Questionable if this is only about movies, and not about any Bittorrent traffic.
It’s probably a map of where VPN servers are located mixed with countries that don’t persue copyright violations. And not necessarily where the users are located.
Are VPNs seriously that prevalent? In Australia, most internet providers aren’t also owned by media companies. So many have clearly stated policies that they will not pass your information on. Mine does, so I don’t bother with a VPN, there’s no reason too.
I know this is very much a tangent but honestly VPNs feel like a massive scam that everyone in the piracy community at large keeps perpetuating. Like, I’m pirating more content than I ever have because of subscription services, so I’m not gonna sign up for the extra special piracy subscription just because? And if I actually want privacy and anonymity while browsing I would, and do, just use tor.
Tor has massive issues with torrent traffic. Don’t do torrent over TOR.
Internet service providers don’t directly rat you out. The way it works is: Some (shady) companies watch torrent traffic for the copyright holders, and log the IP addresses. If it’s a residential address and from a country they can pursue in, they file a court case. The judge then decides and sends a letter to the internet service provider. The ISP then is obliged to tell the court. It’s a lawful request by a court. And then they get you.
Sometimes they can also take some shortcuts for a action for injunction(?). (I’m not sure if that’s the correct term.) At least that’s what they commonly do in Germany, where I live.
I’m not sure how law works in Australia. But where I live, it’s pretty uncommon to pirate content via bittorrent without a VPN. There is a good chance you’ll one day get an uncomfortable letter in the mail, if you push it.
I was not, at all, suggesting to torrent over tor. Like I said, I don’t need to obfuscate my torrent traffic. I use tor for private browsing, which is the other major thing VPNs advertise themselves on.
In Australia, there is legal precedent that courts won’t make these judgments anymore. American media companies, in the past, were granted these orders. However, they would then go off and commit actions that are illegal here, like sending coercive letters saying stuff like “Pay us $25 or we’ll sue you”. But sending it to a few thousand people and hoping enough pay, that it will recover your costs. The case was involving Dallas Buyer’s Club. I actually got a letter, well my mum, when I was still living at home ~11 years ago.
I’m pretty sure they’re still allowed to ask your ISP nicely. Mine refuses those requests. This also isn’t my take on all of this, I followed the case back in the day on the Whirlpool forums.
@princessnorah Romanian here. We’re generally not using VPNs because ISPs do not seem to care that much. Even so, there is a popular private tracker (I won’t advertise it here) which has pretty much all you need, especially movies and popular software. If you use that one, you can be 100% sure nothing will happen to you.
Edit: we also have non-permanent IP addresses by default, so if anything, I can just restart my router, and I am assigned a new one.
