Illegal torrent

Copyright pirates were sued for wildly disproportionate amounts of money, and most settled out of court. These public scare tactics shone poorly on the recording and movie industries because they were portrayed as petty millionaires bullying poor college students. Direct lawsuits are much less common these days, but the campaign against torrenters is far from over.

Now the job of going after individual copyright pirates has been outsourced to a growing number of small businesses known as copyright trolls. These companies locate torrenters who illegally download copyrighted content through their real IP addresses. They then approach the copyright owners and sign a deal that lets them take legal action on their behalf.

Others are hired directly by Hollywood production companies to sniff out pirates. With legal leverage and a list of names, the copyright trolls then go after torrenters via mail, email, or even by going door to door and handing out settlement letters.

These letters are not legally binding documents or injunctions. Copyright trolls use intimidation, fear, and shame to make torrenters pay without ever going to court. The most common way to receive a settlement letter is through your internet provider. A copyright troll will go through the court system to subpoena your ISP and force it to email customers with a legal threat and hand over personal details.

According to US law, an IP address is not a person. Your case could be dismissed before the date that your ISP is set to reveal your personal details to the troll. If you respond and identify yourself, that gives the troll a more direct means of targeting you. This is a game of probability for copyright trolls. If they send out 1, threatening emails and 50 people reply, they only need a handful to actually cough up money to make it worth their time.

If things escalate and you decide to take action, lawyer up. Depending on your ISP, it may take actions against you on its own behalf. That could mean throttling your internet connection or threatening to hand over personal details to a copyright troll.

Why does your ISP even care? Because torrenting takes up a lot of bandwidth, and that bandwidth costs ISPs money. On top of that, an ISP could be receiving kickbacks from content owners and their associates.

However, if you insist on torrenting, take the time to protect your online privacy and keep copyright trolls at bay. The best way to torrent safely is by using a VPN. A VPN accomplishes two things: first, it re-routes all your internet traffic through a server in a location of your choosing, which changes your real IP address to one used by hundreds or thousands of other people assuming your VPN uses shared IP addresses, which most do. This adds a significant layer of anonymity and makes it much more difficult for anyone to track you.

Second, a VPN encrypts all your torrent traffic before it leaves your computer. That means your ISP cannot monitor your internet activity, nor can anyone else. Not all VPNs tolerate torrenting. You can check out our list of the best VPNs for torrenting here , which are services with fast download speeds and a focus on online privacy, security and anonymity like NordVPN , Surfshark , and ExpressVPN among others.

We recommend a VPN over Tor for a couple reasons. First, Tor is slow, and usually best for simple browsing and other low-bandwidth activity. Another popular app among torrenters is Peerblock. Peerblock is a desktop firewall with a regularly updated blacklist of IP addresses. These IP addresses belong to entities that try to track your activity online, especially on peer-to-peer networks. Unfortunately, the blacklist is only updated once upon installation. After that, users must pay to keep them updated.

Instead of torrenting, another alternative is Usenet. Usenet downloads are much, much faster; often as fast as your ISP can handle. Usenet is more private as well.

Some even throw in VPNs for good measure. Torrents, on the other hand, require that you share at least some identifying information to connect to the tracker and peers.

Usenet providers make files available for a certain number of days. How many depends on the provider, but the standard is 1, days after the original posting. Until that time is up, users have full access to that file. Torrents only stay up as long as people seed the file. Trackers can be private or public, and the former usually requires an invitation from an existing member.

Anyone can just go to their respective websites and search without logging in or requiring any sort of authentication. Likewise, anyone can upload files for others to download. These uploads are not moderated, so users must judge whether a download is safe and accurate based on comments and the reputation of the uploader. Private trackers are more exclusive both in terms of who can upload and who can download within a group.

They vary wildly in terms of content and quality, but many members of private trackers attest that they have higher quality files, faster downloads, longer retention, and an overall more consistent and safe experience. The law views private trackers the same as public trackers.

Internet piracy is piracy whether you do it in public or within a private group. Many people have moved away from downloading entire files through BitTorrent and opt instead to stream video content either on their web browsers or through customized programs like Kodi. Such laws can be enforced at any time, and governments are not known for passing laws they never intend to use. The only provisos are that you use a VPN service which allows torrenting , and that you use a kill switch to prevent your real IP address from becoming accidentally exposed in the event of a VPN failure.

It really is as simple as that, and lame advice found elsewhere, such as avoiding recent DVD releases, is alarmingly dangerous. We recommend the following VPN services because they are secure, private, and allow torrenting on their servers.

Private Internet Access - Unrivalled torrenting support, and a no-logs policy that's been proven in court Surfshark - An excellent budget VPN, with torrenting support and lots of features. With both Usenet and cloud torrent services such as put. But it's important to remember that the Usenet or cloud torrent service does know your real IP address and probably also has your payment details. And services such as these can be hacked or legally forced to hand over your personal details.

In , for example, Dutch Usenet providers Eweka and Usenette were ordered to hand over the personal details of two of their customers accused of uploading over 2, eBooks, while in Eweka again was forced to identify a former customer accused of uploading copyright-infringing material. We, therefore, strongly recommend using a VPN with such services anyway, so why not just cut out the often quite pricey middle man? Ever-greater internet speeds have made streaming video content from websites or IPTV servers via Kodi and suchlike the go-to option for most casual video pirates in theory it is possible to stream music illegally, but the pervasive presence of legal YouTube music videos means this has never really got off the ground.

Streaming has the advantage that playback is pretty much instant, but it is usually possible to torrent much higher quality videos. And of course, streaming-only lets you watch video content, while you can torrent apps, games, lossless music files, audiobooks, eBooks, and more. And, as with Usenet and cloud torrenting services, the streaming provider can see your real IP address, which can potentially be logged and handed over to copyright holders. This is also probably a good time to remind Popcorn Time users that although the app looks and behaves like a streaming service, it's really just a fancy BitTorrent client.

So please do use a VPN with it. Private trackers mean that your torrent downloads are shared among far fewer people than with public trackers.

The chances that one of your peers is a copyright enforcer are much lower as a result. Copyright holders can hang out on torrent forums and blag invites to private torrent sites just like anyone else can.

Fans of private trackers claim that content moderation means higher quality content. But honestly, even the most experienced torrenters have seen precious little evidence to support such a claim. More persuasive is the argument that strictly enforced high seed ratios improve download speed performance. This might be true, but large torrents that are far off the trending list can be an albatross around your neck, as they make achieving the required seed ratio very hard.

Looking for something? Written by Douglas Crawford. How to stay safe when torrenting Want to reduce your risk when torrenting? We will discuss speculative invoicing further later in this article. United Kingdom Copyright infringement: Criminal Offence Punishment: Up to years in prison and an unlimited fine Successive British governments have been among the world's most enthusiastic supporters of copyright holder rights.

Gov UK The government claims that only large-scale commercial pirates will be targeted, and no-one has yet got into trouble for torrenting for personal use. It also leads to more infected computers; studies show that a healthy percentage of torrent files — both legal and illegal — contain malware , which can range in severity from pop-up ads to software designed to help the intruder gather credit card numbers.

In some countries, there are repercussions for downloading an illegal torrent. For example, in the United States, some people have been given hefty fines for illegal music downloading. Before downloading a torrent, I recommend reading the comments and reviews from the community. Still, you should always be cautious when it comes to downloading torrents.

The act of torrenting itself is not illegal. However, downloading and sharing unsanctioned copyrighted material is very much illegal , and there is always a chance of getting caught by the authorities.

Torrenting non-copyrighted material is perfectly fine and is allowed, as there are no restrictions that apply to that. In many countries, such as the U. The authorities and ISPs can easily catch people who distribute copyrighted material without any privacy precautions. Torrenting client software stores all IP addresses of seeders and leechers as well. By simply monitoring a torrent file, the ISP has access to all IP addresses downloading a specific torrent.

As a result, the authorities could come knocking on your door. Copyright trolls are individuals or companies that are in the business of going after torrent pirates. These businesses locate torrenters who illegally distribute copyrighted material based on their IP addresses. When they successfully locate a torrent pirate, they sign a deal of approval with the copyright holders to take legal actions on their behalf against the pirate.

In some cases, Hollywood production companies hire these businesses to specifically snoop on pirates distributing their content illegally. Typically, copyright trolls have a legal strategy in place that summons the ISP to send you an threatening email. So, when you get caught for torrenting unsanctioned copyrighted material, you could receive a settlement offer from your ISP.

In most cases, I would ignore the first settlement letter. In most countries, such as the U.