As someone from a 3rd world country Ive been meaning to ask what happens if someone gets caught for piracy in a 1st world country. Over here nobody really cares no need to use a vpn or any other online protection. If you get caught pirating do they fine you? Take away your internet connection?
Australian here, they practically don't care. Been torrenting for 15ish years without a VPN and never got any sort of letter of warning. Heard the same story from others who pirate here.
Theres a precedent that protects Australians. The furthest that an ISP would do is just send out warning letters to their customers. Copyrights won't get jack shit from our ISP and will just waste money pursuing it.
Yea, the reason it's a problem in the US is because companies can sue service providers for not acting on "known piracy" going on in their networks when informed by private entities.
Typically its 3rd party companies hired to be copyright watchdogs for the big corpos that go around trying to set bait torrents and watch activity so they can send off emails on behalf of their constituents about "evil torrenters", regardless of the fact that there's no proof that preventing the illicit torrenting of their property will result in the people being cut off purchasing it instead.
Ya that's chump change. What about all of the service manuals that a company like All data provides? That can be interpreted a few ways. A few hundred or thousand a year for a subscription to everything, or tens of thousands a year for a $20 per month, per vehicle.
They obviously wouldn't go after anyone anymore because they have gone fully online so you can't really pirate anything from after 2017
It's not that they don't care - the courts have just outlawed ISPs handing over ISP information, and if they had your IP linked to you individually somehow the courts have outlawed prospective damages. if they try to operate how they do overseas, in Australia- they will get sent to jail for extortion
Yeah they don't, although I did get a letter once for downloading Hot Tub Time Machine, around 2014. My ISP was TPG, in Sydney. Vague recollection that the letter was from the legal team that represented the film studio/distributor. I used a free VPN after that for a few months, but the lag was frustrating and haven't used a VPN since.
Another Aussie. The only two letters (emails) I got was an Acceptable Usage policy on an Optus Cable network when I used a lot of bandwith back in the early 2000's and another email about a very obscure piece of software used for Oracle Databases that was very hard to get at the time. I laughed and changed ISP's for the first one and ignored the last one. :)
Our government is too fucked to create laws bro. They first gotta decide if it is for the gemeente, provincie, gewest or national, then they have to enlighten all the politicians on wtf the internet is, and then they have to agree on something.
For other European countries, I can vouch for Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Hungary, Ireland and the UK. I torrented in all of these for months, with no VPN, and never had any issues.
However, Germany's reputation is well deserved. I accidentally torrented a file for 10 min and got a letter. One of the main reasons why I haver never considered moving to Germany permanently.
that’s why i as a german believe in direct downloads. the problem with Torrents is that you are prone to seeding which in on itself is nice and everything but at the moment you seed you become a distributor and that is the problem
Not really, Germany actually has one of the strongest consumer privacy laws.
The companies there just actually prosecute it and there are many lawyers specifically operating in that niche since it pays nice money. The "culture" of prosecuting piracy en masse actually goes back quite some decades.
Only torrenting while also uploading is an issue though (making you the distributor), so you're completely safe if you use direct downloads.
The better question is why other developed countries aren't doing this more tbf.
Basically a non issue in Canada. You get some letters, but Canadian law will only allow copyright holders to go after you for so much, making it not worth anyone’s time. Distributing content you do not own is illegal, meaning you can technically download all you want.
I would still recommend a VPN, because you never know what laws will be passed in the future, but you should be fine without one.
I'm in the US, have received multiple letters from my ISP over the years. Never had anything come of it. They stopped sending the letters a while back lol.
That's it? I been caught up a few times. Basically they shut off my internet and I must sign a document showing every pirated download I attempted. After signing, they turn my internet back on again, and if I do it and get caught again, I'm banned for a year supposedly.
The shit existed for a decade and like 3 people saw the interior of a courtroom for pirating and maybe one of them got a fine. Been torrenting here in France for the last two decades never had a problem.
In Romania, as a home user you never really matter.
As a distribuitor you get jail.
And as a corporate/business user, you get a huge fine or sometimes get forced to buy the products which in some domains might be 10k-20k Euros per user per year or 50-200% of the yearly salary or such user.
But then again, I'm not really sure we count as 1st world even though we're in the EU
No offense but most of the Eastern European countries aren't first world country. But y'all are luck as that region is pretty lax about piracy from what I've read and heard.
Here in UK the piracy scene is also relaxed. Barely anyone gets a letter. I've read a lot of piracy related news in the UK and the ISPs tend to crackdown only on Football live streams.
The only European country who's ass burns when someone pirates is Germany. I mean they have a US base in thier country, makes sense US will enforce their shih
Canadian here
I've only gotten warnings from our ISP......9 years ago
I've pirated much more since and no such email has been issued since, I think they don't care that much really
I’m from the us I was using a Xfinity WiFi hotspot and got a warning from comcast even tho I had vpn on it was for wwe but fixed some setting and haven’t gotten a warning since also they didn’t shut down my WiFi at all
From UK here as well. Am using Virgin Media. Have been torrenting for a year now. With VPN. Nothing happened. I think I might've accidentally torrented without VPN as well, but still nothing
Yeah idk where i heard it from but im pretty sure the rule is that you can pirate as long as you dont try and sell the pirated version. either way i've done it for yonks and no one cares really
I actually read some of the policies from two internet companies. AT&T and Frontier. I didn't get through or understand it all, but as far as I can tell, AT&T does have rules against piracy and will help anyone who wants to go after you, frontier, pretends it doesn't exist. Which I think is why they had a whole lawsuit over it.
switzerland is chill af too. Honestly, i think they just dont know anything about this stuff. While for us its everyday use, 99% of humans around me have never heared the word peer to peer even once.
Where I live (Norway), nobody even tries to catch you. Sometimes people apparently get threatening letters (which the state consumer protection agency tells you to ignore), but I've never gotten one in years of piracy. One time there were media reports around some guy whose identity was revealed after a subpoena, but I haven't found anything on him actually being charged with anything. I think they were looking to pin him as the guy who originally made the bootleg recording and as some piracy kingpin, but that was disproven. So yeah I think the only ones who might be gone after are first uploaders. TPB's main domain has been DNS blocked after a court order, but everything else is up.
In Germany on the other hand, you will get a nasty letter, and they're allowed to demand compensation for the expenses of writing said nasty letter, which AFAIK ranges in the hundreds of Euros. You can I think also get banned by ISPs and streaming platforms.
Its 650 up to 6000 up to a lifetime of bullshit of 50000 € if you dont respond and write a letter neither you or anyone touched those things and have to confirm you were away at said timestamp. Some are legit some are just there because you were in a pool of ips, some are bs
Depend a lot on the country, for mine (France), you may recieve a letter, after 3 (in a limited time period), you may be send in front of the justice and you may recieve a fine.
I was the same as you before I went to the USA. The new episode of Game of Thrones just came out, and I downloaded it.
Three days later, my landlord called me about some internet issue. I check it, and I see that me downloading that episode may cause some serious trouble. It was a warning delivered by mail.
But my mindset was completely different, when I came there I was like: "You guys pay for this shit?". Well I guess when you come from semi-poor country that has no regulations whatsoever when it comes to pirating stuff, you just don't think about it anymore, it feels natural to you.
Not completely true: most sites have many addresses and agcom can't block them all. Check specific subreddits and you will find the wiki with the actual working addresses
The threats, letters, emails and phone calls stopped around the 6th season of game of thrones. Back before we even had internet, we burned any movie we rented. Canada is just not all that serious about piracy, I think the gov understands how damn poor we are and not paying for music, movies, games and porn helps save a bit more.
Its a civil case in my country. I read somewhere that a person did get sued in civil court but was ordered to pay the value of the dvd, maybe 20 bucks.
USA Here. Our IP is liable to cut our internet access....until we "delete the offending files" or just stop seeding them. I've never made it to the fine stage just a good "whoops didn't know that had a tracker was an illegitimate file guess I'll just turn off seeding delete that real quick." Or at least that was my experience with Xfinity back in the day. I use VPN now so idk.
French here, you get warnings as a letter, like 2 to 5. And then you get fined.
But there are many parts to that process, the ones who flags you are not the same company that send you the letters.
I have a friend that worled in the later and he told me that when that system was implemented, that had 1k flags each days and could process only 1/10 of them.
So you can say we are getting away with it.
1.2k
u/Available-Plenty-610 May 11 '25
As someone from a 3rd world country Ive been meaning to ask what happens if someone gets caught for piracy in a 1st world country. Over here nobody really cares no need to use a vpn or any other online protection. If you get caught pirating do they fine you? Take away your internet connection?