Recently, my wife and I had a shouting match over piracy which went nowhere other than making me realize I couldn’t back up my positions on anything other than the higher-level ethics stuff.
The argument went something like this:
Wife: piracy is federal crime, federal crimes mean federal prison, i don’t want you going to federal prison
Me: thats not how that works
Wife: how do you know? What if they got a court order against you and you had to supply all your files to them
Me: incoherent monkey tantrum noises
To clarify, she is fine with piracy, she just is scared of me getting caught. And my position was “nuh uh!”
My understanding is that the biggest point of risk (of actual legal consequences, specifically) is when you are the one propagating files (because the feds will go after uploaders when able) and when using public torrents (if i forget to use a VPN, dmca snitches might send a “stop pirating” notice to my landlord who owns the router our internet goes through). Not 100% percent sure why these are the risky things, though, and I’m not sure if there’s other things i need to be on my toes about.
The argument i have more trouble with figuring out how to answer is the question of “what if the feds change their strategy for some reason and start playing whack-a-mole with individual pirates like me?” What do I do to future-proof myself? Is just using a VPN across all my devices enough?
As someone else already said, it greatly depends on where you live, which you didn’t mention.
Some random third world country: They most likely could not care less. Even if they have anti-piracy laws, there is no one to try to catch you or enforce those laws. They don’t produce the overwhelming majority of the movies, TV shows or other files that are down/uploaded, so piracy doesn’t affect them.
The U.S.: Use a VPN whenever torrenting, like Mullvad, Proton, or IVPN - https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/. Use qBittorrent and make sure to BIND your VPN to qBit. Do not solely rely on a killswitch, they can fail. If you’re caught uploading files without a VPN, you’ll most likely just get a letter or email from your internet provider. Don’t respond. If you do respond (like if they shut off your internet until you contact them), you’re only answer should be is that you don’t know anything about it, and maybe your neighbor hacked your wifi or into the main line. However, you mentioned the landlord owns the router (so I assume that means the landlord also pays for your internet?), which means don’t be an idiot and put yourself in the position of trying to explain to your landlord (and your wife) why you were downloading / uploading some shitty music or porn. Use a VPN. I prefer Mullvad for anonymity, but Proton has some great Black Friday and holiday sales sometimes. There’s a little more to it than this, but this is the basics. Also, the majority of ISPs don’t care at all that you’re down/uploading files, until they are contacted by someone connected to the file you were uploading. Then, they are obligated to contact you. Eventually, if you keep doing it, your ISP will get tired of dealing with the letters in regards to you and may just cancel your account.
Germany, or somewhere similar: I’d suggest using Usenet. It’s a bit more complicated to setup, but it’s an overall better experience in my opinion. Get 2-3 good indexers and put their info into Prowlarr for searching, get a good provider and put their info into SabNZBD for downloading. Make sure the SSL connection is enabled in SabNZBD (which it already should be by default) and then you technically will not need a VPN, because whatever you’re downloading is automatically encrypted. Obviously, there is no uploading back to the hive while using Usenet. I’d still use a VPN though, so your ISP doesn’t even see what you’re searching for and what websites you’re going to. If interested, Radarr and Lidarr can track movies and TV shows for you. The three apps I mentioned that end with “arr” are part of a group of apps known as the “arrs”. https://wiki.servarr.com/