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.
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.
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…
That’s crazy, maybe its the same thing over here.
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.
To be honest our country is run by a Mafia that has been committing literal crimes for a while now, this would be a drop in the bucket. Ironically, one previous offense involved the use of software to spy on the personal electronic devices of politicians and influential people, both in the ruling party and outside of it. Another was a criminal neglect of the train system that ended up in a train crash with 57 people dead. Not to mention the subsequent cover-up which involved editing audio records of the incident before their release to shift the blame and many other false records, the politicians literally disguising themselves as random civilians that one time and appearing on TV saying how safe they feel travelling after the incident and other things that don’t really come to mind right now.
If I may say, no, I don’t think EU is coming to save us. They barely gave them a slap on the wrist for all these offenses combined.
We have something similar in France for more than a decade. As you are torrenting, you are obviously sharing your ip with other torrent clients and this is where they get you. The agency (used to be called Hadopi but they change their name and can’t recall the new one) is following some torrents, gets your ip from torrent clients and then ask internet provider to give name/address. You then received a warning letter, upon 3 letters received, you can get a fine or go to court.
sweden also had this but they stopped sending out fines because they were a company masquerading as a government agency which is basically fraud. there is an explicit carve-out in the law for making private copies of things, and we already pay a “copying fee” when buying media that can be copied to so they had no way of proving whether you were pirating or doing backups.
We also have the right to copy media we bought here. Nonetheless, you need to prove that you have bought media you have downloaded.
Edit: Sharing copyright media is strictly forbidden here, so even if you prove that you buy media, you are not allowed to torrent it.
Do you have some source for this IP thing in the EU? I wasn’t aware of any new privacy laws.
only sources I can find are in Greek since this is my home country where this was implemented, but basically EU forced us to do it so I thought other countries would also have this problem. https://techmaniacs.gr/episimo-syndesi-afm-me-ip-kai-prostima-se-osoys-katevazoyn-katanalonoyn-kai-diakinoyn-peratiko-periechomeno/ see if you can translate this to english, will come back with an uptade if I find something better. update: found this article in english only, but 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.
this is an ad for a vpn.
Unfortunately there’s little coverage in English of this issue.
Uh, thanks. That really doesn’t look good. Usually copyright infringement is a civil matter. And I believe we had sufficient laws to handle that in European countries. I haven’t read the cited new law, but I guess that “shortcut” just does away with everyone’s privacy. Plus it’s going to swamp the courts with cases. I’m not sure if they’re bored or anything… But either they just hand out fines without checking properly… Or, if done properly, this is just a lot of additional work for the justice system. To the benefit of the copyright industry. And either way, it’s just bad for the people.
Edit: I believe this is the mentioned government gazette. The copyright changes are in Chapter 2: https://www.e-nomothesia.gr/kat-arxaiotites/n-5179-2025.html
It’s a lifestyle, not a way to save money. I pay for piracy related tech more than a netflix subscription costs.
This. I don’t do much but I have spent $1,200 on HDDs alone. Then there’s the true saviors of the internet with hundreds of TB, even PB of backed up, virus-free content
I don’t do much but I have spent $1,200 on HDDs alone.
this might interest you when its ready in a couple months. this is exactly the issue its working toward resolving.
Seedboxes go from €2 to €100+ a month depending on how much you will torrent and how much space you need on the box alongside other factors. My personal choices are Gigarapid and Ultra but there are others
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.
I use airvpn for torrents but depending on your European country you might not be able to.
Why would it not be an option in some countries? Are you saying it’s illegal or impossible to encrypt any traffic through a VPN while being in some of the countries, or what’s the matter?
I remember a while back the European country air is incorporated in passed an anti vpn law to prevent people from using them to stream soccer games (?). In compliance with the law, air said it wouldn’t offer services to people in that country.
So depending on what country the op is in and how the company is complying with the law, airvpn might not be an option.
I know about the dangers of free VPNs, its why I haven’t turned to those at all in the first place. Sure what you say could work but as far as I know no one can be entirely sure paid VPNs don’t also sell your data. I’m pretty much aware that a properly used good VPN will make my life a lot easier but I don’t like the idea of paying just for safe browsing. I want to see what other options are out there before I submit to that as a necessary evil. Thanks for the recommendations though.
I tried a lot of the alternatives before switching to a vpn for torrenting.
For a long time I only used private trackers with encryption required and dht and whatnot off. It worked pretty good, especially with traffic shaping on the router.
If you really want to avoid paying money that’s where I’d start. The problem you’re gonna run into comes from how the law is used against piracy, who does it and how.
If I were gonna go that route today I’d set up doh or dot first. Both are free if you want to use mullvads servers.
Good luck.
I’ll look into it, thanks.
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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I use Tor to get magnet links and feed them to my clearnet torrenting client, no issues so far and the ISP would have to breach my privacy to provide my IP.
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
Torrenting in a café? Get Mullvad and stop complaining.
That’s probably a bad idea.
Not only are you going from committing a crime in private to committing a crime in public, you’re putting yourself in one of the most vulnerable positions possible when it comes to computer security (every few months there are new attacks developed specifically to target users of free public wifi).
Even if that wasnt a problem to you, businesses often have content blockers and traffic shaping to prevent you from torrenting and when they don’t you’ll be competing with everyone else actively streaming video and audio to their phones as well.
It’s also trivial to figure out who’s torrenting on public wifi and has been for years.
If you’re truly concerned about this new law then public wifi isn’t the solution.
E: and if all that doesn’t convince you and you go through with it, you’ll be causing a problem that will actively make people look for you so the wifi isn’t completely jammed up.
That’s a bunch of solid info, I definitely wasn’t planning to do anything without proper research into it anyways. I’d also never make it someone else’s problem as might be the case with public WiFi. Guess there goes that idea though.
Please bear in mind that even if you were to figure out a process for torrenting without a vpn in a jurisdiction with a law against it that you don’t want to bear the repercussions of, you still need to seriously audit and understand your own security practices.
Just last week, the guy who runs the website “have I been pwned”, which hosts a searchable database of credentials that have been found in data breaches, was phished and had to add the people on his mailing list to his own websites database of people who suffered from data breaches.
This person is a security consultant to many organizations all over the world and operates one of the first resources used to figure out the breadth and depth of an individual or organizations exposure to leaks.
There are many cases just like this ripped from the headlines example.
If experts in the field cannot guarantee their own security, it follows that you cannot do so either and you may be well served by thinking critically about your own capacity to perform the research required to accomplish the task you’ve laid out for yourself.
To put it more succinctly, and I have to ask that you read the following with as much kindness, understanding and warmth as possible:
You are likely not capable of figuring this out for yourself in a way that keeps you safe from the law.
Please be careful out there and make good decisions. Not everyone on Reddit or lemmy is an expert and many people don’t have your best interests in mind.
