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?
i2p.
It’s really that important in the USA? Asking from Europe, where Ivve never even heard of anyone getting fined.
You can afford AirVPN 💜
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 basically have 5 (?) devices there. Share the cost with 4 friends and it’s 1 Euro a month.
If you can share the cost of a VPN with one or more other people (most allow multiple devices to connect at the same time), it’ll be much cheaper. Or if you can’t afford that either, try to find someone who will let you use theirs for free. Maybe you can even find someone who isn’t tech savvy who will pay you a few bucks a month to cover the VPN in exchange for you downloading Linux ISOs for them.
I would prioritize a VPN ahead of an ISP. Free Open/Public APs are not uncommon in my area.
Here’s a reliable, free VPN: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
RiseUp is slow and intended for activists and the politically vulnerable. It’s not for poor people who cannot afford a $5 a month VPN. You will be fucking over people with much more legitimate use cases than yours if you start using it for torrenting.
I see… Not sure what I’m supposed to do then.
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.
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.
Honest question, why would you need a VPN if you want to download from private trackers?
Usually, copyright owners target people on public trackers and on the DHT. Not a problem if you only get into private trackers.
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Use someone else’s wifi.
I used to park my car in a Home Depot parking lot when I went to work with a laptop torrenting until the battery died.
I lived above a Starbucks for a while, that was the best VPN I ever had!
I used to do that at the Burger King that was next to my old house. I’d prop my laptop up by the window the faced the restaurant and start downloading.
Then at some point they added something to the WiFi that, after you’ve been connected for like 30 minutes, disconnects you. You wouldn’t be banned or anything, it would just cut the connection until you go back to the captive portal and click “I Agree” again.
I feel like a lot of public WiFis these days have data caps and throttling to circumvent downloading.
Hard to get a positive seed ratio this way, but definitely seems like best bet for someone that can’t afford airvpn
this is like asking how to safely hook up with strangers at the bar if you can’t afford condoms to help protect you from STIs. if you can’t afford a VPN, you can’t afford to get disconnected by your ISP for three strikes, let alone afford a settlement because some copyright troll logged your IP as a downloader. just don’t do it until you can properly put some safeguards in place.
Public WiFi exists and it’s also pretty easy to get free condoms.
Pro tip: Never use public WiFi without wearing a condom.
Why does this anti poor bullshit have so many upvotes? Public WiFi exists and it’s also pretty easy to get free condoms.
hey hows about you go fuck yourself
No u
fair enough
Tribler or i2p.
Edit: there are also non-bittorrent p2p networks out there like Retroshare, but I haven’t used them, so don’t know how useful they are.
What are the adoption rates of those compared to a standard private tracker?
Dunno, I haven’t used private trackers in 10 years. You can add any magnet link to Tribler and it will go through exit nodes to hide your IP, kind of like Tor does for browsing clearnet. I haven’t used i2p in a while either; back then, I used the Postman tracker, and don’t know if that’s still what most people do or not. I personally just use a paid VPN, because there really isn’t a good way to set Tribbler up with an *arr stack.
