The proper way to do this is to use a seedbox (basically a VPS w/ lots of storage, in a pirate-friendly jurisdiction, that comes preinstalled with all the tools you'd need). It's weird that top AI labs have been caught torrenting stuff, when the solution is obvious, and doesn't leave traces (i.e. no meta IP ranges would have been leaked)...

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mantra2 2 days ago | parent [-]

Familiar with Seedboxes but do you really get off worry free just because the hardware exists in a different country (probably on leaseweb)? Wouldn’t it matter where the company was based itself or is the biggest hope that you’ve become too much of a pain in the ass to deal with?

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NitpickLawyer 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

You have to think from the perspective of "who has enough data to correlate this with you". Obviously, three letter agencies will know. But that's not the point.

What happens usually is that a) copyright investigators (on behalf of copyright holder associations) or b) ISPs do basic analysis and "flag" IP addresses.

The copyright investigators usually look at torrenting pools, log all the IPs, and do some sort of query on those IPs (whois, reverse dns, etc). Then they pursue the biggest targets. "Hey, look, this IP that belongs to Meta has torrented 4234234TBs worth of our clients' data. Bad Meta". And the headlines pour.

Your local ISPs do basic inspection, and can see you're torrentig, but usually (unless they take extra steps) won't know what you're torrenting. But they can send a letter saying "hey, knock it off!".

If you're using a "proxy", either via VPN or VPS (seedbox) then your primary IP address never gets caught in these logs. So they won't be able to know who it was. Sure, they can go the legal route and subpoena the VPS providers, but that's where the "friendly jurisdiction" comes into play. Unless they get raided by said 3 letter agencies, they won't care much about an angry letter from a lawyer.

	▲	mantra2 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Still, I’d imagine the company would still have to comply to the laws where they’re based not where the location of the hardware is.

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immibis 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're talking about companies (seedboxes, not Leaseweb) whose entire business model is enabling piracy. If they got their customers in legal trouble for piracy, they'd quickly go out of business.

btw a representative of Leaseweb told me they don't do individual accounts any more - they're focusing on the European sovereign cloud transition.