Torrenting without vpn for EU resident
Torrenting without vpn for EU resident
EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number and they say piracy is going to receive a huge blow. Obviously I have no intention of stopping but now I'll have to start using a VPN, if I want to continue my way. However, I do not trust VPNs a lot and I do not like the idea of paying for them (I could just pay for the movie in the first place)
I looked into using Tor network to torrent but it seems like it'd be a hindrance to the network itself, which is going to be a huge inconvenience for other users. Additionally I know that even if I found a way to throttle my bandwidth to remove this problem, Tor isn't exactly made for this sort of thing anyways.
Now, obviously it doesn't have to be torrenting, but I would gladly hear any suggestions on how to avoid paying and getting movies and shows without being caught doing it. Truthfully I was only streaming from websites for many years, so I do not know a lot about torrenting vs direct downloading either. Thanks in advance for any responses.
It's a lifestyle, not a way to save money. I pay for piracy related tech more than a netflix subscription costs.
This. I don't do much but I have spent $1,200 on HDDs alone. Then there's the true saviors of the internet with hundreds of TB, even PB of backed up, virus-free content
EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number
no they're not.
the EU ruled that IP addresses are personally identifiable information (PII) for the purposes of GDPR compliance EIGHT YEARS AGO. this means that internet services cannot store your IP address without your consent and explicitly telling you why they need it, they have to delete it when they're done with it, and if they are to be stored in any way for aggregate data then it needs to be anonymised so that it can no longer be associated with you.
any change to associate IPs with you would break the GDPR.
Greece did it anyway and EU made us, actually. https://bernitsaslaw.com/2025/03/27/law-51792025-on-digital-piracy the "dynamic blocking measures targeting end-users" are connection of the IP with the equivalent of a social security number of the people inside the house where the infringement occurs.
EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number and they say piracy is going to receive a huge blow.
Sounds like an April Fools joke.
You need to pay for a VPN. It's like a condom for the internet. Frankly, stop trying to avoid something that you should already be using.
Mullvad is a good start. Go purchase it.
Didn't mullvad stop port forwarding? That ain't great for seeding.
You can keep on seeding after downloading and your torrenting program will still manage to upload to any member of the swarm for that torrent that it connected to (even if only to check their status) during the download phase.
This should be enough to get you consistently above a 1:1 upload to download ratio for any popular public torrents, though for those with very few leechers you might never get there.
The lack of port forwarding is only a problem for remote machines your program has not connected to during the current session for a torrent (i.e. not yet seen machines that try to connect to your client), which means you can't seed at all in a purely for seeding session or upload to machines that joined the swarm after your download was done in a mixed session.
If your pattern of usage is that of mainly a downloader of public torrents who tries to give back to the communy at least as much as they took and whose not mainly into obscure stuff, it works fine.
Perhaps? It works just fine for me but I'm a bit of a filthy casual who doesn't torrent all that much
Unless this condom has a pocket dimension inside that absorbs all the "genetic information" that's in there and gives it up to someone else to put it in your partner anyways...
So the solution is to what... ? Raw dog it?
- mutually assured destruction: if a VPN starts leaking network activity it's suicide for their business model
- distribution of concerns: VPN services as a rule don't give a shit about your torrent traffic the way a copyright holder might care about your IP
If you're out here creampie-ing the whole internet you don't have either of those barriers but you still carry all of that risk.
Even condoms very rarely break that doesn't make them in general useless. Perfection is the enemy of progress.
Do you have some source for this IP thing in the EU? I wasn't aware of any new privacy laws.
only sources I can find are in Greek since this is my home country where this was implemented, but basically EU forced us to do it so I thought other countries would also have this problem. https://techmaniacs.gr/episimo-syndesi-afm-me-ip-kai-prostima-se-osoys-katevazoyn-katanalonoyn-kai-diakinoyn-peratiko-periechomeno/ see if you can translate this to english, will come back with an uptade if I find something better. update: found this article in english only, but the “dynamic blocking measures targeting end-users” are connection of the IP with the equivalent of a social security number of the people inside the house where the infringement occurs.
Uh, thanks. That really doesn't look good. Usually copyright infringement is a civil matter. And I believe we had sufficient laws to handle that in European countries. I haven't read the cited new law, but I guess that "shortcut" just does away with everyone's privacy. Plus it's going to swamp the courts with cases. I'm not sure if they're bored or anything.... But either they just hand out fines without checking properly... Or, if done properly, this is just a lot of additional work for the justice system. To the benefit of the copyright industry. And either way, it's just bad for the people.
Edit: I believe this is the mentioned government gazette. The copyright changes are in Chapter 2: https://www.e-nomothesia.gr/kat-arxaiotites/n-5179-2025.html
Seedboxes go from €2 to €100+ a month depending on how much you will torrent and how much space you need on the box alongside other factors. My personal choices are Gigarapid and Ultra but there are others
Update: Hilariously, while looking into finding english articles for said law in Greece, I stumbled upon one possible answer for my problem. The SSN that connects to the IP address has no way of pinpointing a perpetrator in a place with free WiFi like an internet Cafe. This method is not really safe, for the law has only passed recently but in extremely classic Greek government fashion, the law has many gray areas and potential loopholes! Tell me what you think about this idea.
How about you don't go saturating some poor sods public WiFi that he is kind enough to provide to his customers? Cheapskate
Torrenting in a café? Get Mullvad and stop complaining.