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.
You can try I2P. The selection is smaller and it’s slower, but it’s free and privacy-first.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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).
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.
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.
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
