I’ve noticed many people promote VPNs for torrenting to evade legal troubles in some places. But I wonder how do VPN companies get away with legal complaints? Especially if their servers are located in Germany or Japan, where piracy is heavily penalized.

p.s. I have never used a VPN for piracy, and I have never received any DMCA emails.

  • haroldfinch@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    10·
    2 months ago

    But it’s VPN providers who rent the servers that have downloaded the torrents. So they can basically say it’s not done by us, but the users of our service, and thus they don’t bear any consequences? It seems like such a good business model.

    VPN providers do not bear any responsibilities for providing services for piracy.

    The DMCA’s principal innovation in the field of copyright is the exemption from direct and indirect liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries.

    So technically if VPN providers do not keep logs, you are fine. But since it’s impossible to know how VPN providers servers are implemented, still there are risks.

    I mostly use public trackers. Maybe it’s just my ISP doesn’t care.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
      91·
      2 months ago

      Plot twist: RIAA and MPAA own all the major VPN providers, and/or the data centers they rent from.

      /ConapiracyTheory

    • bastionntb@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Correct. That’s also why it’s important to find providers thatchave passed many independant audits. Like ProtonVPN or Mulvad.