EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number and they say piracy is going to receive a huge blow. Obviously I have no intention of stopping but now I’ll have to start using a VPN, if I want to continue my way. However, I do not trust VPNs a lot and I do not like the idea of paying for them (I could just pay for the movie in the first place)
I looked into using Tor network to torrent but it seems like it’d be a hindrance to the network itself, which is going to be a huge inconvenience for other users. Additionally I know that even if I found a way to throttle my bandwidth to remove this problem, Tor isn’t exactly made for this sort of thing anyways.
Now, obviously it doesn’t have to be torrenting, but I would gladly hear any suggestions on how to avoid paying and getting movies and shows without being caught doing it. Truthfully I was only streaming from websites for many years, so I do not know a lot about torrenting vs direct downloading either. Thanks in advance for any responses.
EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number
no they’re not.
the EU ruled that IP addresses are personally identifiable information (PII) for the purposes of GDPR compliance EIGHT YEARS AGO. this means that internet services cannot store your IP address without your consent and explicitly telling you why they need it, they have to delete it when they’re done with it, and if they are to be stored in any way for aggregate data then it needs to be anonymised so that it can no longer be associated with you.
any change to associate IPs with you would break the GDPR.
They are actually working on a simplified GDPR version. Nothing good into the pipe.
Greece did it anyway and EU made us, actually. https://bernitsaslaw.com/2025/03/27/law-51792025-on-digital-piracy the “dynamic blocking measures targeting end-users” are connection of the IP with the equivalent of a social security number of the people inside the house where the infringement occurs.
your link has nothing about the EU forcing the issue, in fact this seems to blatantly fly in the face of eu law.
Yes, I have failed to find an english article that covers this issue properly, not much I can do if there isn’t coverage. Maybe EU didn’t force it and I was misinformed but the government passed it anyway as you can see.
Something similar happened in Sweden, the politicians said that the EU is forcing Sweden to store data about users. Like, “we don’t want this… but we have no choice!” And then it turned out that what they did was actually against EU laws and Sweden was fined for doing what they did and ordered to stop.
Hope people don’t re-elect such dumb bricks…
i can indeed see, and if the things the greek ad-article are saying but are not in the text of the law are true then it is very troubling and will probably result in sanctions from the EU, because the union have been on the asses of the greek government for years now to get them to curb corruption. it is also even more reason to get a vpn.
Where have you heard about this nonsense law?
I corrected it in my replies, maybe I should have corrected the post itself too, the law is in effect in my country, Greece. There are multiple articles about it and everyone is discussing it here in the country. Apologies for any confusion.
You need to pay for a VPN. It’s like a condom for the internet. Frankly, stop trying to avoid something that you should already be using.
Mullvad is a good start. Go purchase it.
Didn’t mullvad stop port forwarding? That ain’t great for seeding.
Yes, Proton VPN is a better option if you require that feature.
EU is making a new law which makes your IP the same as (something similar to) your social security number and they say piracy is going to receive a huge blow.
Sounds like an April Fools joke.
Unfortunately needing a VPN is not.
I torrent without VPN in the EU. I’ve been doing so for years. Still no letters as of writing this comment.
It massively depends on the country - it’s probably fine in Southern and Eastern Europe but not for example in Germany were if I’m not mistaken copyright violation is even part of Criminal Law rather than Civil Law as in pretty much the rest of the World.
Personally ever since I lived in the UK - which has the most insane levels of civil society surveillance in Europe, including of Internet usage - I got into the habit of doing pretty much everything behind a VPN, which also helps with peace of mind for the whole torreting thing no matter which country I’m living in at the moment, plus I pay 5 euros a month for the VPN which is less than a single streaming service, so in a way it pays itself (it’s funny how piracy compensates for the costs of protecting myself from dragnet surveillance).
I live in Germany and my brother and me torrent and no letters for years so I do not know what you are on about.
I vaguelly remember reading that Germany made Copyright Violation even for personal use a Crime, rather than merelly a Civil Law affair like it is in most countries.
Mind you, I might be wrong on the countries or on the details (i.e. maybe it’s only a Crime if it’s for profit).
Edit: So I searched for it and from here I got that:
Are there criminal copyright provisions? What are they?
Copyright infringements under German law also constitute criminal acts, which are punishable by fines or up to three years’ imprisonment. If the infringement is done on a commercial basis, the maximum punishment is five years in prison.
According to German copyright law, unlawful exploitation of copyrighted works, unlawful affixing of the designation of an author and the infringement of related rights are subject to imprisonment of not more than three years or a fine. In addition, any attempt shall be punishable.
The unlawful exploitation of copyrighted works on a commercial scale is subject to imprisonment of not more than five years or a fine.
The infringement of technological measures and rights management information is subject to imprisonment of not more than one year or a fine.
As I said, in most countries copyright infringement is not a Crime, just a Civil Law matter (i.e. you can be sued by the owners of the Copyright for damage but you won’t be sued by the State to pay a fine or even be jailed for it). Frankly judging by what it says there German law is very draconian on this.
Free vpns sell your data. It’s why they’re free. Processor cycles and bandwidth cost money so if you want someone to use their processor cycles and their bandwidth to encrypt and route your traffic through their servers without clandestinely peeking, and using lawyers and advanced security techniques to ward off the police, you gotta pay them.
In order to seed torrents you need to have a port on your vpn endpoint that is accessible to the internet and gets passed to the computer running your BitTorrent client. This is called port forwarding. There are only so many ports, so a vpn provider that offers port forwarding will probably charge more and you might not be able to get certified hood classics like :42069 because someone is already using it.
I use airvpn for torrents but depending on your European country you might not be able to. There are other port forwarding vpns. The cost is cheap, most come out to less than $5 a month.
Most let you run multiple devices at the same time so you might have your computer at home torrenting through the vpn while you’re away at work browsing porno on the toilet connected to the vpn which lets you get past the work content blockers.
So… just pay for a port forwarding vpn.
You can try I2P. The selection is smaller and it’s slower, but it’s free and privacy-first.
Update: Hilariously, while looking into finding english articles for said law in Greece, I stumbled upon one possible answer for my problem. The SSN that connects to the IP address has no way of pinpointing a perpetrator in a place with free WiFi like an internet Cafe. This method is not really safe, for the law has only passed recently but in extremely classic Greek government fashion, the law has many gray areas and potential loopholes! Tell me what you think about this idea.
How about you don’t go saturating some poor sods public WiFi that he is kind enough to provide to his customers? Cheapskate
Try Tailscale.
How does Tailscale help here?
Set up a computer in some country that doesn’t give a shit about your activity on internet, install Tailscale on it and set it as exit node.
That’s like a VPN with extra steps. Though if someone you trust in that country already has an exit node you can connect through, then that does sound good.
Yo, 2 things:
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I too heard that about Greece, but I couldnt find any article about it, only stuff I heard from others which they probably read them on FB. Do you have any (reputable) article coverthing this? I just considered those roumors it as fearmongering and moved on.
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Yo, since I haven’t seen you around, just to know, we have a sonewhat active greek community at https://fedia.io/m/Greece
Hey, thanks for the heads up on the Greek community, I’ll be giving that a visit for sure. Also yes, I can find articles that are trustworthy but they are all in Greek, sadly xD. I might look again sometime though, will let you know!
but they are all in Greek
Haha sure, send me the greek ones, μπορω να τα διαβασω:)
[Btw, I’m not a lawer, just because my comment is long don’t consider it correct:)]
Tl;dr: From what I understand, they’re gonna ask the internet providers (though it might also include vpn providers, streaming services etc.) any info about you that they consider necessary (so you could assume anything they have about you). So my opinion is, if you have a proper vpn that follows the zero-trust model, it should probably protect you. The main new thing here is that it has become illegal to consume pirated media (instead of only sharing them).
In the article you posted, there’s the governmental announcement too:
https://search.et.gr/el/fek/?fekId=777704
From the article you posted:
Όπως διαβάζουμε στο σχετικό νόμο: “Αρμόδιες για τον έλεγχο της εφαρμογής των διατάξεων του παρόντος νόμου και την επιβολή των προβλεπόμενων κυρώσεων είναι η Ανεξάρτητη Αρχή Δημοσίων Εσόδων, η Γενική Διεύθυνση του Σώματος Δίωξης Οικονομικού Εγκλήματος, η Διυπηρεσιακή Μονάδα Ελέγχου Αγοράς, οι Αστυνομικές, Λιμενικές και Τελωνειακές Αρχές, οι οποίες μετά τη διαπίστωση της παράβασης, ενημερώνουν τους δικαιούχους μέσω του Οργανισμού Πνευματικής Ιδιοκτησίας. Για τη διαπίστωση των διοικητικών παραβάσεων της παρ. 2Β και την επιβολή των διοικητικών προστίμων επιτρέπεται από τις αρμόδιες δικαστικές αρχές η διαβίβαση προς τις αρχές του πρώτου εδαφίου, των αναγκαίων στοιχείων για την ταυτοποίηση των παραβατών, τα οποία συνελέγησαν και περιέχονται σε ποινική δικογραφία που σχηματίσθηκε κατόπιν άσκησης ποινικής δίωξης για τα εγκλήματα του άρθρου 66. Αντίστοιχα, οι αρχές του πρώτου εδαφίου δύνανται, με σκοπό τη διαπίστωση των διοικητικών παραβάσεων της παρ. 2Β και την επιβολή των αντίστοιχων κυρώσεων, να ζητούν από τους παρόχους της παρ. 10Α του άρθρου 66Ε, οποιοδήποτε απαραίτητο στοιχείο για την ταυτοποίηση των προσώπων που παραβιάζουν τα δικαιώματα της παρ. 2Β”.
I couldnt find what is defined as providers in Paragraph 10A from article 66E (this should be stated in pages 583-585)
From what I understand, they’re gonna ask the internet providers (though it might also include vpn providers, streaming services etc.) any info about you that they consider necessary (so you could assume anything they have about you). So my opinion is, if you have a proper vpn that follows the zero-trust model, it should probably protect you. The main new thing here is that it has become illegal to consume pirated media (instead of only sharing them).
Hey, I understand this already but your input on the proper VPN is very much appreciated! This law seems sketchy to me, especially after another user on this thread pointed out that it violated gdpr. Honestly I know I really need to take my whole privacy into consideration and not just this tidbit but I have little time at the moment to properly set something decent up. That might also mean getting a VPN, lol. It is comforting to at least know that a proper VPN should cover me.
Yeah, there are vpns that say that they dont keep logs and allow portforwarding. Check out a recent post in this community about vpns: https://lemmy.zip/post/34924276
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