VPN to a nice safe country like Switzerland.
Look into selfhosting the Servarr stack along side QBitTorrent, pick a media player such as Plex or Jellyfin. Easy free streaming.
this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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You will want to find a proper torrent site, this is not going to be easy considering you’re new to this. Using public sites you get a world of other problems such as malware.
Getting a seed box is an option, then you can install a media server like Jellyfin. But a lot of reputable seed boxes don’t allow public trackers.
There are two schools of thought, and one of them is insanely wrong.
The current preferred method (by youngins) for pirating is by using a VPN provider to "hide" your torrent traffic, which is generally valid, but it's not a silver bullet and it's a wrong way to think.
The other is to use a seedbox, which is a remote server hosted in a country that doesn't recognize piracy as a crime to begin with...
The choice is clear. Especially when you consider to get a good private VPN you'll have to pay $5-10/mo. You may as well pay $5-10/mo to commit a crime where no one thinks its a crime, then you never have to worry about it. Using a VPN you can still get caught, it's just exceptionally rare because conditions have to line up perfectly. But what if your VPN is down, and you accidentally begin a download? You willing to get a $100,000 fine for that?
Just use a damn seedbox.
Question out of curiosity, do you then keep stuff on the seedbox only or do you download to your local hard drive in your country? Because that download would still be illegal or wouldn't it? Just if we are talking about legality of things, everything else set aside.
Simple: https://fmhy.pages.dev/videopiracyguide#streaming-sites
More complex: Mullvad VPN, QBitTorrent, 1337x.to
If you're using windows, make sure you set it to show file extensions. Watch out for files with a double extension such as "mkv.exe". That's guaranteed to be malware. Don't open any link, bat or com files either.
Use a VPN. Here's a free one: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
Go to a torrent site, such as https://1337x.to/
Search the movie you want, find a torrent that suits you.
Download and watch.
Here's a free streaming site: https://hydrahd.sh/
Personally, i would never get a free one. But mullvad have gained my trust. Especially as they have been raided, proved that what the LE wanted did not exist, and therefore by law they had to turn around and leave ^^
I'd agree, but RiseUp is one of few good things online that's free and not sucking your data off the bone. They're a group of anarchists who provide free online services (mainly email, newsletters, a vpn) for free for activists.
And the FBI has raided them once and found nothing.
Never use a Free VPN, unless it's a reputable limited free VPN like Windscribe
I would normally agree but I have used riseup when money was tight and they still seem fine.
Yeah RiseUp is the only free one I actively trust.
VPN (always) and QBittorent. After starting your VPN, go into the Preferences > advanced settings> Optional IP to bind to > pull down the menu and find your current VPN's IP address and select it. Protected, even if your VPN goes down. You can add torrent search engines to QBittorent under the Search feature.
I do similar except I limit qBittorrent to only use the vpn interface so has a built-in kill switch
Nice try, cop.
Start by checking the Megathread and other resources in the sidebar.
These resources are really all you need, but they're all individually quite focused so for a new person it can be hard to see the forest.
An overview:
For movies, streaming sites are fine.
To start torrenting safely:
- get a paid vpn (i use mullvad)
- download qbittorrent or the like
- find a public tracker from the megathead, general ones are easy/convenient for starting imo
- virus scan/use common sense/be careful
I thought Mullvad didn’t port forward any more so torrents didn’t work with it?
It works for me... I think it's something like it goes faster with port forwarding but to be honest I don't know the details.
I'm checking out the free version of Proton VPN now after paying for PIN for a while. Haven't used it to torrent or anything yet. Just trying to run most the time now for increased security in this new era. Are unpaid versions less secure? I'm not so much worried about the price. Just checking out something different.
The free version of proton VPN does not allow torrenting
Technically you can torrent with it, but the free tier does not include port forwarding, so you will not be able to seed very effectively.
Edit: disregard, I was remembering incorrectly.
i thought it doesn't allow peer to peer connections?
I just searched it a bit, and I think you're right. I was thinking the paid tier only let you use port forwarding and access their servers optimized for P2P traffic, but it sounds like they actually block P2P traffic on the free tier.
My bad!
haha, I guess I don't have wonder about crossing that bridge. Thanks.
As a general rule, if you're getting a service for free, you're the product.
I don't know much about the downsides of free in the context of VPNs, as I didn't really get in to the technical ins and outs. But when we're talking security and privacy I think the cost of supporting something good and sustainable is well worth it.
I've heard port forwarding is helpful for speed, and that might be a paid only thing, but to be honest I'm consistently surprised by how fast things go for me just using mullvad.
Another thing you may wish to consider: the Proton CEO has praised Trump which is a huge red flag to me in the privacy space.
All good points. Thank you.
At least Proton isn't a scammy company compared to most other free VPNs. And they still allow port forwarding on paid plans, so they are quite a good choice for torrenting. I think Proton and Mullvad are probably the most recommended options around here.
Yes. I hadn't looked at any of this stuff in a long time. Mullvad is something I'm definitely going to check out as I'm seeing it recommended in a lot of comments. Thank you.
VPN, virtual machine and a good site to find torrents with seeds
Unless you're Canadian, then you can just raw dawg pirate whatever with no repercussion. IP cannot be associated to an identity here. At worst you get cease and desists notices emailed to you by your ISP but you can ignore them, ISPs are obligated to forward these. Especially notices from companies outside of Canada.
It all depends on where you live, in Poland they don't care unless you're pirating polish productions. Then the fist of God crushes you. Allegedly
What do you have in terms of hardware?
What’s your experience?
I am happy to guide you through the steps needed.
get a decent VPN
Step 1: download the free ProtonVPN app; https://protonvpn.com/download
Step 2: download the free qbittorrent app; https://www.qbittorrent.org/
Step 3: download vlc media player; https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Step 4: install and connect ProtonVPN to a free server.
Step 5: Pick a public torrent website from the wiki and look for a movie you want to watch.
Step 6: copy the magnet link the website lists and add it to bittorrent. Wait for it to connect and download.
Step 7: enable showing extensions if you use windows; https://www.howtogeek.com/205086/beginner-how-to-make-windows-show-file-extensions/
Step 8: make sure that all your downloaded files only ever play in vlc, and that they arent .exe files.
Step 9: leave qbittorrent running (and seeding!) On your computer after your movies are downloaded.
Proton VPN doesn’t allow P2P file downloading (torrents) on its free version.
Yes, but it still works. So long as you don't overdo it, like someone who isn't new to this, it'll work just fine for a start.
I don't know how it work for you but not me. Are you sure you lock qbitorrent to the VPN only? Otherwise qbitorrent may just use you normal internet.
I would recommend Mullvad over Proton. Proton's CEO is problematic and a bit of a wild card. They also have proven that they care more about money than privacy. They want to be a Google ecosystem and constantly push more product on you. Someone else mentioned this and it's a good thing to live by: if a company's service is free, you are the product. When it comes to being an application that has full control and insight into your network traffic, no thanks.
Mullvad is disgustingly cheap, costing only $5/month. I've been using Mullvad for 15 years now, and it's always been $5/month. You get DAITA plus a whole host of other necessary sailing accoutrements. They have one of the best track records in terms of not shoving marketing bullshit down your throat and being true to what their website and documentation says. The only limitation in terms of network usage is that you can only have 5 devices tied to a single account. It's mega easy to remove a device to free up a slot, though.
For newbies qbitrorrent's search is more than adequate enough to replace steps 5-7. But this is a great guide!
Yes, the search is great for starting out! But i think you need to add the python-search plugins first, right? Not that its hard to do but it is something that needs to be done first
VPN, torrenting software, go online and only download from legal parties and don’t pirate ever.
On windows, I used Mullvad VPN and Qbittorrent. The settings suggested by Rodneyck are also what I used for qbittorrent.
And a tip: if you notice qbittorrent is not downloading your torrents but has lots of seeders and your VPN is connected... try restarting qbittorrent (right click the tray icon and quit) and it should start downloading.