Yes, lots of people. Most settle for a relatively small fine, a few thousand dollars. Torrent website hosts have been sued, and even arrested. The numbers sued or otherwise badly affected by consequences from file sharing is only a tiny percentage of the total users of torrent software.
Statutory damages. If you are sued in a civil lawsuit, you may have to pay $750-30,000 per illegal download. If you violated the law “willfully,” then you may have to pay up to $150,000 per download.
There is a 1/14058 chance of being sued for the average pirate each year. To put this in perspective, it is slightly more likely for you to die in a car accident. Maybe you download more than average though, and your personal chances are higher.
The simple answer is yes, you can get caught torrenting even when using a VPN; however, it's very unlikely since VPNs hide IP addresses and web traffic. One way you can get caught though is if the VPN you are using doesn't have a kill switch.
If you're torrenting illegally, your ISP will send you a warning letter and probably start throttling your connection speeds.
Your ISP will only know that you are torrenting when someone who has monitored your IP address engaged in torrenting and proceeds to tip the ISP off. That said, ISPs can usually guess when you are torrenting by analyzing the amount of bandwidth you are consuming.
A civil lawsuit could hold you responsible for thousands of dollars in damages. Criminal charges may leave you with a felony record, accompanied by up to five years of jail time and fines up to $250,000.
NEW YORK, Feb 7 (Reuters) - A British man was sentenced on Monday to a 22-month prison term after admitting involvement in a global piracy ring that caused major losses for movie and TV production studios by distributing unreleased content online.
Maximum penalties for felony copyright infringement generally are: Commercial advantage or private financial gain: five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Once a user is identified, the ISP will send a warning. There is a 3-tier system of warnings with two warnings per tier. After 6 warnings the user is blocked.
Your IP address is a target
When you download or upload a file through BitTorrent, your IP address is exposed to everyone else downloading the same file. Hackers and copyright trolls often lurk in torrent swarms to find IP addresses they can target.
Cases of software piracy, or noncompliance with software licenses, can be reported on the Internet at http://www.siia.net/piracy/report.asp or by calling the IP Protection Hotline: (800) 388-7478.
The potential penalties for breaching the law include fines of up to $117,000 for individuals and a possible term of imprisonment for up to five years.
A person must not perform an act of piracy. Penalty: Imprisonment for life. (1) A person must not voluntarily participate in the operation of a pirate-controlled ship or aircraft knowing that it is such a ship or aircraft. Penalty: Imprisonment for 15 years.
If you're caught with any illegally downloaded files or software that can be used to download files, like Kazaa, Bearshare, Limewire or Morpheus, there are serious penalties; you could face a fine of up to $60,500 or spend up to five years in prison!
If the content is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, then the copyright holder can sue for Federal court for copyright infringement. Federal law sets the following penalties for copyright infringement: The actual dollar amount of damages caused and profits earned from the infringement.
In 1998 the mandatory death penalty was abolished, and the sentence is now up to life imprisonment.
The Piracy Act of 1698 made it possible for Admirals to conduct trials at sea or anywhere else without having to bring the accused to England. It would lead to the execution of 600 pirates, estimated to be around 10% of those active in the Caribbean at that time.
Key Takeaways: How Legal Is Torrenting? Torrenting itself is not illegal, but it is illegal to download copyrighted material that you don't own the rights to. Uploading files of digital content that's copyrighted through the process of seeding is always illegal.
Downloading copyrighted material whether for personal use and/or distribution (seeding) is illegal, as is merely streaming copyrighted material and you can be prosecuted for it. The likelyhood of you getting caught though is still slim. Even if they knew you were doing it, you'd get a warning from your ISP.
Assuming you shared files for all five years of the RIAA's legal hunt, among an (eventual) crowd of 45.6 million, that's a one in 1,629 chance of getting caught during that time period.
IP address leaks: everything you need to know
In theory, when you connect to a VPN, your true IP address should be completely hidden from website owners and other people torrenting the same files as you. However, it is still possible for your real IP address to leak out and become visible.
While most ISPs don't care if you use a VPN, the answer is simply that it depends on your geographical location. In most of the world, where VPN use is legal, we can trust that ISPs generally don't care. Whether you connect to a VPN server or that of a popular website probably means very little to them.
Why Should I Hide My IP Address when Torrenting? As previously mentioned, whenever you download/upload a torrent file, your IP address is added to a torrent swarm. That basically means that anybody who is sharing the same file can see your IP address. Your ISP and copyright trolls can track your download activity.
The short answer is yes, torrenting is legal in Australia. However, there are some important caveats to keep in mind. Firstly, while downloading copyrighted material for personal use is not illegal, distributing that material is. So if you're caught sharing files you've torrented, you could be liable for infringement.