If you're using windows, make sure you set it to show file extensions. Watch out for files with a double extension such as "mkv.exe". That's guaranteed to be malware. Don't open any link, bat or com files either.
VPN (always) and QBittorent. After starting your VPN, go into the Preferences > advanced settings> Optional IP to bind to > pull down the menu and find your current VPN's IP address and select it. Protected, even if your VPN goes down. You can add torrent search engines to QBittorent under the Search feature.
ipleak.net to confirm your VPN is not leaking your IP too. Add the magnet/torrent link option and keep that page open. Your client will connect and will show what ip address is being exposed to peers.
There are two schools of thought, and one of them is insanely wrong.
The current preferred method (by youngins) for pirating is by using a VPN provider to "hide" your torrent traffic, which is generally valid, but it's not a silver bullet and it's a wrong way to think.
The other is to use a seedbox, which is a remote server hosted in a country that doesn't recognize piracy as a crime to begin with...
The choice is clear. Especially when you consider to get a good private VPN you'll have to pay $5-10/mo. You may as well pay $5-10/mo to commit a crime where no one thinks its a crime, then you never have to worry about it. Using a VPN you can still get caught, it's just exceptionally rare because conditions have to line up perfectly. But what if your VPN is down, and you accidentally begin a download? You willing to get a $100,000 fine for that?
Yeah qbittorrent really locks this down and makes it fool-proof quite easily.
I noticed that none of my anime torrents were downloading last week. I was like hmm did my VPN get IP banned? Then I tried a private tracker. Last ditch effort was the Arch Linux iso.
I forgot to pay my VPN for the year. As soon as I did, restarted the container, boom back to business as usual
Question out of curiosity, do you then keep stuff on the seedbox only or do you download to your local hard drive in your country? Because that download would still be illegal or wouldn't it? Just if we are talking about legality of things, everything else set aside.
Of course its still illegal. I'm not saying it's using a seedbox makes it legal to download illegal torrents. It's just legal in the country of your seedbox. So if your seedbox provider gets a DMCA notice, they're going to throw it directly in the trash.
Additionally, between my seedbox and me, is encrypted. So how would anyone know what I download from my private seedbox? There's realistically no way to get "caught." Copyright holders pay people to monitor torrent traffic for people to prosecute and hassle--but the same isn't true for private servers which encrypt traffic.
AND use at least an adblocker, and even more important, something like noscript where you can see what the website is trying to load onto you. Ublock origin lets through an ungodly amount of crap on those streaming sites.
I would recommend Mullvad over Proton. Proton's CEO is problematic and a bit of a wild card. They also have proven that they care more about money than privacy. They want to be a Google ecosystem and constantly push more product on you. Someone else mentioned this and it's a good thing to live by: if a company's service is free, you are the product. When it comes to being an application that has full control and insight into your network traffic, no thanks.
Mullvad is disgustingly cheap, costing only $5/month. I've been using Mullvad for 15 years now, and it's always been $5/month. You get DAITA plus a whole host of other necessary sailing accoutrements. They have one of the best track records in terms of not shoving marketing bullshit down your throat and being true to what their website and documentation says. The only limitation in terms of network usage is that you can only have 5 devices tied to a single account. It's mega easy to remove a device to free up a slot, though.
Yes, the search is great for starting out!
But i think you need to add the python-search plugins first, right? Not that its hard to do but it is something that needs to be done first
I don't really understand why everyone's telling you about torrents when you don't need them to watch movies. Like, it's nice if you want Blu Ray quality or have bad internet or something, but you don't need to download stuff unless you really want to. I just use uBlock Origin with Firefox and one of a few streaming sites. You can find a list here: https://wiki.dbzer0.com/piracy/megathread/movies-and-tv/ (Scroll down to streaming and try one out.) It works on mobile, too.
Sometimes you'll have to check multiple sites to find older, more obscure things, but for the most part they only really differ in their UI. Some anime sites even have options to skip the intro/outro and autoplay the next episode.
You will want to find a proper torrent site, this is not going to be easy considering you’re new to this. Using public sites you get a world of other problems such as malware.
Getting a seed box is an option, then you can install a media server like Jellyfin. But a lot of reputable seed boxes don’t allow public trackers.
On windows, I used Mullvad VPN and Qbittorrent. The settings suggested by Rodneyck are also what I used for qbittorrent.
And a tip: if you notice qbittorrent is not downloading your torrents but has lots of seeders and your VPN is connected... try restarting qbittorrent (right click the tray icon and quit) and it should start downloading.
Unless you're Canadian, then you can just raw dawg pirate whatever with no repercussion. IP cannot be associated to an identity here. At worst you get cease and desists notices emailed to you by your ISP but you can ignore them, ISPs are obligated to forward these. Especially notices from companies outside of Canada.
It all depends on where you live, in Poland they don't care unless you're pirating polish productions. Then the fist of God crushes you. Allegedly
Honestly? If it's your first time and you just want to watch movies for free? Install an adblocker (uBlock Origin Lite, for example) and check out the websites listed at https://fmhy.net/videopiracyguide.