Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

In France they don’t care unless you pirate French content

I've been using private trackers for the past 16 years. I've never gotten any notices from my ISP, or been involved in any legal related issues since a lot of those sites have now been raided or shut down. The only time I use a VPN is for anything public tracker related. Obviously a VPN is good practice but I haven't seen the need for it since a lot of trackers require you to sign up with your home IP address anyways.

Edit: Forgot to mention that my downloads are about a 50/50 split between downloading locally and on my seedbox.

I think you are giving an overly simplistic answer, to the point of being misleading.

Stating that you need a VPN for pirating is blatantly false. It's perfectly possible to pirate without one. You can assume that people are asking if they should have one, but it is helpful to draw the distinction- including the why you believe they should use one. What does a VPN do, how is it helpful, what could happen if they don't, etc.

Teach people, don't just give them blind rules.

Not everyone lives in the so-called first world. Here the ISPs don't care about pirating.

Ahh, American ey?

Do I need a VPN to read this post?

What a bullshit post. The reality is that it depends on your circumstances. Most people in the United States do not need a VPN. Saying it's required is horseshit.

Whether you really need a VPN depends on where you live. When in doubt, use one

You don't need a VPN if you use I2P!

I don't use one. Never had.

I use a seedbox abroad and secure ssh to transfer stuff to my own server. Don't see what additional security a vpn would give me.

Rants about not going to a big vpn because of privacy concerns, yet brings up one of the largest vpns still that their uses. Btw a vpn is only subjective to what you are doing, torrenting or any p2p activity you will need a vpn. Direct downIoads from datanodes, 1cloudfile or streaming from a site aka broflix, primeflix you dont need a vpn. Ive gone years without getting any notice from my isp with this information. Of course the websites will change over time but the info still stands true to this day.

Starting an AI company will also allow you to infringe copyrights on a massive scale without punishment

Buy an ad.

Summation of arguments below: if you know a lot, then you know if you know if you need a VPN or not.

If you don't know if you need one, just get one.

Your mileage may vary. 25 years of downloading shit without a VPN and I never had a problem.

I don't have to worry about any of this because I live in Denmark! It is not possible for me to pirate stuff because it implies that I did not pay, which I did as there is a special piracy tax!

We call it 'blankmedieafgiften'.

~~we call it 'kulturarvsafgiften' and apparently you can't google it which I'm not gonna imply any conspiracies about but yknow~~

Is this a vpn sales pitch

I think there is a big misconception that the main use of a VPN is piracy when that is really only true when in a community of pirates. There are many legit uses for one as well.

For example, while VPNs are generally not a great tool for anonymity they can be a useful tool for privacy. One of the side effects of not trusting your ISP (or better put trusting your VPN over your ISP) with your data is it also makes it easier to torrent.

Its this relationship of trust that makes choosing a respected VPN (such as Mullvad, IVPN, or Proton) important over just choosing the cheapest provider with port forwarding.

Not everyone is US based, but ofc it's an understandable assumption since it's a very populous and well Internet-connected country (plus we're discussing in English).

To save one's behind when torrenting (pirating is a bit generic), a VPN is a great tool, but falling into the privacy/security and legal nightmare of a cheap service installing malware (or getting their proprietary app hacked) and/or stealing residential connections is a big risk (like with those services where a huge budget is spent on predatory marketing on youtube); paradoxically having that unrestricted VPN app installed might mean that a lot more people are torrenting with your residential connection. This point is not a deal breaker, just a "beware", do your homework and isolate that connection within your OS or even better within your network.

Other counterpoint: within a country where they haven't started to really crack down on it, you are protected by the impossibility of fining / suing / arresting millions of people at once. More people sign up for VPNs and torrent from outside the country, the more their connationals will also need protection.

Sorry for the wall of text..

VPNs are not required. Instead of egressing on your ISPs network, you're egressing on someone else's network. It's kinda like paying for a second ISP so you can egress your ISP to go encrypted to your other ISP. What does it accomplish other than putting you in another law jurisdiction?

Even purevpn who said "no logs" handed over data.

"In 2017, PureVPN, which advertised a no-logs policy, supplied connection logs to the FBI during a cyberstalking investigation. These logs enabled the identification of a suspect by linking activities to originating IP addresses. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureVPN

"In 2016, IPVanish, another provider asserting a no-logs policy, furnished user data to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during a child abuse investigation. The information shared included the user's real IP address and connection timestamps. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPVanish

You pay them, and for what? To just take their word for it? Sorry but it's impossible to run a reliable network without some level of logging.

Not to mention that there have been documented instances Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), have been misused, leading to concerns about domestic surveillance.

This section allows the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to collect communications from non-U.S. citizens located outside the United States, even when those communications are routed through U.S.-based companies, such as cloud providers, internet service providers (ISPs), and tech companies.

At that point do you think you'll get some form of compensation from the VPN provider?

Not every country has firms that send warning letters/lawsuits for torrenting. Research whether your country does that before getting a VPN. In my country, I never had to get one.

So i see this alot and i understand it but at least in my country (canada) i have been torrenting for well over 15 years with out a vpn. The worst case is a 5k fine total but not before a letter from the isp forwarded to me on behalf of the copyright holder. Which i can ignore with out any issue since they have no idea who i am.

Issues will arise if you reply to them.

So is vpn required?

it depends on where you live and your confort with your risk.

UseNet over SSL?