Right now I have to choose between darkweb piracy (Slow downloads, hard to find things, search services are slow) and clearnet piracy (Lots of popular shows are monitored by copyright bots), so I've been pirating less and less
Is this normal in your experience? I am/was a VPN noob.
Usually I get the cheapest plan and run a torrent client on it then use scp from there. I almost got wireguard working once but had to get them to add a kernel module through a support ticket then reinstalled and didn’t feel like bugging them again.
Just a happy customer.
Yes, the answer is that all of them "might" be under surveillance. There's no way to guarantee that any of them aren't.
Good enough to scare ~everyone by itself, though iirc they did threaten to halt your service, something I never decided to test out.
I'm aware that in the US the ISPs are essentially monopolies avoiding each others areas, which always confused me for the original capitalist economy. Are you then on a blacklist? What's the recourse?
Starlink is coming into play, though, giving everyone a third option that is probably decent, unless you're a serious gamer or have other needs that require minimum latency.
If you are one of the lucky few, then you also have the option of fiber internet. But fiber actually provides broadband upload in addition to broadband download, so if you get cut off from fiber, then you are left with no option for broadband upload.
Comcast, Spectrum, Charter, etc all lobbied for laws that said that they “own” the equipment (and poles) going all the way to your house. Not the property owner and certainly not the city/municipality. This is why community fiber has failed here in the US. It would have to be done with entirely new lines and infrastructure not owned by a “utility”.
Worse still is they have lobbied to make sure they AREN’T classified as a utility and be regulated as one.
Are you on a blacklist if you get kicked off? Yes. Though it’s easy to work around it.
I got kicked off because my IP address was the same IP address that someone saw on a torrent tracker. Despite the fact that cable has dynamic IP’s. I eventually fought them and got back on their good side.
So to recap. A community foots the bill for infrastructure, that they’ll never own, to a cable company, who has guaranteed rights through legislation, to own all of the infrastructure including the coaxial cables running to your house. They still want to own your router and modem and your TV. Most people just give it to them. It’s absurd. Using Comcast’s router/modem, on Comcast coaxial, on Comcast utility poles, to a Comcast repeater station, and yet NOT A UTILITY.
If you torrent in Germany without a VPN or a Seedbox, so from a residential IP, there is an extremely high chance (if you torrent the latest blockbuster from Pirate Bay it will approximate 100%) that you will get a so called "Abmahnung" and have to pay either a few hundred / thousand euros or fight it in an actual court.
PeerGuardian could help, but it's risky and both VPN and Seedboxes are pretty cheap, so I would use one of the latter. :D
The time window from me torrenting to the letter being sent was around 2 months, not that bad.
Nowadays, I just use a VPN & Torrent Caching, no issue at all (40 TB and counting) :)
IF you don't have multiple ISP options each offering reliable high speed connections in your area, you should be especially careful or you could find yourself with very limited access to the internet or even no internet access at all.
It requires time and effort though.