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>Private from your current ISP, sure, but not from Mullvad

being private from your local ISP is what 99% of people care about because they use VPNs to send copyright infringement claims to /dev/null and watch netflix, not to smuggle nuclear secrets to Iran. It's privacy in a practical sense that's useful to people. If I go from an untrustworthy ISP to a trustworthy one I've gained privacy, there's no need to be overly academic about the term.

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I'm not really trying to be pedantic for giggles.. perhaps I just think it's sad that 99% of ISPs are considered your privacy enemy and on top of that I don't consider VPNs a scalable solution to the problem at large so I'm more entertaining the "why is this the de facto solution" question in the "does it scale to society" solution space. It starts to look more like a social problem/solution than a technology problem/solution. That's more what this is about. If everyone used a VPN we'd really be in the same scenario we are today because to support that infrastructure you'd need exit nodes in every city and boom there goes your location advantage.

I don't consider my ISP my privacy enemy when it comes to paying my mortgage, or filling out my taxes. I do consider my ISP my enemy when it comes to downloading Linux ISOs, because the IP addresses issued by my ISP can be tied back to a geo location and are known to be the "last leg" address that would be targeted for infringement purposes.

Why is an ISP concerned about Linux ISOs? Or is this a code word for warez?

Code word for torrents. Linux ISOs are probably the most common large file legitimate use of torrents and so it's become a code word for pirated content.

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