Yep!
I've also resorted to putting tailscale exit nodes in foreign relatives homes with Pis in the past.
There are enough weird issues with pretending to be a domestic internet connection from a VPS IP that I've given up trying.
The seedbox providers are typically headquartered somewhere where they can just burn DMCA notices. The servers themselves are also often located in piracy friendly jurisdictions (the Netherlands used to be common, not sure what’s current).
They usually come pre-installed with a remotely accessible torrent client like Deluge, Transmission, etc. Also often includes other software like VPNs, Plex, etc.
You should be relatively safe using one. The server does all the torrenting, you just download the files over FTP so you never appear in the swarm directly. It’s also a huge pain in the ass for law enforcement because it becomes international quickly. You’re in country X, the server with its IP in the swarm is in country Y, and the company that has the rental agreement with the data center for the server is in country Z.
Anecdotally, I used to spend some time in the space and I can’t recall a seed box provider ever getting raided. I think they just generally don’t bother with folks technical enough to go that far; there are easier fish to fry.
Do they come with root access if we end up renting one?
Some provide root, some don’t. Last I checked, you’ll pay more for root because most of the servers are physical so you have to rent a whole server basically.
The servers are typically IO bound on the NIC so they aren’t super picky about what you do with CPU and memory. They won’t let you run a crypto miner or do heavily parallel transcoding, but if you want to chuck a Python+SQLite web app on there I doubt they’d care.
Well no, can't really guarantee that.
> Do they come with root access if we end up renting one?
Some do, some don't. If you want root you'll need to rent a dedicated one and avoid shared plans.
I'd hope someone prepares for that, and when it happens proposes a vote or public address, for laws that make the attempts backfire.
Definitely not piracy friendly jurisdictions most of the time, most are located in Netherlands (most popular), Germany, Canada, United States, Finland and France.
> I used to spend some time in the space and I can’t recall a seed box provider ever getting raided.
Most seedbox providers don't officially allow piracy and don't promote piracy and will listen to valid legal requests, they're safe, you aren't. If they get in legal trouble that involves you, they will totally throw you under the bus to save themselves.
A lot of seedbox providers also don't allow public trackers because that attracts legal notices.
> It’s also a huge pain in the ass for law enforcement because it becomes international quickly. You’re in country X, the server with its IP in the swarm is in country Y, and the company that has the rental agreement with the data center for the server is in country Z.
Actually, it really isn't.
They just don't care as long as the providers stay legal (example: Whatbox (Incorporated in Canada, servers in NL and US) and RapidSeedbox (Incorporated in Hong Kong, servers in NL) started forwarding the legal notices to their users to avoid issues, Ultra.cc (Incorporated in Singapore, servers in NL, CA and Singapore) and Hostingbydesign (Incorporated in Denmark, servers in NL and DE) blocked some trackers to avoid issues)
It's when you stop following the law that you get into trouble, like Hostingbydesign's owner who ran another seedbox provider and got arrested, sentenced and fined when he knew about the piracy and ignored it.
providing such a service (-network) is a popular monetization option for all kinds of useless crapware. this is very useful, but even more shady than regular vpn providers.
(Note: I'm Australian, been living in Canada for almost 20 years and only recently had someone explain that to me and suddenly it all made sense!)
The Studios and Music Companies lobbied and got a law passed but the ISPs managed to have the law include a small charge ($20 from memory) for each notice. So the Movie/TV people never bother sending any notices and the music people only rarely do it.