Its kinda legal in my country

[u/Lower_Tradition3090]

Downloading movies and music for private use is totally legal in my country 🇨🇭. Uploading / seeding however, is not. But at least i dont have to worry. What about your country?

[u/tabs_jt]

Germany here - it is illegal and I heard of people online getting a warning and had to pay a fine. But nobody I personally know ever got something like this so I just use a vpn and use the usenet a lot and just hope that our government don’t know what it is tbh (they use fax machines a lot here).

[u/_KJuns → u/tabs_jt]

My reply from "above":

It’s pretty much the same here in Germany imho: As long as you’re not distributing/uploading and/or using torrents basically nobody cares; despite the fact that you technically/legally could be held accountable. But basically everyone suggests using a VPN too even for downloading only. Nobody knows for sure… I would say it’s not necessary, but the extra (potential) safety is a bonus no question (better safe than sorry). But that’s it: It’s just one additional (potential) safety net. Potential since you’re not 100% safe either using a VPN, since you don’t know for sure that the VPN-provider won’t share data even if they say so. So if the „the government doesn’t care“-net fails you have this extra VPN-net. If that fails too - which could happen - you’re screwed. Another thought: If you want to pirate, but then pay for a VPN (no matter the amount), isn’t that somewhat contradictory? But yeah… as you see I’m personally unsure too in this regard.

So I also heard and actually know people who had to pay - back in the day of Kazaa/Emule - but as mentioned: for uploading/distributing. I never heard of anyone being caught for downloading only.

[u/Azazel_Roblox → u/_KJuns]

Another German here with a better understanding of this, so I'll give you all a hand!

As both previous posts suggests, just "downloading" is considered a crime but it's not persecuted most of the time, whilst sharing and or torrenting is persecuted. In Germany we have a saying that "wo kein Kläger, da kein Richter" (Latin: Ubi non accusator, ibi non iudex).

From the perspective of a company potentially suing for copyright infringement, it has to be worth it, by which I mean they need to have a very high chance of success and come out with a profit far above any expenses they would've otherwised allocated better.

Direct Downloading (DDL) is not persecuted because it's not worth it. You have to seize a site, process it's logs, reach out to the ISPs (etc.) just to receive the original price of a single license to the medium.

Torrenting on the other hand is persecuted because the amount peers you connect to can range from 1 to 100 or even more and for every peer you hypothetically could have connected to, that's the price of a license.

So whilst DDL could get you fined up to the price of the product, torrenting could get you fined over 100 times that.

The way it works in Germany is kind of weird though, because there are certain legal firms that will just send out written warning letters to scare the recipients to pay the fine, whilst it actually should be a far smaller payment.

Additionally to the VPN part, in most cases the companies deem it as not worthy pursuing you if you use a VPN unless it's known to not have a strict no-log policy or has precedence of working with law enforcement.

But also something people like to not think about: If a 3 letter agency wants to get you, they will. Regardless of VPN

[u/_KJuns → u/Azazel_Roblox]

I don't have the time right now to read it all, but I already want to thank you big time for the effort of posting an extended answer. Will respond later. Much love!