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Comment by geranim0 | Hacker News Reader

I receive complaints all the time by my ISP for torrenting... they do nothing except frightening older people

Not universally true though, and in some countries (like e.g. Germany) it's a really bad idea to torrent without a seedbox or vpn in another country.

What's different about Germany when it comes to piracy? And what about using a PeerGuardian blacklist to block known trackers?

There are lawyers that speciallize in sending fined cease and desist letters, and German courts are very quick in giving court orders to ISPs to force them to give such lawyers the name and address of the offending IP address.

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

Those lawyers aren't going to bother to go to court for less than 1000€ though. They probably don't even check if their data is correct. They hope you incriminate yourself by paying the fee and signing their prewritten contract which is massively stacked against your favour. You'll have to go to a lawyer just to write an actual cease and desist agreement and most of the time you can dodge the entire bill.

Sure, but why even bother with this stuff if there are (more or less) safe ways (VPN, Seedbox in another country) available for cheap? :D

I wonder, can this be spoofed to essentially DoS them by making them send their BS letter to every single German resident?

Just the politicians in power and their entourage, please

I'm from Germany and I had an issue with this two times. The first time was when I torrented a Movie when I was like 17, and got a C&D which ordered me to pay a €1000 fine. Got a lawyer (which cost around €500) and never heard back. Two years later they sent a letter again, because of the same thing and demanded €2000, to which I just didn't respond.

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're in the US I advise caution as ISPs are going to be increasingly aggressive about shutting off accounts. The media industry has demanded that repeated, unproven, accusations alone should be enough to force your ISP to close your account and never allowing you to open a new one. ISPs don't want to do that, but courts so far have been agreeing with the media industry on that. ISPs who don't do it, risk literal billions in fines.

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.

13 years ago, last I used them, Comcast would send an email with a list of the titles of the torrents it thought you downloaded.

Good enough to scare ~everyone by itself, though iirc they did threaten to halt your service, something I never decided to test out.

I tested it, it's legit, they will terminate your service.

I've always wondered about this. I'm assuming that they terminate, you so paying (obviously), but can't you just get another service with someone else?

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?

In most places, there's at least 1 other option in my experience. But there's rarely more than 2 decent options, and there might only be the 1.

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.

There is no recourse for 90%+ of US households if they want wired internet. The company that owns the coaxial wire connection to your home is the only broadband option (download bandwidth only). Comcast is the biggest company, but there is always only 1 coaxial cable connection to each home so only 1 company you will be able to get it from.

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.

The last mile problem with internet and telecommunications to homes has been a battle going on now for decades.

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.

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