They do, but “rightsholders” suck harder. And the tech companies oppose the measures the rightsholders are pushing them to adopt.

Here, the enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but they aren’t my enemy.

What are you even on about? One person could conceivably add CSAM to a torrent that you eventually download, and you could find yourself subject to a criminal investigation.

I’ve gone my entire adult life downloading copyrighted material without using a VPN

“I’ve been fucking multiple partners weekly my entire adult life. without protection, and I haven’t gotten AIDS yet.” <— That’s you. That’s what you sound like.

You are giving your ISP every thing that a rightsholder needs to harass you, with your understanding that laws and corporate policies currently protect you from that harassment. But you ignore that those policies can be changed, and those changes can apply to data you’ve previously given to your ISP. When rightsholders start arguing “think of the children” and pointing at such torrents, that’s the kind of thing that gets laws and policies changed.

Why give them the information in the first place? Why not keep that information away from your ISP? Why trust them to do the right thing when you can easily deny them the ability to do wrong?

That level of paranoia is a waste of energy.

I know I am paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

Identifying and evaluating vulnerabilities is a critical component of any security plan. In a good one, any vulnerabilities will be well outside the scope of feasibility.

Why would some Hollywood studio plant CSAM in a torrent?

To cast FUD on piracy in general. To inextricably link “pirate” with “pedophile” in the mind of the general public. To convince the general public to treat copyright infringement as criminal rather than a civil matter.

That would implicate them as well.

They hire or extort someone to initially seed from some third world ISPs, and the swarm takes over from there. It never gets traced back to them.

It would cost them far more in legal fees to come after me than to just leave it alone.

You aren’t the objective, just the means. The purpose is to make piracy a truly objectionable practice in the eyes of the public.

None of this is a likely threat, but is any of it completely outside the realm of feasibility?

You don’t have any justification to be that condescending. Your security practices are reliant on the law, and the law is not a factor under your direct control. It has changed without your input before, and it will change without your input in the future. Meanwhile, your ISP is building a record of your non-compliance that it can provide to rightsholders just as soon as it likes.

Good security practice minimizes reliance on factors outside your control. You can’t control whether your ISP has your personally identifiable information, but you can deny them knowledge of your data transfers. You can’t control whether a VPN has knowledge of your data transfers, but you can deny them knowledge of your PII.

Also it definitely would cost them if they told me “we have not responded to this notice from the rightsholder” and then turned around and did exactly that. That would be a flat out lie to their client.

As of the time of their letter, they had not responded to that notice. They could respond tomorrow without ever having lied to you. You would not have grounds to sue.

Just out of curiosity, will your Canadian ISP and your (current) Canadian laws protect you when a rightsholder portrays you as a pedophile instead of a pirate? If they anonymously publish a torrent containing their movie and some hidden CSAM, are you fucked?

What incentive do they have to actually follow through on that claim?

I pay my ISP $600/yr. If a third party with a bug up their ass creates $601 worth of trouble for my ISP, why wouldn’t they throw me under the bus?

No ISP is deserving of the kind of trust you describe. It costs them nothing to put those words in a letter.

I don’t particularly trust a VPN provider either, for much the same reason. But, the VPN provider wants to know as little about me as possible, while the ISP needs to know everything.

On the public wifi, the operator of that wifi can see any data you pass through their network. They can likely see what sites you visit, but probably can’t see what data you send to and from those sites, due to encryption. Unless they have an account with you, or you provide your information in clearext, they can link your data to your devices, but not to you directly, at least not from your use of the AP. They can potentially link your data to your image on their cameras, and thus your identity.

Your ISP has the same access to your data, but they also have a payment account linked to you, and they regularly cooperate with rights holders and law enforcement.

A VPN can do the same thing as an ISP: they know what sites you visit, but probably don’t know what data you are sending and receiving, and they can link it to your payment account. However, they generally do not cooperate with rights holders, and may or may not cooperate with law enforcement in their jurisdiction. While you are using a VPN, your ISP knows you are using them, but doesn’t know what you are sending back and forth, due to encryption.

If you want to remain as anonymous as possible, use a burner device with no accounts on public wifi.

If you want to avoid harassment by rights holders while you engage in piracy, a VPN is sufficient.

Technically unlimited, but with an exponentially increasing annual registration fee.

Exactly. I don’t have a problem with artists profiting from their work. I don’t have a problem with their temporary exclusivity. The problem I have is when they never intend for that work to belong to the people; when they think they can maintain control over an idea long after it has become “culture”.

For the problem you mention, I would suggest that any studio who has been offered the work during the five year period owes royalties for a 5-year period after the studio publishes the work, even if it has since entered the public domain. Something along those lines would likely become a standard clause between the screenwriter’s guild and the studios, and doesn’t necessarily need to be enacted in law.

I wouldn’t be opposed to a longer period for some major works. Start with a standard, 5-year period from the time of original publication, then allow an extended copyright registration with an exponentially increasing annual fee. A few additional years would likely be affordable. The fifth, possibly. The sixth, only for the most profitable franchises, and the seventh being a large fraction of the national GDP. If James Cameron wants to pay for the entire military establishment through the proceeds of Avatar III, he can get one more year of protection.

I don’t really care to fight about what the original intent of copyright is,

Then you can get bent.

Art and invention benefit the whole of humanity. A work whose sole beneficiary is its creator does not qualify as art or invention, and deserves no protection.

The purpose of copyright is to promote science and the useful arts. The purpose is to get art and inventions into the public domain. The purpose is not “to get artists paid”. Getting them paid for their works and discoveries is the method by which copyright achieves its purpose. It is not the purpose itself.

If they are only interested in keeping their works proprietary; if they are uninterested in pushing them into the public domain, they are not achieving the purpose for which copyright exists. They do not qualify for copyright protection. They can get bent.

Neither of those options is particularly appealing to me. I’d look at building a more respectable file server, with 4 or more SATA ports. I’d have a relatively tiny SSD to host the OS, and any number of HDDs in some variety of RAID array

SSDs are fast; HDDs are slow. I would not want my operating system hosted on an HDD if there is any way to avoid it. An external USB drive would have slow file operations to and from that drive; an internal HDD would slow the entire system.

Can’t tell if you’re drinking the Kool aid… Or serving.

I can think of a couple ways this post makes sense. For example, if Denuvo paid this commenter to make this post.

A proxy operates on the application level; a VPN on the OS level. Both the VPN and the proxy are susceptible to OS-level threats. The proxy is also susceptible to application-level threats that the VPN is not. A misconfigured or exploited torrent client, for example, could ignore the proxy and expose your public IP. With a properly functioning VPN, that faulty application can only expose the public-facing end of the VPN tunnel.

Self hosted VPNs are not suitable for sailing the seas. Self-hosting a VPN server only provides remote access to your local network. It does not provide any sort of privacy benefits, because the tunnel exit is an IP address traceable to you.

If they are paying for it, it’s either not self-hosted, or they are paving a licensing fee for the VPN software they are running locally.

Is the legal environment tomorrow going to be the same for you as it is today? Are they going to change the law, (or the interpretation of it) tomorrow? Have they already done so, but that news hasn’t reached you yet? If they have changed it, does a hostile entity have your information already logged?

To answer your question, yes, you should be concerned about exposing your public IP address.

Not really, no.

When you understand how to ask the question, you will already have your answer.

Basically, your ISP, VPN, or your own networking equipment is going to be your chokepoint. The only person who can actually determine which one of those three is the slowest is… You. Nobody else has that information.

Until you can understand the distinction between “upload” and “download”, you cannot understand the information your ISP, VPN, and the manufacturers of your networking equipment are providing to you.

(On a tangentially related note: If you don’t have a VPN, go ahead and uninstall your torrent client until you’ve spent a lot more time studying networking concepts.)

Aka, your “upload” speed.

According to the article, it requires them to get accreditation to operate in in Italy, unless I’m reading that wrong.

Uh huh. So, I put a DNS server and VPN server online, and an Italian happens to find it. Is Italy going to try to extradite me or something?