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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[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Anecdotal; but I spent 5ish years pirating via torrents from my home in Canada. Never once used a VPN and received an emailed copyright notice forwarded through my ISP about once every 3-5 days.

They never went further than that. The ISP isn't permitted to give out my personal contact info short of a court order, and the copyright holder(s) can't be bothered to pursue it further to get that info.

As long as you never reply to the notice; all they have is an IP, a time stamp, and a copy of the letter they sent to the ISP. They don't know who I am to drag me to court; so first they'd have to sue the ISP for that info. Even then, tieing one specific individual to an entire IPs traffic is next to impossible. Was it the IPs subscriber? Another person in the household? A guest? Someone with unauthorised access? Too many variables/possibilities to prove 'beyond reasonable doubt' in a court of law.

Now a days however I use usenet. $12/year for an indexer, and ~$5/month for access to a usenet provider/server. Fast reliable downloads that always complete within 5min. No more waiting on slow or seedless torrents that potentially take days before giving up and trying another. This is all done though an ssl connection to a private server, so there's nothing to snoop/get reported for.