Finally got a copyright warning from ISP - Reminder

Well, After hundreds of GB of torrents downloaded, I slipped up. I've been changing around linux distros recently and i believe i configured my VPN wrong or forgot to turn it back on after doing something. Well, I finally got hit with a copyright warning. Just your typical "we had to send this" type of warning but none-the-less, I slipped up.

Sharing this because the day before it happened, I read a post about not only having your killswitch on but also binding your client to you vpn interface for situations like this. Needless to say I didn't take that precaution. For those who are on linux, I found a great post about how to set this up on reddit and wanted to remind people to "double wrap" because why not be safe lol.

The steps were more or less as follows (for QBitTorrent at least):

Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced Settings
Under "Network Interface", select your vpn interface. To test, check what shows with your vpn on, and then turn it off and re-navigate to this part to see what dissapeared. Thats likely your vpn interface if the name wasn't clear. (Do not be seeding/downloading torrents while doing this in case).
To test, download a non-copyright torrent like the Ubuntu ISO torrent. In the middle of download, disconnect or close your vpn connection. This should stop the download.

Not sure if reddit links are cool here but here is the guide source if anyones interested. Binding VPN to Torrent Client

Stay hidden!

81 comments

I collect these like pokemon 🙃
- LMFAOOOO
- Maybe do something about your opsec...
- Based TekSavvy user
- Teksavvy is fantastic
  
  Yo this kind of talk got lawyers going after reddit to prove some isp is complicit. Y'all gonna turn the eye of sauron on us! 😖
- All hail Canada's notice-and-notice-and-notice-and-notice-and-notice system of copyright enforcement!
- I had no idea that Teksavvy passed these along. I thought they took a stance to ignore these.
  
  The content of the email is very laissez-faire, e.g. "we legally have to send these ¯(ツ)/¯ "
- Head's up – there's a law firm which many on RFD are talking about being served demand letters from, after repeated warnings were ignored.
  Don't worry though, the demand letters are largely baseless and unenforceable, especially since the SCoC ruled last year that service bill payers are not responsible for the actions of their network users.

Reply that you work for Meta and Mark said it will be ok.

You can use this to test your IP while torrenting.
https://torguard.net/checkmytorrentipaddress.php
- I prefer https://ip.network/, much easier to remember.
  
  I do split tunnelling, so only the torrent stuff goes through the VPN.

ive not had any leaking since i setup my torrenting container(deluge is my fav) to use the openvpn container(gluetun) for its internet. theres zero chance it can leak, nothing to 'forget to turn on'.. kinda idiotproof, which i needed
gluetun is your friend
- Gluetun can also be configured to write it's forwarded port to a text file (if your VPN provider supports port forwarding), and then I have a custom script that runs when my qbittorrent container starts to read the port number and change the listening port in the config file. Works great!
- Why openvpn? Last I checked wireguard has significantly better performance (plus it's built into the kernel already)
- Cool! I'll definitely check that out. Thanks!
- Be careful of dualstack and IPv4-only VPNs. The client can discover and advertise the real IPv6 address, even if adequately firewalled. I'm not sure if gluetun addresses this risk.
  edit: this should be considered a risk even if you don't have IPv6 support today, as this could be enabled by your ISP in the future, then automatically enabled on your network by your router.
  
  Look at Mr fancypants here with an ISP that actually has some form of IPv6 support
- gluetun is dope! i just setup a podman pod with gluetun and deluge.
  
  How do you manage your podman pod? I just manually wrote it out into a script just this past week, but it seems inelegant to do all these commands so manually.

I swear, getting a letter and/or email about your piracy is definitely a rite of passage. My parents have definitely gotten a couple for things I've done (since they pay for the service) and I regret nothing.
Probably not accurate whatsoever, but I like to think ISPs and such refuse to drop your service if they're a big enough ISP because that's less money for their greedy cannon fodder of a CEO and won't do anything unless the government or a larger company comes along either serving them a lawsuit or legal letters/documents.
- It definitely felt like a right of passage lol. Ill be saving that. Might have to put it up on the wall to look back upon in my elder days.
  
  I kinda wish I could save mine now that you mention it, but I don't have access to my parents emails and they've probably long since deleted the email.

Same thing also happened to me at the end of last year. I usually only use torrents on my PC, but that day I decided to also use them on my laptop and of course I forgot to change the network interface to that of my VPN in qBittorrent because I'm an idiot. After around 2 weeks, I got a cease and desist letter ordering me to pay ~1000 € and sign their cease and desist declaration. Was able to negotiate down to 600 € and only sent back a modified declaration, still pretty expensive for such a silly little mistake. I'd say you can consider yourself lucky to just receive a warning :)
Unfortunately for me, German law makes torrents a very lucrative business model for some law firms who do nothing but send cease and desist letters, thousands each year.
I only got caught for a few seconds according to their letter, but that was enough to get me into trouble. Not sure what the reason was, perhaps I started the VPN too late or maybe systemd was stopping the VPN service before qBt got closed when I was shutting the laptop down. Either way, this probably wouldn't have happened if I had set the correct network interface in qBt and I've learnt to always do that first whenever I install a torrent client. I can only advise everyone to also check the publicly visible torrent IP with tools like this, just to be sure.
Smooth sailin' me hearties! 🏴‍☠️
- The IP checker you linked likes to flag false positives. I just checked it on my phone and it claimed that my IP address was being leaked, despute me using a VPN and the IP they listed being my VPN's server
  
  Ignore that orange banner, it's an ad. In fact, ignore all banners telling you something like "Your IP is exposed", because those are all just trying to sell you a VPN and can't possibly know for certain if an address belongs to a VPN server or not. Always compare IP addresses manually.
  What's important in this case is the address listed in the table below after you have opened the magnet link in your torrent client. If everything works correctly, it should be different from your actual IP address (which may or may not be the one displayed on the site, depending on whether you're using split tunneling).
- Oh dang, well so far it's only a letter they sent to my ISP, in which they relayed that someone on my network was doing it with or without my knowledge.
  My ISP has records I can look up the see the original email sent from the person who claimed the copyright. I was like, where did I mess up? They must not have very clear evidence.
  Well.. I was dead to rights Lmao. IP, movie name, times, data downloaded, etc. I'm hoping that's the only thing that leaked in that time period and there isn't more just qeueing lol.
  But yeah, that's why I wanted to share this post. Some people aren't in countries where this matters, but for those of us that are, stay safe. Learn from others. Im lucky so far but someone may not be and get fined like in your situation.
  I used Usenet but honestly I love being able to publicly seed for others. It feels like giving back so it's a risk I'll take over using usenet.
  Much love to the community 🏴‍☠️
  
  Obviously you kicked the former friend off your network after you learned of their illegal activities and admonished them to pay for their media instead nudge nudge

I keep forgetting that some people need vpns to torrent.
- Yeah it sounds so bizarre to me... What do you mean your ISP is constantly snooping all your encrypted traffic or trying to de-anonimize you by making undercover peers? That doesn't sound very net neutral...
  
  The ISP usually doesn't give a shit. It's various industry groups (think RIAA) seeding and trying to deanonymize people, then they complain to the ISP who'll usually (IME) brush it off with stern look but I guess in really egregious cases they'll cut service.

My father got us kicked off our ISP for downloading music from random public trackers.
I've been on private ones for years and never gotten a warning.
- Damn, kicked off? Where do you live and how many violations did he get?
  
  California. And I'm not entirely sure. The emails went to my mother, so I didn't hear too much about it until they terminated our contract.

I don't use a VPN, and haven't got a letter from my ISP in all the years I've been pirating.
- This!
  I haven't had one since an idiot roommate decided they wanted to fuck around. I fixed the problem (no more roommate).
  Been 20 years now.
  VPN seems a way to screw up decent performance when all you need is to stay away from public trackers.
  
  What happened to your roommate? That sounds kinda scary... :o
  
  Yeah, public trackers definitely raise your chance of a notice by at least an order of magnitude. New content also tends to be more noisy than old content. I also found a drop by selecting "require encryption" although I can't imagine why it would help (IIUC most of these scanners just connect to everyone in the swarm, not sniff random internet traffic.

Your link is broken
Also, visit here for a tool that lets you test and ensure your torrent client isn't leaking

Were you using a public or private tracker?
- Public I assume, I'm pretty new to torrenting and haven't really dove into private trackers yet. Any resources your recommend on reading up on that?
  
  It can be tough to get an invite to a private tracker, but that's all I've been using in my 20 years of torrenting and I've never received an ISP letter. I don't use a VPN. Just keep an eye out for open sign-ups. Once you're in, it's essential to keep a good ratio.
  
  Getting an account on a big general tracker like TorrentLeech is a pretty good foot in the door. They do open signups frequently. There's also IPtorrents and their whole network, although they're pretty looked down upon by the private trackers community. If you want to start working towards invites to more selective trackers, MAM, OPS, and RED all have an interview process. MAM is by far the easiest one to build a ratio on, although note that they do not like to be thought of as a stepping stone.
  
  ~~/r/opentrackers~~ /r/opensignups to find openings and read the rules of wherever you're joining. Typically, they just want you to seed for X amount of time within Y days. I've also been temporarily banned once for not having any activity several days after joining on one of the more popular sites.

Copyright warnings are fairly common in developed nations like much of western Europe and say, US right? Do they result in prosecutions as well( would it be worth it for an ISP to take an individual user to court and spend time and money on it?)
Copyright warnings are almost unknown in my country or much of the underdeveloped / developing world.
- In Germany you don't get warnings, you'll have to pay a fine immediately and if you get caught again you signed a notice that you'll pay absurd amounts then.
- No prosecutions in many many years.
  But, with the new oligarchy dictatorship in progress... I would not be surprised to see Sony get some bills passed to have ISPs cut you off permanently.
- Mostly us stuff, never heard of one in Europe
  
  I got one a few years ago (Europe), but you just throw them out, they're meaningless threats without action behind and to my knowledge no one has been convicted based on one ever in my country. But if you torrent copyrighted material without a VPN here, you'll definitely be getting them.
  
  France put in a place the Hadopi in 2010 (now part of the Arcom) specifically to target people torrenting copyrighted stuff.
- I don't believe the ISP would have legal standing to take you to court, as they don't hold the copyright.
  They're in the middle, being told hy copyright holders that someone using their service is violating copyright, and they must "do something".
  Eventually they may shut off your service, but I haven't heard of it happening since the early 2000's.
- You don't get warnings in Spain, I have never seen one or met anyone who saw one. And I have seeded hundreds of TiB of linux ISOs from a home computer.
  
  Are those distros copyrighted?
- In Poland you can download but not allowed to upload/seed. I don’t know is that the way law written or it’s just not enforced.
- In my experience in Canada, no, not at all. I've only had two but the impression I got was the ISP is legally obligated to pass the notice along and nothing more. The companies complaining are likely American and the ISP want to keep me as a regular paying customer.
- Prosecution only happens for criminal offences here and copyright infringement would be a civil matter. I have not heard of civil actions against downloaders for years though I may be out of the loop. The notices scare people off and some ISPs might kick you off under their terms of service but they don't take people to court.
  I have never seen a copyright warning. My old, old ISP never forwarded them on principle. And now there are VPNs.