Disclaimer: I do not steal licensed content and do not advise anyone to do that.
But, hypothetically, if someone were downloading rather new US tv shows via torrent and their VPN client betrayed them (as in stopped working for 10-20 min), how fucked up they are? Should they expect police knocking on their door or what?
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Wait, I’ve been torrenting non stop for a week now. Didn’t realise there’s a possibility of cops knocking at my door
How fuc*Ed up are they if they are doing it?
The police are probably already on their way. They would have gotten an alert at the Cyber Crime center as soon as the VPN stopped working. At the very least they’ve already contacted the criminal’s home country’s embassy and are looking over their permanent record.
The only thing you can do now is wipe the drive and use acid to remove your fingerprints, just in case.
It is up to your ISP, I guess.
Protip: learn how to use Docker. There are a lot of Docker containers with torrent client+VPN tunnel and the most important part – simple kill switch – it will immediately stop torrent activity if your VPN fails.
This is entirely anecdotal, but when I was living with a host family in Toyama in 2013, I torrented GI Joe movie on my laptop. The next day my host family got a letter from their ISP. Cant remember the contents and I’m not sure if it was a warning or a fine, but I was shown the letter and they checked my PC (I of course destroyed any evidence before showing them it)
However, since coming to Kanagawa and Saitama, while have not at all learned my lesson from that in incident I’ve run into no such issues with my current provider (Softbank), so it’ll entirely depend on your ISP. I havent torrented anything in a long while now due to actually being able to afford online streaming services, but when I wasn’t able to, options were limited and boundaries tested. These are my results.
It’s not a police matter but there’s a chance you’ll get a bill for a few hundred dollars via your ISP. Happened to a buddy of mine when his wife torrented one episode of House she hadn’t seen.
It would probably be a civil matter handled through fines/etc… rather than something the police would handle, unless you were torrenting some *really* illegal stuff or had an upload operation going. Whether anything actually happens to you seems to be a crapshoot. Anecdotally, I torrented shit occasionally with and without a VPN while using au hikari, and never had anything happen to me at all. One friend who has new shows/games torrenting 24/7 got a letter telling him to stop, but never got any fines or anything. I’ve heard that they come down harder on seeding, so maybe stick to just downloading.
Relax
The worst that can happen is you receiving a letter from your ISP saying that you downloaded copyrighted content and if you continue to do so they will suspend your service.
Happened to me way back in 2014 or so.
The annoying thing is, the only way I know of to watch anime in Japan is to download it illegally. I’d happily pay to stream it, but they don’t have English subs in Japan and the streamer services that do have English subs, have licences outside Japan.
I’m currently catching up on anime shows I’ve missed by going to Australia.
Make it make sense to me.