With the resurgence of pirating, do you think there will be a “response” from the powers that be?
In general, what would that look like?
Specifically, do you think VPN companies based in the US or friendly countries will start to feel legal or corporate pressure to stop letting people use their services to download copyrighted material?
I just feel like these things always ebb and flow.
Yes they will, and anyone confident in saying no doesn’t understand that laws will be changed if they need to. If VPN usage is significant enough of a factor in piracy or any other illegal activity laws will be changed to find providers responsible. They could mandate data be logged. There’s so many other more nefarious things that these VPNs could be sheltering more important that governments would like to be able to have information on that I just can’t see them shrugging their shoulders and ignoring it. That time will come.
Go for it. I have a Digital Ocean droplet in Amsterdam. Took an evening to spin up, and I can do it again. $6/mo.
You are aware that there are 1,000 uses for a VPN other than pirating? I work for a software dev, we’re dependent on half a dozen for secure access. Hell, even the accounting guy needs a VPN to upload to the bank.
The powers that be depend on VPNs to do business. Mandate logging? OK. We’ll roll our own. This is old, proven and simple tech.
Digital Ocean collects this data already. Some of these Vpn providers claim to collect nothing, sometimes not even payment information. If you’re doing something illegal on that Digital Ocean droplet and law enforcement tracks it down to that IP, Digital Ocean will comply with any lawful order for the data they have on you.
You could theoretically set up a logless VPN server where everything resides in RAM… Unless DO can export RAM at an exact moment in time or catch you in the act and take a snapshot of the RAM at that moment.
They could theoretically sniff your outgoing connections though, but that’s difficult to trace with DNS-over-HTTPS.
No company, especially VPN companies, will encourage you to break the law or violate copyright.
We have to support companies like Mullvad who operate on the premis that privacy is a human right, if it’s just a business equation then they will fold when it’s inconvenient
Plus, if the VPN is setup right, they can’t know exactly what you are downloading or what you are accessing.
Yes and no. The movie/game companies can still easily trace torrents back to the VPN server. So the VPN provider is under constant pressure to crack down on piracy.
And some have begun to give in. Lots of VPNs have dropped support for port forwarding, because it’s commonly used by Plex/Jellyfin servers.
Actually, no. Even if they trace it back to the provider, if said provider is running little to zero logs and proper encryption, there is no way for the provider to know who is doing the downloading of anything.
It’s also not the movie/game companies doing anything. There are companies that monitor p2p for specific files for TV shows, movies, games, etc and then automatically send a boilerplate cease and desist to whoever owns any ip addresses for said files. Some isps like Google fiber (at one point) just ignored these requests and didn’t pass it on to the end user. Every other isp including VPSs, seedboxes, etc will autoforward the dmca notice and if you rack up enough they will fire you as a customer.
I suggest you and others here check out proton, they have a ton of servers including ones that support p2p. They don’t and can’t tell who is transferring what. If you do a ton of downloading of pirated content, I’d also suggest setting up even a basic seedbox. The one I am currently using takes crypto and doesn’t need any info aside from an email address. They will forward dmca notices and the auto delete the offending content after about 12 hours but if you restart the torrent you can download it again if needed and you can then let it seed for as long as you want.
I mean I’m still out here rawdogging usenet without a vpn. I keep waiting for the great crackdown on usenet but it never comes… Surely that comes before any VPN crackdown.
Some might but if they do, others will take their place.
None of the big VPN companies officially endorse use if their services for piracy or any illegal activities for that matter.
But to crack down on it they would have to keep logs on your activity and with that most of their legitimate use cases wouldn’t be valid anymore either.
No person can make a locked door 100% secure. It either is a locked door waiting to be unlocked, or its a welded shut wall which defeats the whole point of a door.
Privacy is a tradeoff with illegal activity. While unfortunate, a person cannot have full privacy ona VPN without giving criminals that same privacy. Some may consider this assisting criminals, some may not. But you can’t have full privacy and be able to catch criminals too, you have to pick one or the other.
