And that is why I don’t torrent, living in Germany. Even just leeching will put you on the radar of, at best scam law firms, at worst motivated rights-holders.
A company admitting they comply with the law when ordered to by the court is a positive to me as it means that they don’t do it unless they don’t do it on a whim and they are complying with the law, which would most likely also include privacy laws. Any company that would refuse a court order is going to be shut down and probably have all of their records turned over instead of the narrow subset that would be ordered by a court.
“From day one of our operations, we have never provided any customer data to law enforcement, nor have we ever received a binding court order to log user data. We never, for a second, logged user VPN traffic, and the results of multiple audits prove that we are true to our policies,” the company said.
You do you but it also means that if they suspect you of illegal downloads or streams and get that court order, that they’ll log that shit and then you’ll receive those lovely letters eventually, making the whole point of the VPN pointless.
What you want is for them to demonstrate incapacity to comply. “We’d love to help your honor, but as we sell a privacy service we don’t log user activity”
“From day one of our operations, we have never provided any customer data to law enforcement, nor have we ever received a binding court order to log user data. We never, for a second, logged user VPN traffic, and the results of multiple audits prove that we are true to our policies,” the company said.
In the event the company does receive information requests from a law enforcement agency, NordVPN says it “would do everything to legally challenge them.”
“However, if a court order were issued according to laws and regulations, if it were legally binding under the jurisdiction that we operate in, and if the court were to reject our appeal, then there would be no other option but to comply. The same applies to all existing VPN companies if they operate legally. In fact, the same applies to all companies in the world,” NordVPN said.
So they don’t log and are just admitting that they might need to if they were forced to. That is extremely reasonable.
NordVPN being trash xD
Not only because of that. Complying with the law is a ok. I just hate their whole vpn and security propaganda. Like, you will be hacked without us…
And they have been hacked, if I remember correctly it was twice…
There are better commercial VPN providers.
Sadly ovpn.to went down some time ago. Cheap, secure and Mr. Nice was really nice and helpful. He probably died -.-
Freaking slow, exactly like Tor imo.
The last torified torrenting test was many years ago. Speeds were at 100kb/s. Nope. With double VPN I’m at ~150 Mbit/s during torrent downloading.
If more people would torrent over i2p with great internet connections the experience would get better, since all i2p users are part of the network of servers. The slowest connection in the multiple hops decides the connection speed.
Because all traffic is encrypted and doesn’t leave the i2p network, forwarding traffic from unknown systems is not an issue, similar to Tor middle nodes (Tor Exit nodes shouldn’t be hosted at home).
qbt only ever sees the VPN as its network. It is logically isolated from my main gateway.
there are healthchecks running, so if the VPN fails qbt enters in a restart loop until the VPN is back to a healthy status.
I use private trackers for 99% of my torrents.
You also have to know that these scummy law firms use honey pot attacks, where they advertise themselves as leechers and record your IP if you upload to them. Technically a proxy to another country would just be enough here, but hey, this works too and I sleep better.
Since you use a torrent container and a vpn container I am interested in how you manage to communicate with the torrent container.
Do you utilize the *arr stack? Also with a docker?
If the answer is yes, how did you achieve the communication between the containers?
Reason I am asking is, that I want to connect to my other container but when I bind my container to the service I am unable to let it communicate directly with it.
By that logic, I’d need to access the container through the vpn container, right? (*arr <-> vpn container <-> downloader container)
After much thinking I managed it myself and found that out as well. What I also needed was the environment variable FIREWALL_OUTBOUND_SUBNETS so my other containers could connect to the container.
It’s really easy for a law firm in Germany to find out who the IP belonged to, if they have proof that the IP infringed on their copyrighted media.
The law firm looks at torrents and downloads a bit. With the IP, time and media name they can send a cease and desist letter with a fine of hundreds to thousands of euro. Ignoring the letters is not possible.
This is possible because the law firm has contracts with many big copyright holders (Disney, …).
But most of the time the fine is too high, so it’s possible to pay half by getting a lawyer. Basically the copyright holder overestimate how much damages they can get for the distribution of copyrighted material. If I understand it correctly. IANAL.
It’s simple to avoid by binding the torrent client to the network interface of a VPN, but not everyone knows that.
Not if you use a VPN though.
Also, modifying the letter, so it doesn’t include you admitting to the crime has proven effective for me (I was young once and didn’t use a VPN)
The letter is also pretty toothless since in a household with more than one person the actual infringer cannot be identified solely by IP, still better to just use a VPN though, avoids that entire can of worms
It’s also very easy to avoid this little problem by not being the only adult in the household. Unless one of the at least two adults snitches they can’t sue because there is reasonable doubt about the actual infringer (not legal advice, better option is to just get a VPN)
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And that is why I don’t torrent, living in Germany. Even just leeching will put you on the radar of, at best scam law firms, at worst motivated rights-holders.
Kid named vpn:
what’s a motivated rights holder
is scary
BREIN
You better watch out.
You better not try
To pirate movies I’m telling you why
Motivated rights holder’s coming to town
He sees what you’ve been viewing
He knows when you’re online
He knows if you’ve been sharing movies
So use a vpn for goodness sake!
Seed box or VPN should be options.
This comment sponsored by NordVPN :)
NordVPN will log and share your data if ordered by court. They’ve confessed as much last year.
Good to know. I was joking since they sponsor so many YouTubers.
I usually recommend looking at TorrentFreak’s VPN reviews.
https://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-anonymous-no-logging/
A company admitting they comply with the law when ordered to by the court is a positive to me as it means that they don’t do it unless they don’t do it on a whim and they are complying with the law, which would most likely also include privacy laws. Any company that would refuse a court order is going to be shut down and probably have all of their records turned over instead of the narrow subset that would be ordered by a court.
You can comply with the law whilst not having anything to provide the law. Such as Mullvad does.
That is also now Nord works, they just clarified that they would comply with a court order if necessary which is how legal businesses work.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-with-law-enforcement-data-requests
You do you but it also means that if they suspect you of illegal downloads or streams and get that court order, that they’ll log that shit and then you’ll receive those lovely letters eventually, making the whole point of the VPN pointless.
What you want is for them to demonstrate incapacity to comply. “We’d love to help your honor, but as we sell a privacy service we don’t log user activity”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-with-law-enforcement-data-requests
So they don’t log and are just admitting that they might need to if they were forced to. That is extremely reasonable.
It’s not though? The reasonable result would be to simply shut down in that jurisdiction.
NordVPN being trash xD Not only because of that. Complying with the law is a ok. I just hate their whole vpn and security propaganda. Like, you will be hacked without us… And they have been hacked, if I remember correctly it was twice…
There are better commercial VPN providers.
Sadly ovpn.to went down some time ago. Cheap, secure and Mr. Nice was really nice and helpful. He probably died -.-
I hear there are good ones in the Netherlands!
VPN and you are fine lol. Sometimes you have to pay even for illegal stuff… Nothing’s free…
You could use i2p for bittorrent, it is free, slower but secure.
Freaking slow, exactly like Tor imo. The last torified torrenting test was many years ago. Speeds were at 100kb/s. Nope. With double VPN I’m at ~150 Mbit/s during torrent downloading.
And time is more expensive than anything else :)
If more people would torrent over i2p with great internet connections the experience would get better, since all i2p users are part of the network of servers. The slowest connection in the multiple hops decides the connection speed.
Because all traffic is encrypted and doesn’t leave the i2p network, forwarding traffic from unknown systems is not an issue, similar to Tor middle nodes (Tor Exit nodes shouldn’t be hosted at home).
Just use a VPN
I have downloaded dozens of terabytes in Germany and I’m doing fine buddy.
For now…
No need to risk your savings over Avengers Endgame 4K…
I’ve been doing it for almost 10 years. I know what I am doing. I have several layers of security.
If you however are a tech illiterate then of course you’ll get fined. I have friends who got fined too.
Would it be possible to reveal what you did to increase security?
I always (want to) try to improve mine.
I have two containers, qBittorrent and the VPN:
You also have to know that these scummy law firms use honey pot attacks, where they advertise themselves as leechers and record your IP if you upload to them. Technically a proxy to another country would just be enough here, but hey, this works too and I sleep better.
Since you use a torrent container and a vpn container I am interested in how you manage to communicate with the torrent container.
Do you utilize the *arr stack? Also with a docker?
If the answer is yes, how did you achieve the communication between the containers?
Reason I am asking is, that I want to connect to my other container but when I bind my container to the service I am unable to let it communicate directly with it.
By that logic, I’d need to access the container through the vpn container, right? (*arr <-> vpn container <-> downloader container)
You have to expose the qbt http port in your VPN container. All API communication (arrs etc) goes through here.
After much thinking I managed it myself and found that out as well. What I also needed was the environment variable
FIREWALL_OUTBOUND_SUBNETSso my other containers could connect to the container.2 friends got sued for around 3000 each here in germany, but they “only” had to pay 1600.
You mean they got a shock letter that says “pay us, or we’ll take you to court”? Just throw that junk mail away.
If you do that in Germany, they’ll take you to court and win. You have to pay their legal fees too.
Do they actually do that in the majority of cases, or just a few to scare people? Germany is really weird on IP law…
They do it with German efficiency.
It’s really easy for a law firm in Germany to find out who the IP belonged to, if they have proof that the IP infringed on their copyrighted media.
The law firm looks at torrents and downloads a bit. With the IP, time and media name they can send a cease and desist letter with a fine of hundreds to thousands of euro. Ignoring the letters is not possible.
This is possible because the law firm has contracts with many big copyright holders (Disney, …).
But most of the time the fine is too high, so it’s possible to pay half by getting a lawyer. Basically the copyright holder overestimate how much damages they can get for the distribution of copyrighted material. If I understand it correctly. IANAL.
It’s simple to avoid by binding the torrent client to the network interface of a VPN, but not everyone knows that.
Not if you use a VPN though. Also, modifying the letter, so it doesn’t include you admitting to the crime has proven effective for me (I was young once and didn’t use a VPN)
The letter is also pretty toothless since in a household with more than one person the actual infringer cannot be identified solely by IP, still better to just use a VPN though, avoids that entire can of worms
It’s also very easy to avoid this little problem by not being the only adult in the household. Unless one of the at least two adults snitches they can’t sue because there is reasonable doubt about the actual infringer (not legal advice, better option is to just get a VPN)