I share a network with my roommates. How can I pirate without risking action against them? (piefed.ca)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by OliveBrittle@piefed.ca to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Hi all.

I've pirated before, but on my own independent network. For reasons I won't get into I've gone from living independently to living with roommates, and while I personally don't have anything against piracy myself, my current concern is that because things are on a shared network, I don't want them to get dinged by our ISP should I get caught in the act.

Beforehand, because it was my own network, my actions, my consequences to face in the rare circumstance that I do get caught (which hasn't happened yet), everything was smooth sailing.However, even if the likelihood of this happening is low, I don't want others facing consequences for my own actions.

What are some ways I can generally mitigate this issue? I mostly just pirate movies, and was curious if using streaming websites from FMHY or using SoulSeek would have the same risk as torrenting.

Edit: My region is Canada to help.

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[-] sk@utsukta.org 28 points 6 days ago

if you use torrents without a VPN it can cause problems. For general streaming websites i dont think there would be any issue. soulseek also would not be an issue. The ISP reports usually come when you seed/leech a public torrent and there are bots that automatically send IP notice to the ISP of the IP they see (since its public). Therefore using private trackers is a bit more secure in this manner but for the best solution use a VPN.

[-] OliveBrittle@piefed.ca 6 points 6 days ago

Does this require port forwarding or is that different usecase entirely?

[-] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 6 days ago

Port forwarding would be preferable, but it's not required. If you don't have an open port, you will only be able to connect to peers that do.

[-] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Torrenting requires at least one side (either seed or leech) to have an open port. If you don't have an open port, you'll be able to torrent but will only be able to leech from seeds that have their ports open. So it will potentially limit your torrenting speed and/or completion. For instance, what if there are 10 seeds, but none have open ports? You'll sit there being able to see 10 seeds, but your client won't ever actually connect to them. So you'll be stuck with a torrent that looks like it could finish but never will because you can't connect to the available seeds.

Of course, if you're only torrenting popular content with thousands of seeds, you'll probably be fine. The chances of some of them having an open port are pretty good. But for smaller torrents with only a few seeds, you may find yourself stalled even when seeds are available.

[-] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 1 points 5 days ago

This explains so much. Thank you.

[-] mursejoy@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 days ago

I thought soulseek was peer to peer, why would you not use a VPN for that?

this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026

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