Is Downloading Torrents Still Safe?

I know this may be an old topic and what not but I just need this question answered because I haven't begun downloading torrents again for this reason. I remember reading torrent websites such as piratebay and others will record your IP address and get you in trouble for downloading from them. My question is: is this true?
Is downloading torrents still safe?

I primarily use piratebay. Has anyone had any trouble using it?


Also I came up on this article here:

Here is the source: http://www.toptechreviews.net/tech-news/acta-takes-steps-against-piracy/

You must’ve heard about those blazy reports on, how furious those companies get, when their content (software, audios and/or videos) is released on the internet, without any consent from them; and the next thing you know – every kid on the block is downloading something illegally through torrents and rapidshare.

Well, now the ACTA (anti counterfeiting trade agreement) finally decided to take charge and put an end to the online piracy thing. According to the folks in Telecom and IT industry, everyone’s pretty excited about a change in the software release system.

Furthermore, the ACTA decided to hold ALL ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) responsible for the illegal download of any document through any online source. ISPs are instructed to sever the internet connection of that particular user (but is this really going to help? I mean really?) And discontinue their service for him/her.

So, in a way, I’d call the ACTA license as yet another “copyright law on steroids” sort of thing. And there is a valid reason to it too. Do you remember those court room dramas and lawsuits against Napster and KazaLite? Yeah, those old school developers who just started off with this online music and file sharing thing years ago. But what happened? They got off with a little slap on the wrist and now Torrent Websites have replaced them.

There is no end to online piracy, as long as people are using the internet. At one hand, we have people like, Karel De Gucht (EU Trade Commissioner), who are appreciating this step, taken by the ACTA. But is it really going to apprehend those pirates and barricade millions of users from downloading and illegally sharing content – online? Well, let us just wait and see how this thing ends.

I take all those warnings with a grain of salt. There's millions upon millions maybe even a billion or more people that pirate things, they're not going to sue/charge everyone..

They're more or less a scare tactic, and they still use them for a reason, they do work to a degree.. Durring their last great 'crack down' (what their 20th by then? this being their 50th?) I had several people warning me about downloading movies and such because 'they're cracking down'..

Nothing more came of it then of the very first warning I heard about a few out of the millions of people that do it got slapped with ridiculously large fines, the media parades them around and uses them as an example saying 'this could happen to you, so stop'

But there's another reason they use scare tactics... It's about the most effective way they actually have to curb piracy... As I already said, they can't possibly go after everyone, and they know this and they know most of us know they won't..

I started pirating music when I was 14, and you know why? Paying 20 bucks for a *** CD is ridiculous... I didn't have rich parents who bought me whatever I wanted, and 20 bucks was a loooot of money to me then.. So of course I took the easy way out. Call it me trying to justify 'my criminal activities' or whatever you want.. I can just as easily say charging so much for a CD is a crime. Someone actaully tried to tell me that CD's cost that much becuase of piracy, those were the prices before piracy even took off.. So no, it wasn't.

Downloading anything from an unknown source is dangerous. However, the reason torrents are much better is for the simple fact that it relies on other people downloading/have downloaded it to work well. If something wasn't trustworthy or was reported dangerous, odds are nobody would continue to download it, and if it slipped past your judgment, you'd have hell of a time getting it anyways.

It's just the companies being greedy, even with all the ppl pirating they make more than enough money to pay their employees and the headman make millions. It's all greed. Personally I don't pirate out of being cheap, it's that i'm not going to the store everytime I want to see a movie, If I can't pirate it oh well, I'll do without, so to me and many others it's just a way for more ppl to enjoy a product they otherwise would have done without. If anything they should be happy it's being seen/used.

Anyway, enough justification it's wrong regardless but as far as I know it's not illegal. They are messing with the ISP like you said though, I've been threatened once or twice by Cox Cable(Suddenlink) to "delete" said file from my pc and they will turn my net back on, I throw it on my HDD external and then I get it back on lmao.

It's not illegal as far as I know they are just doing waht they can to make us stop. I have no doubt they soon figure out a way to get it passed, but atm i've not heard it being illegal the ISP just has the right to refuse your service. The people are are breaking the law are the ones UPLOADING said files, that is copyright infringement(or some other term).

Until the torrent sites are legally closed down it's safe. Would be ridiculous to go after torrenters as opposed to the sources, and ISPs would be severing hundreds of thousands of connections if that true, and losing a lot of customers as a result.

It's not clear cut illegal like having drugs or anything of that nature is... It's in a grey area... Technically, they can take you to court for just downloading something illegally.. But to my knowledge there aren't many (if any) laws that specifically list illegally downloading software/media as a criminal offense.

Just download Peer Guardian.. a static Bouncing Ip program.... if your scared.... they say it helps... im sure everyone uses it.. to be on the safeside.

Totally agree with you, it's the same reason I download torrents. If I payed for all the music I have I could buy a new Honda civic >_>

You've actually been threatened by your ISP for downloading?
WTF?! O_O;
And how did they know you deleted the file?
There's no way the can check your PC to see if the file is still there once you download it is there?
Isn't that an illegal invasion of privacy if they did?
>_>

Thanks for all of the info guys. I guess I'll start downloading my torrents again screw it lulz.
I have a lot of music to catch up on >_>



P.S sorry for the late responses I posted the thread and went to bed lol.

The only thing I've ever downloaded were TV shows. I think it would be rather hard to come after someone for downloading something you could just record off the TV or even watch online.

a teacher of mine a few years back told me about a letter from comcast asking him to remove files he had downloaded. it was in regards to a pga golf game for ps2 iirc, and as far as i know it was just a warning. they only asked for the files to be removed because with out permission or court order, theres no way for your computer and/or its files to be seized or examined.

also, if your going to download anything from anywhere, use peerguardian like neon suggested.

edit: i also remember him telling me the letter directly mentioned EA games.. so im just guessing certain companies ***/try harder to do stuff about piraters than others.

The law in question is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). The law says that downloading any copyrighted material, even free material, without the written consent of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by an enormous fine. End of story.

ISP's or other "middle men" in the system, like Youtube, operate under something called the Safe Harbor Provision.

Basically, if you download something using their bandwidth, or upload something copyrighted to Youtube, they are not directly responsible for what you do. They cannot be sued themselves. However, in order not to be, they have to follow a certain procedure.

First, they must accept something called a DMCA Takedown Notice. If the copyright holder sends the ISP (or Youtube, etc) a notice saying one of their users is breaking copyright, they must immediately take that user offline and/or delete the content. No proof is required.

The ISP must then turn around and tell the user their stuff has been yanked and/or their account blocked. The user is given two options: delete the content and accept the verdict, or contest the DMCA Takedown Notice. They generally have 30 days to comply.

If the user chooses not to delete the content and contest the notice, the ISP is legally required to give the copyright holder all personal identification information about the user. Privacy laws do not apply. This allows the copyright holder to take the user to court directly, and sue for damages from copyright infringement. As long as these steps are met, the ISP is off the hook.

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There's a few ways that copyright holders can detect you stealing content.

The first, is that by nature of being a peer-to-peer network, anyone currently downloading a torrent can see anyone else also downloading that torrent. All the movie studio (for example) needs to do is try torrenting their own stuff, and they'll see everyone's IP.

They then simply need to look up which ISP corresponds to the IP address, and serve the ISP with a DMCA Takedown for the user that corresponded to that IP at that particular time.

The second is that torrents have central scheduling processes called trackers. Using a similar DMCA procedure, the copyright holder can force the tracker to divulge everyone who is using the torrent. (Or potentially ever has.)

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If your ISP sends you a notice telling you to delete something off your computer, it's because they have received a DMCA Takedown from someone detecting you stealing copyrighted material. You've been caught. Obey them and deal with it, or the ISP will be compelled to help the copyright holder track you down for a lawsuit.

As long as you say the content was deleted, the ISP is off the hook. So generally, they won't ask for any proof that you've done so.

However, if the copyright holder later finds you haven't deleted the content (by say, accidentally seeding the content over a torrent again), the copyright holder is allowed to circumvent DMCA Takedown and sue you directly.

Laws have changed a lot, even if the thing was 60+ years old. I think it would still apply :(

thats why I don't seed when using uTorrent, saves my own *** that way.

But this is the 21st century man, everyone is streaming ***online.

Instead of getting with the program, musicians and whoever start to get butthurt over the fact that people are downloading their songs.

Eminem had a great idea. He purposely let a few of his songs to his album the Relapse leak onto the internet, thus creating a buzz for the album.

It happened again with that new iPhone. That poor shmuck purposely left the phone there on the barstool for some anti-social nerd to come by and pick it up.

They can take those laws and shove them up their *** while reciting the Manifesto.

Nope, the DMCA supersedes previous copyright law on the internet, as of 1996.

If you mean the Communist Manifesto, you're barking up the wrong tree. Because it's based on collective ownership, communism generally does not have a concept of copyright and usually, (such as in China), ignores DMCA.

I did not mean it like that lol. When I said that, all I know is people think they have a right to torrent when they do not. I used the wrong words... those laws are not hard to read. But people still do it, and try to justify it, by what ever means.

I remember how people will look something up saying they can torrent or download something as long as it is really old. That makes no sense.

sorta like people who think they can break NDA agreements

Well most here probably are guilty of it.... I remember I used to do it a while ago. I stopped 2 years ago. Not much I really need to see today.

Edit:

It depends what you are torrenting.

as for the title:

OP it never was safe, look what happened to kazaa and p2p applicantions/clients. People thought they were safe but that is not true. Also those applications and sites encrypt stuff right? because of such things like this?

Thanks for the response Jaerik!

Thanks Blurr.. I almost overlooked this. Thanks! Sry to bring up a old post.. but good point!

The government forced through the controversial digital economy bill with the aid of the Conservative party last night, attaining a crucial third reading – which means it will get royal assent and become law – after just two hours of debate in the Commons.

Earlier the government removed its proposed clause 18, which could have given it sweeping powers to block sites, but replaced it with an amendment to clause 8 of the bill. The new clause allows the secretary of state for business to order the blocking of "a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright".

A new law in the UK now means that ISP's in Britain will be forced to feed information to the government about our actions online. ISP's will be forced to disconnet users who infringe upon copyright for fears of being fined up to £250,000 if they do not and ISP's will also be forced upon the secretary of states say so to completely block sites like this and many others from UK access.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/08/digital-economy-bill-passes-third-reading

Peerguardian is not safe. most of the riaa agencies use spoofed ips, which is incredibly easy to do.


I personally use Usenet and while not completely safe, private trackers.