Ive thought about torrents but they require a paid vpn from what i know? I dont really want to pay, which is why im thinking about piracy because im not made of money and cant afford a vpn. Im just not sure if its possible to be safe and sail the seven seas all for free?

What would you advise i do? what did you do when starting out?

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[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 50 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well first off, torrenting doesn't "require" a VPN, you may want to look up your area etc... in most of the united states, basically if you torrent without a VPN, there's a chance that your ISP will detect it and typically they will send you a letter saying "we know you downloaded _____ illegally, if we catch you again, we will cancel your service".

which depending on what you are going for (like say new releases and big name targets are what they will be watching for the most)... that could take years to even happen.

Now as far as safe, and lower risk... you could always look up pirating on the IRC... it's not the most user friendly route out there, but that's kind of the point, it's ancient technology and for the most part no one bothers to monitor it.

and then of course there's just tons of bootleg streaming sites. bottom line anything that's not peer 2 peer, is pretty much impossible for ISPs to identify what you are doing on... and thus are pretty safe.

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 13 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

ISP will detect it and typically they will send you a letter saying "we know you downloaded _____ illegally, if we catch you again, we will cancel your service".

It's actually the studios that own the content you are torrenting that will seed the torrent and then collect a list of all IP addresses that connect to them, then they ask your ISP to shut your internet off.

You ISP doesn't actually care if you torrent, because if they cancel your internet they lose out on money.

[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 hour ago

Unless your ISP is a content owner, which several are now. Comcast/Xfinity is NBC for example. Plus Comcast makes a lot of profit on cable TV, so they have reason to ger people to stop. That being said, I dont know anyone who was simply downloading for personal use who got their service canceled. But it is a major risk in the IS since most ISPs have near monopolies at least over broadband speeds, so the majority have no other options.

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

True, I guess the process is the studios have deals/threats to sue the ISPs if they don't do it.

Either way regardless of their reason or motives. The ISP is the one that's in charge of sending the threat and dealing the punishment, and again the key point is (again region may vary, do research on your ISP), but typically they send a warning first. So in short, if you just want to get started quickly, you can just start torrenting with no VPN (you should probably seed things for as little time as possible), and hope you can afford a VPN before you get the threatening letter, if you do get the threatening letter... then stop all peer 2 peer based piracy until you can afford to do it safer.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

There is also Usenet, access is cheap but not free.

[–] datavoid@sh.itjust.works 7 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Substantially more pricey than a vpn

[–] immobile7801@piefed.social 1 points 6 hours ago

Buy usenet around black friday, super cheap. I currently pay $18/yr for usenet, any useful VPN is way more expensive.

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 12 hours ago

So much pricier that when you take a Usenet subscription they'll often add a free vpn on top, as a treat