Yeah. Piracy being legal or Piracy not being sanctioned are two entirely different things. Idk about the former, but the latter is the case in many countries.
E.g. downloading and streaming is legal in Switzerland, while it’s illegal in the EU. But it’s not sanctioned, so nobody cares.
Uploading/seeding is illegal in both regions, thus torrenting copyrighted material is illegal. But Switzerland doesn’t really prosecute torrenting, so nobody cares.
If Cloudflare wants to operate in a jurisdiction it has to follow its laws. They can fight them in court, but if a court orders them to do something they’ll likely comply in some way or another.
E.g. UK wanted a backdoor in E2EE iCloud, so Apple disabled E2EE in the UK.
Yes, but the point is keeping the quality the same. If you reencode a 5000 kbps x264 Blu-ray encode to 3000kbps x265 you will have visibly worse quality.
If you encode the corresponding Blu-ray remux with x265 to 3000 kbps the result will likely be nearly indistinguishable from the 5000 kbps x264 encode.
For OP: I also prefer smaller releases so I download mostly h265 WEB-DLs. They are usually around 3000-5000 kbps (1.3-2.3GB/hour) and look fine (especially as they usually come with HDR).
Redownloading WEB-DLs in the right size will give you the best quality for the small size (and saves energy, depending on where you live).
I’ve never used them but I heard about them in the context of private DNS and VPS hosting. E.g. they act as a middleman to shield domain the shield the client from authorities (at least to some extent — they still have to follow the laws).
Given their focus on privacy I’d trust them for torrenting at least as much as the other options. As a first VPN I’d say it’s great because of their flat 5€/m price. A few years ago I used Mullvad for that purpose — until they removed port forwarding.
I just want to mention that the forwarded port provided by the VPN must match the one configured in the torrent client. Buying a VPN which offers port forwarding is not enough.
Not all torrent sites require an open port. E.g. MAM works without an open port. It majorly impacts your ability to seed) but that isn’t a problem because of how much bonus points you get. TL does not either.
That’s fine. It completely depends on your threat model and your preferences. To this date I haven’t heard anything negative about PIA except their owners, so it’s fair to trust them. I just want to point out that you can have both with other providers.
Generating a random account number is a unique and great feature of Mullvad.
But other providers allow for the same privacy. E.g. AirVPN does not require a valid email address. Any random string works for all required fields (email, username, password). Payment via Monero is available too.
Njalla does require a valid email address (it sends a confirmation mail), but any tempmail provider works (which you could access through Tor). They also accept Monero.
I2P is not an option because I’m using a VPN for regular internet traffic. As much as I like the idea of I2P, there’s just no I2P torrent sites with the selection of content I want.
Tor is not an option for torrents.
Given there’re alternatives I’d rather choose an independent service instead.
But that’s a personal decision which is why I mentioned PIA with the disclaimer, instead of ignoring them.
If you want port forwarding the choice is between AirVPN, ProtonVPN and Njalla. Iirc PIA also supports port forwarding, but their ownerships reputation is no good.
Mullvad, IVPN and many other services don’t support port forwarding.
I don’t have direct answer to the question, but I generally don’t add public trackers to my (public) torrents. DHT/PEX usually works fine for me for finding seeds on the occasion that I do need something from public torrent sites.
I wonder whether adding additional trackers only increases the speed in which peers are found or whether it also substantially increases the likelihood of finding peers.
You’re right, IVPN does not support port forwarding. The other three do.
Edit: IVPN seems to have removed port forwarding at the same time Mullvad did.
A few good ones are AirVPN, ProtonVPN, Njalla, IVPN.
A basic requirement most devices don’t meet is the ability to relock the bootloader. Other than Fairphone, Google Pixel and OnePlus basically no manufacturers allow unlocking and subsequently relocking the bootloader, which makes custom ROMs inherently less secure than stock. This keeps CalyxOS from most devices. LineageOS can’t be relocked and thus is able to support way more devices.
Others have pointed out more in-depth security requirements GrapheneOS specifically thinks of as mandatory (they do take security very seriously).
If you pay 10€ per month for a VPN, cancel and switch to something better. E.g. njalla always costs 5€/m with port forwarding.
If you’re on a private tracker with CGNAT you need to use a VPN to be able to port forward. Without port forwarding many will ban you.
It’s only an issue if the files aren’t properly named. If you’re using *arr this won’t be an issue. E.g. “Title (Year) - TMBD/TVDB ID” works flawlessly.
A few years ago I’d use sites in the order of rarbg > TGx > ext.to, although I’ve searched via qBittorrent.
I don’t think Usenet is really more difficult to use than Torrents. While writing I noticed you have to pay for a Usenet provider (and likely the indexer too), which does make it more difficult than torrent. But only if you live in a region where piracy is not persecuted and you can skip the VPN.
Usenet: You buy a provider and put it’s credentials into sabNZBd. You have an indexer, which gives you a .nzb, which you put into sabNZBd to download your files. If your provider is missing pieces the download might fail.
Torrent: You buy a VPN and bind qBittorrent to it. You have an tracker, which gives you a .torrent, which you out into qBittorrent to download your files. If there’s no seeder or you aren’t port forwarded the download might fail.
Hate the players not the game. Players being the rights holders.