I just want to torrent a little HQ music with metadata man.

I used to pay for streaming music but due to current affairs and financial instability… I wont pay for that shit anymore.

I was thinking doing the whole shenanigans with an old laptop, a fresh VPN account, scanning with clamav, moving everything to my cloud drive etc.

But is it even worth the extra steps if I won’t get in any trouble for raw dogging the torrents from my main workstation and my everyday VPN account?

I did some research and found many people recommend some level of opsec. Does it matter?

I’m not US based but I am close with many people that is, both professionally and personally.

  • Blizzard@lemmy.zipEnglish
    41·
    9 hours ago

    Downloading without sharing is illegal in some countries??? That’s ridiculous. If you visit a site that has an image, it gets downloaded to your disk in order for the browser to display it. Same for audio/video files if you play them on a website. People break law in the UK, France, Germany, US etc. for watching YouTube or visiting basically any website?

    • MurrayL@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      I’d think it’s obvious that downloading isn’t illegal in every case, otherwise you’d never be able to watch/listen to any media online.

      A differentiation is necessarily made between authorised and unauthorised downloads, such that buying and downloading an album on iTunes is legal while torrenting that same album is not.

      Music on YouTube is authorised via licensing. That’s why videos get routinely flagged for using copyrighted music without permission (and sometimes even with permission due to overzealous or malicious DMCA claims, but that’s a separate argument).

    • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
      2·
      9 hours ago

      That’s actually a legal gray area in Germany. It’s unclear whether the browser cache legally counts as downloading. In any case, it’s not enforced. It’s only torrenting/uploading that gets people into trouble.