this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
474 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
59468 readers
4901 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Mostly for western developed countries where you will get fucked up by the government for pirating. ISP's in US Canada and UK will sue normal middle class people for torrenting, unless you mask your IP with the correct VPN.
Canada limits the amount that a company can sue for downloading pirated media to the point where it's not worth it for the company to actually take it to court. The company can ask the ISP to send an email to try to scare the user, but that's about it.
this is great news
Been getting those emails for 10+ years, I just laugh and keep seeding.
You didnt answer the question
I have never heard of this happening. And I've gotten multiple cease and desist letters from my ISP. ISPs don't really have the case for a suit anyways, but there are third party companies that companies like Disney will pay to watch torrents for them and ask your ISP to send you that letter.
A decade or so ago, there were some widely-publicized cases of folks who got absolutely ruined with six- or seven-figure judgements against them for copyright infringement.
Example from 2012.
Maybe it was a tactic the copyright cartel used in the mid-2000s and then stopped or something, but it was enough to shift folks' behavior such that using VPNs became the norm.
You are correct, it's super uncommon to get sued for pirating unless you're a major player. If you get busted by your ISP too many times, though, they may give you the boot. My ISP has a 9 strikes in one rolling year policy (at least last I knew).
Yeah, we get the VPN part. What about the port-forwarding part?
I might have used the wrong word. I think the term is binding a VPN to a torrenting application so that all data going in andd out of pass thru the vpns servers
But isn't that how VPNs work, binding the network interface connected to it to the applications?
Shit they do that? Man that sucks. People go to jail? Or have to pay fines?
Fines. And say you seeded a movie to 1000 people and a DVD of the movie costs $20, they sue you for $20000, treating it like you broke into a warehouse and stole 1000 DVDs of the movie.