Well, After hundreds of GB of torrents downloaded, I slipped up. I’ve been changing around linux distros recently and i believe i configured my VPN wrong or forgot to turn it back on after doing something. Well, I finally got hit with a copyright warning. Just your typical “we had to send this” type of warning but none-the-less, I slipped up.

Sharing this because the day before it happened, I read a post about not only having your killswitch on but also binding your client to you vpn interface for situations like this. Needless to say I didn’t take that precaution. For those who are on linux, I found a great post about how to set this up on reddit and wanted to remind people to “double wrap” because why not be safe lol.

The steps were more or less as follows (for QBitTorrent at least):

  1. Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced Settings

  2. Under “Network Interface”, select your vpn interface. To test, check what shows with your vpn on, and then turn it off and re-navigate to this part to see what dissapeared. Thats likely your vpn interface if the name wasn’t clear. (Do not be seeding/downloading torrents while doing this in case).

  3. To test, download a non-copyright torrent like the Ubuntu ISO torrent. In the middle of download, disconnect or close your vpn connection. This should stop the download.

Not sure if reddit links are cool here but here is the guide source if anyones interested. Binding VPN to Torrent Client

Stay hidden!

      • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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        5 months ago

        Yo this kind of talk got lawyers going after reddit to prove some isp is complicit. Y’all gonna turn the eye of sauron on us! 😖

      • bjorney@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        The content of the email is very laissez-faire, e.g. "we legally have to send these ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      All hail Canada’s notice-and-notice-and-notice-and-notice-and-notice system of copyright enforcement!

    • ramjambamalam@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Head’s up – there’s a law firm which many on RFD are talking about being served demand letters from, after repeated warnings were ignored.

      Don’t worry though, the demand letters are largely baseless and unenforceable, especially since the SCoC ruled last year that service bill payers are not responsible for the actions of their network users.

    • 0range@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      Man i wish. Here in France they actually send letters and you get a 1500€ fine if you ignore them three times.

      Or at least they did back in the day, do they still? Well i’ve already gotten 2/3 letters so i’m not gonna try to find out

  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I don’t use a VPN, and haven’t got a letter from my ISP in all the years I’ve been pirating.

    • tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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      5 months ago

      This!

      I haven’t had one since an idiot roommate decided they wanted to fuck around. I fixed the problem (no more roommate).

      Been 20 years now.

      VPN seems a way to screw up decent performance when all you need is to stay away from public trackers.

      • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        What happened to your roommate? That sounds kinda scary… :o

        • tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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          5 months ago

          It was one of a few stupid things and I wound up just telling him to leave.

          Kinda wish it was more dramatic and/or gory, but I usually am just too tired to turn to violence.

          Besides, I’d never admit to owning that chipper shredder anyway.

      • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, public trackers definitely raise your chance of a notice by at least an order of magnitude. New content also tends to be more noisy than old content. I also found a drop by selecting “require encryption” although I can’t imagine why it would help (IIUC most of these scanners just connect to everyone in the swarm, not sniff random internet traffic.

        • tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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          5 months ago

          Actually there’s a better reason for the encryption! You are correct that they use torrent clients to connect and record swarm nodes.

          It prevents an ISP from traffic shaping against known torrent traffic!

          Many ISP will watch for certain unencrypted headers and if it sees torrent will throttle it to nearly nothing. With the encryption, it all just looks like SSL.

  • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    My father got us kicked off our ISP for downloading music from random public trackers.

    I’ve been on private ones for years and never gotten a warning.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I swear, getting a letter and/or email about your piracy is definitely a rite of passage. My parents have definitely gotten a couple for things I’ve done (since they pay for the service) and I regret nothing.

    Probably not accurate whatsoever, but I like to think ISPs and such refuse to drop your service if they’re a big enough ISP because that’s less money for their greedy cannon fodder of a CEO and won’t do anything unless the government or a larger company comes along either serving them a lawsuit or legal letters/documents.

    • JackAttack@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      5 months ago

      It definitely felt like a right of passage lol. Ill be saving that. Might have to put it up on the wall to look back upon in my elder days.

      • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        I kinda wish I could save mine now that you mention it, but I don’t have access to my parents emails and they’ve probably long since deleted the email.

  • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    Copyright warnings are fairly common in developed nations like much of western Europe and say, US right? Do they result in prosecutions as well( would it be worth it for an ISP to take an individual user to court and spend time and money on it?)

    Copyright warnings are almost unknown in my country or much of the underdeveloped / developing world.

    • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      In my experience in Canada, no, not at all. I’ve only had two but the impression I got was the ISP is legally obligated to pass the notice along and nothing more. The companies complaining are likely American and the ISP want to keep me as a regular paying customer.

    • Lysergid@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      In Poland you can download but not allowed to upload/seed. I don’t know is that the way law written or it’s just not enforced.

  • rabber@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    I have hundreds of those. I’m in Canada though so I don’t care.