I use PIA's Canada servers for torrenting because they are (geographically) closest to the US with port forwarding. No issues, been using them for years.

If you are using torrentio, you are downloading via torrent on your home network. Depending on what country you are in, it's not safe to do that without a VPN. If you are trying to watch on a TV via Fire stick or Chromecast, setting up a VPN is not easy.

Fun fact: epub can contain a virus without being an exe. Epub is essentially an archive of text, image and stylesheet files (try opening it with WinRAR, you might be surprised). You can put a malware script inside that archive, and it won't flag until you try opening that ebook on your PC. So you actually need to be more careful with ebooks than, say, video or audio files.

You don't need a VPN with Torrentio + Real Debrid. You are not torrenting - they already torrented it for you, and you are streaming the cached file directly from the RD servers. I think the only "catch" is that it's not free (obviously) so I don't think you can call it "free lunch" lol. Torrentio addon specifically scrapes the debrid service - now, if you were to install, say, TPB addon for Stremio, it would be torrenting, so you don't want to do that without a VPN.

myanonamouse has sheet music

My VPN comes out to about $2/month (got a promotional offer). What other service, exactly, can I buy for 2 dollars?

Maybe on some trackers you have to resort to these cheats, I don't know. On many private trackers, you get bonus points just for seeding a torrent - doesn't matter if anyone downloads from you, the points just accumulate hourly. Then you exchange the points for upload, which counts toward your ratio just like it would if you had physically uploaded that amount.

You can read their rules ahead of time, they have a Wiki that's freely available without a login (just google for "torrentleech wiki"). The 10-day minimum duration doesn't have to be consecutive. For example, on TL it would take you 50 hit-and-run torrents that you stopped seeding for 5 days to get a warning that can potentially affect your acount. It's really not hard to steer clear of that.

It's funny because we subscribe to the AMC A-List and go to the movies quite a bit (obviously this is in the US). But it's because a) we have a couple of AMC theatres close by, and b) it's just me and my spouse, no kids involved. So it's something that to us is worthwhile (having a night out a few times a months to see a movie on the big screen). Also, we never buy concessions. I can't imagine how an average family with a bunch of kids can just go and drop over 100 bucks on tickets and concessions on any given night.

We haven't been able to watch our local NBA and NHL teams in 4 years on most major cable/satellite providers in the area because of a contract dispute (that's what happens when the same guy owns every team AND the sports network). Last season, one of our team's games was nationally televised on TNT - and you STILL couldn't watch it in our area because of blackout restrictions. It was an away game that was not airing on the local sports network...it was literally only on TNT, and you still couldn't watch it.

Now even my 73-year-old dad is proficient in finding illegal sports streams.

Netflix - my husband watches it a lot more than I ever did.

Amazon Prime - using a student discount (not a student lol - I emailed my uni's alumni association and asked to get one of their .edu email addresses, and used that to get the student rate for Prime).

Pandora - my husband listens to it all day long while he works, so to him it's worth it just paying for premium without ads

Get Peacock Premium for free from my ISP so that doesn't count.

Stremio (with Torrentio + Real Debrid) makes for pretty nice user interface. I actually went that route instead of Kodi specifically so it's easier for my husband to use.