconfigurating your VPN and accidentally leaking your IP is very real as well for example.
Ah, I get it. You operate it behind a VPN and the seedbox is just a means to get a 24/7 running Linux machine. I think I could do the same on my NAS at home. I mean it takes the same court order to reveal my identity whether it's my internet service provider or my hosting provider... And the VPN is the only thing protecting me if I were to torrent pirated stuff... Or am I missing something?
The juristiction where the provider operates, and the logging/disclosure requirements are very important! ISPs are often required to keep logs, VPN/Seedbox/Hosting providers usually are not. I'm not a lawyer and so on, but I could also imagine that logs from some VPN showing your IP was used to download/upload something are not as good as evidence as a mandatory (and probably somehow checked/verified) logs of an ISP are.
Another thing are provider incentives. If you're running a general purpose hosting business you probably don't want any shady stuff on your servers, and so you're pretty happy to comply with any reasonable information request in that direction. As a VPN/Seedbox provider your business depends on people feeling safe and private on your servers, so you'll do everything in your power to fight these requests, and there is a lot that can be done to fight them. And ofc if they do as they say and don't keep logs then they don't even have the requested information.
I don't think you need Seedbox + VPN. You can do that of course, but just one is usually enough. The important bit is that other torrent clients don't see your personal home IP address, and the provider that does know your IP doesn't have the obligation or incentive to disclose it. But if you want the extra protection you could search for VPN/Seedbox providers that accept crypto as payment, and chain multile VPNs or VPNs and a Seedbox, so none of them have the full picture. I think that's pretty overkill though, and probably hell to set up and maintain. At that point you should probably go with Tor or I2P instead, because that's basically how they operate (onion/garlic routing).
They usually have very beefy connections, far better than what you get for your home internet, especially when it comes to uploads (asymmetric subscriber lines etc.).
I don't think I get it entirely. I googled "seedbox provider" and it seems it's just a VPS with a good amount of storage. I guess they do promise not to cooperate with law enforcement? Or are in other jurisdictions? Does that mean people can do other nefarious stuff on their machines? I mean it says "Dedicated IP"... If the IP doesn't change, they don't need to keep logs anyways, it'll be the same IP today as it was yesterday. And they don't even need to access any logs. They can just see what I torrented with that IP a few weeks ago and it'll still be the same and still tied to the VPS I rented...
I'm based in the EU. So my ISP is also not allowed to spy on my connections. However they will comply with law enforcement as will any normal hosting provider within the EU.
I'm no expert on the topic, but I've also never heard of a case where a seedbox user was sued because of torrenting. As far as I can tell the seedbox providers only ever get takedown requests, they never have to hand over user data or logs. I believe that's mostly because of the jurisdictions they operate in, but some also have restrictions like blocking public trackers.
There are probably a bunch of things that contribute to this. Seedbox providers fighting against information requests, their logs not being as valuable in court, law firms not knowing whether the IP they'd get would even lead to an address (as opposed to IPs of providers they know to be cooperative), the fact that you only downloaded from the seedbox and never uploaded anything yourself, and so on. Torrenting lawsuits are already pretty weak, and adding all this uncertainty probably makes it not worth the effort.
Thank you very much for answering all of my many questions.