Before I say anything further, yes I know how much the recommended VPNs cost. I can read. Please do not interrogate me about it.
I’ve been wanting to get into torrenting for a while, particularly contributing to private trackers related to music (and to a lesser extent retro games, though I don’t have much original stuff to put there as it’s harder to find rare games than rare music). FMHY recommends RiseUp if I must get a free VPN while I’m working on my financial situation, though I’m not sure whether it’s been tested in court. What are my options, if any?
VPNs are dirt cheap. How can you say you can’t afford one? What is your budget, $0.50?
what is your budget? you say you can’t afford a vpn, most vpns are roughly 71 yuan or 10 USD per month, with the option to buy at a large discount if purchased for the full year. tell your budget in your local currency… 10 dollars per month isn’t very expensive, but these subscriptions do add up.
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i2p.
I would suggest don’t.
For downloading, look at DDL sites.
For uploading, if you can’t do it safely, don’t. Stash it all, make backups, keep it until you can do it safely.
I mean you can avoid all that. If you’re just interested in music and retro games then just use soulseek and use the rom megathread. both of which are going to be either peer to peer or direct downloads. no torrenting.
Rom megathread (web search it) has quite literally everything. no need to search, no need to torrent, it’s all right there. And soulseek with Nicotine+ just works like napster. sign up, be sure to share your music library, and then have at it.
I use slsk, I’m just trying to find more places to upload the rare music I have to so it’s less likely to become lost.
right so you just keep your music folder open so people can do just that. More audiophiles are going to be on soulseek than some random torrent tracker.
I don’t understand why you insist on torrenting when you can’t safely do so. You’re going to get way more traction sharing your rare stuff on soulseek than you will torrenting it I can guarantee that.
It’s not that I’m trying to switch away from slsk, it’s that I’m trying to do more in addition to slsk.
Its not a big thing with trackers anymore unless you get into one of the exclusive private trackers dedicated to music, but this requires previous history with other trackers, good upload speeds, etc. I would just stick with slsk for now.
What’s not a big thing with trackers?
Music
Mullvad is €5 a month for total of €60 for a year.
Save up then torrent. If you live in the US you risk way more in fines than what €60 for a year of VPN would cost.
You basically have 5 (?) devices there. Share the cost with 4 friends and it’s 1 Euro a month.
Borrowed WiFi is definitely your best bet. Find a place with a fast public WiFi network you can reach from your car.
I wouldn’t do this because the wifi will make sure you never do this again because of dmca strikes
I use proton and our local laundry-mats; they have open WIFI…and you can get your laundry done while waiting for the torrent to finish
Tribler or i2p.
Edit: there are also non-bittorrent p2p networks out there like Retroshare, but I haven’t used them, so don’t know how useful they are.
What are the adoption rates of those compared to a standard private tracker?
Dunno, I haven’t used private trackers in 10 years. You can add any magnet link to Tribler and it will go through exit nodes to hide your IP, kind of like Tor does for browsing clearnet. I haven’t used i2p in a while either; back then, I used the Postman tracker, and don’t know if that’s still what most people do or not. I personally just use a paid VPN, because there really isn’t a good way to set Tribbler up with an *arr stack.
I would prioritize a VPN ahead of an ISP. Free Open/Public APs are not uncommon in my area.
It’s really that important in the USA? Asking from Europe, where Ivve never even heard of anyone getting fined.
I been using torrents since they became a good option a little over twenty years ago. I’ve torrented using public and all manner of private trackers both with and without vpn or tor.
I have received letters from various ISPs during those years. Here’s what it all boils down to:
What’s most important: turn off peer exchange and dht, turn on require encryption.
What’s also important: only use private trackers.
What’s less important, but good to have: use a vpn with port forwarding with your client bound to its interface. It doesn’t matter if you don’t bind the client to the vpn interface so make sure you do that.
E: just read through the comments on your native instance that don’t show up to me normally. There’s some old misinformation going around still. I’m not gonna argue or go into great detail but things like only leeching, only using foreign trackers or using someone else’s WiFi don’t do anything to help you avoid some kind of letter.
I definitely don’t want to just leech. I use slsk right now and barely use it for downloading, just sharing rare music I find in local thrift stores and such.
Go test into one of the music trackers. It’s easy if you can follow instructions and retain information. If you end up feeling like the social expectations of a private tracker are tripping you up then spend a little time on the mya tracker to get used to it first.
If you’re making your own rips then being exposed to the information, toolsets and expectations of the private trackers will improve the quality of your output.
What’s Mya tracker? Edit: MyAnonymouse, right?
Yeah get in there and get your feet underneath you.
Seedbox.
If you can share the cost of a VPN with one or more other people (most allow multiple devices to connect at the same time), it’ll be much cheaper. Or if you can’t afford that either, try to find someone who will let you use theirs for free. Maybe you can even find someone who isn’t tech savvy who will pay you a few bucks a month to cover the VPN in exchange for you downloading Linux ISOs for them.
I use Cloudflare Warp and make qbittorrent only able to torrent if it’s connected to Warp
Does that have port forwarding though? Because if not, seeding isn’t going to work.
Seeding works fine without port forwarding. Just won’t be connecting to as many peers.
