Law enforcement vs VPN providers?
Hello,
reading about the topic I personally wondered about how people can use VPNs like ProtonVPN for torrenting which isn't legal in some countries, without ProtonVPN and other providers getting in trouble.
Of course they don't log and don't have data about which user is accessing what so they can't hand out data. But why don't law enforcements force them to block specific traffic and thus hindering people from using it for pricacy?
Mullvad was actually "raided" by the Swedish police. They left with fuck all. It was great publicity for Mullvad.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
They left with fuck all.
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Torrenting stuff that is public domain or intended by its creators to be shared via BitTorrent isn't illegal. You won't get busted for sharing a Linux ISO or a copy of Moby Dick.
You would get in trouble for media made in or after 1929 (currently). A VPN would help to protect you from being caught for this, but you would most likely never get arrested for downloading, only being a major player in a scene.
And why cops don't stop them? They do. There's laws on books that prohibit them, but in (a lot) of countries, they either don't have a law that stops VPNs, only piracy sites, or simply don't have the time to care about media piracy when there's bigger fish to fry.
law enforcement is exactly that.. enforcement.
If there are no laws in place to force providers to do that, it cant be done via these means.
And if you cannot enforce because the provider is outside the jurisdiction, then you cant either.
And if you start forcing blocks, the users will adapt by either changing provider or simply evading the block.
police arrest people who didn't break the law all the time, and they can steal money without even thinking you broke the law
In most jurisdictions, with a lot of hand waving, it comes down to would a reasonable and prudent person see a non-criminal use of this service?
So for VPN providers with no logging, would a reasonable and prudent person see a utility in that service? Yes. If you have a health matter. If you're a whistleblower. If you're sensitive about people knowing what porn you like. If you want to look up medical information without getting an associated with your identity. There's a lot of non-criminal uses of the VPN
The question wasn't why VPNs are allowed but why VPNs don't just have to block all torrent traffic by law. Your answer still applies tho: torrents aren't used exclusively for piracy. They're a good way for people to share files who don't have the resources to pay for a server, especially since torrents scale automatically
I'm not very well educated in this topic, so I hope someone can correct me if I'm wrong here.
Torrenting as a whole, is not illegal. Look at Linux distributions for example, they offer direct downloads and torrents. What is illegal is distributing copyrighted files.
And torrents start seeding automatically so it's only legal as long as you torrent files that aren't copyrighted, right?
Not necessarily, that should be configurable from within the torrent client.
Even if you didn't seed, if it's copyrighted content, many places make it illegal to download it as well