Before I say anything further, yes I know how much the recommended VPNs cost. I can read. Please do not interrogate me about it.
I’ve been wanting to get into torrenting for a while, particularly contributing to private trackers related to music (and to a lesser extent retro games, though I don’t have much original stuff to put there as it’s harder to find rare games than rare music). FMHY recommends RiseUp if I must get a free VPN while I’m working on my financial situation, though I’m not sure whether it’s been tested in court. What are my options, if any?
If you don’t have the money for a proper VPN provider, you definitely don’t have the money for a legal defense if it came to that. Save your money and only begin once you can afford reasonable protections.
i2p.
I would suggest don’t.
For downloading, look at DDL sites.
For uploading, if you can’t do it safely, don’t. Stash it all, make backups, keep it until you can do it safely.
Mullvad is €5 a month for total of €60 for a year.
Save up then torrent. If you live in the US you risk way more in fines than what €60 for a year of VPN would cost.
You can get into private trackers and trust them. Not recommended, but some do.
Generally speaking, the copyright trolls only target public trackers and DHT. There have been some instances of them making way into TL and others. Your ISP could also identify torrenting on private trackers if they wanted to, even with mitigations. In my experience and from what I hear, most ISPs do not go to these lengths.
So, there a risk doing the above. Whether or not it’s worth it until you can afford a decent VPN is up to you.
Aside: Please do not use a free VPN for torrenting (or tor, for that matter). They are either like RiseUp and run on donations for people who really, really need them, or Proton which is commercial and specifically try to block or slow down the traffic. Either way, if ruins it for everyone else.
free proton blocks p2p connections anyway
Either way, if ruins it for everyone else.
How does it ruin it for everyone else? One slow peer does not ruin the network.
I meant in the context of the VPN. It slows down the network for everyone on one which is run by donation. For commercial companies, it incentivizes them to further lock down what users can do or what speeds they get.
If you use private trackers, a VPN is irrelevant. All you need to do is fully encrypt your traffic in your torrent client so your ISP can’t see what you’re doing. It’s been working just fine for me for 15 years, and I’ve never gotten a letter.
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I2p is slow and lacks selection but could work.
What’s selection?
Ok so, I was gonna top level comment, but somebody already mentioned I2P, so:
I2P.
https://geti2p.net/en/docs/applications/bittorrent
Now, with normally configured I2P, you can only torrent or file share with other I2P users/nodes/sites.
But, you can also set up an ‘out-proxy’, to connect to the broader 'net, via I2P, essentially using it as a giant, dynamic maze of proxies, where all your traffic is arguably better encrypted than via Tor.
Or, you could actually use Tor as the out-proxy, for… ludicrous levels of encryption maze.
https://geti2p.net/en/about/browser-config
Its slow though. Much slower than all but the most dogshit free vpns.
But… that’s the tier you already appear to be at, lol.
Uh yeah, you can use I2P to access/browse and torrent from the clearnet, not just the I2P net, you just have to properly set up I2P with an out proxy.
I believe the youtuber Mental Outlaw has some videos that walk you through both how to do an I2P basic set up, and an out-proxy set up.
Also, general privacy/security tip:
configure your webbrowser to only do DNS over HTTPS, also known as DoH.
Use Ublock, Canvas Blocker, Privacy Badger, test your web fingerprint with EFF’s tool, make sure all your shit is actually configured right before torrenting anything, use sites that try to trace route you and find your real ip, make sure you don’t have any… emergency fallback to not using your VPN or I2P or normal HTTP.
I’ll be sure to take a look. Thank you.
Like what is available to download.
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I’m kind of in a bind financially in general. Job market is complete ass and I struggle as-is. Not sure what I’ll do there.
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Because I guess giving myself some off-time means I must be a lazy bum who isn’t putting in any work to get a job and work on my skills. Fuck off.
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Well, I’m glad you never get exhausted or anything I guess.
In the US, internet piracy is not a crime, but a civil infraction. And yes, our media overlords have been trying to make it a crime for decades.
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You could also consider looking into a private tracker. It’s not 100% safe but much more safe than a public tracker. It’s also kind of fun getting into it, but hard to get invited.
I been using torrents since they became a good option a little over twenty years ago. I’ve torrented using public and all manner of private trackers both with and without vpn or tor.
I have received letters from various ISPs during those years. Here’s what it all boils down to:
What’s most important: turn off peer exchange and dht, turn on require encryption.
What’s also important: only use private trackers.
What’s less important, but good to have: use a vpn with port forwarding with your client bound to its interface. It doesn’t matter if you don’t bind the client to the vpn interface so make sure you do that.
E: just read through the comments on your native instance that don’t show up to me normally. There’s some old misinformation going around still. I’m not gonna argue or go into great detail but things like only leeching, only using foreign trackers or using someone else’s WiFi don’t do anything to help you avoid some kind of letter.
I definitely don’t want to just leech. I use slsk right now and barely use it for downloading, just sharing rare music I find in local thrift stores and such.
Go test into one of the music trackers. It’s easy if you can follow instructions and retain information. If you end up feeling like the social expectations of a private tracker are tripping you up then spend a little time on the mya tracker to get used to it first.
If you’re making your own rips then being exposed to the information, toolsets and expectations of the private trackers will improve the quality of your output.
What’s Mya tracker? Edit: MyAnonymouse, right?
Yeah get in there and get your feet underneath you.
Doesn’t Proton have a free VPN tier? I think it doesn’t support port forwarding so your connections would be limited, but that might still work?
Otherwise, check the megathread and go with direct downloads. Those happen over https so completely encrypted.
What music DDL sites let you contribute FLACs?
Hmm I’m not sure about contributing. You’ve presented yourself as someone too broke to afford a VPN so I didn’t think you were buying CDs and ripping flacs. Sorry if I misunderstood your goals. I was more focused on the goal of obtaining files.
Edit: ps, not sure if you saw yet, but I pm’d you about another possible solution.
I do sometimes buy CDs, though many of my CDs are from before my financial situation was quite as bad as it is now. They’re all from thrift stores though, so none of them are more than $1.99.
Its being a while for me but windscribe and seedr had totally usable free tiers
I use Cloudflare Warp and make qbittorrent only able to torrent if it’s connected to Warp
Does that have port forwarding though? Because if not, seeding isn’t going to work.
Seeding works fine without port forwarding. Just won’t be connecting to as many peers.
An alternative that hasn’t been presented yet.
Why not use less well known foreign public trackers? Rutracker has a stupid amount of content, including a lot of niche music content.
If you are worried about Rutracker being too well known, you can try Mazepa Torrent. This is only relevant for movies and shows. Their collection isn’t as good as rutracker, but they have most new releases. While the default audio language is Ukrainian, English is always included (this would an issue for non-English language movies/shows, but English subtitles are usually included).
