this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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As far as I know you don't need a VPN to use Soulseek, but it's obviously always recommended to use one over not using one.
Why? Why does it matter whether your traffic is visible to your ISP or a VPN company?
Because you are doing something illegal. Your ISP might not care, but if someone complains, they HAVE to start the process. You're not only protecting yourself, but your ISP from the music industry's wrath.
It's more about being visible to other users. If other users have your IP address, they can go to your ISP and complain about your IP address sharing copyrighted material. In certain jurisdictions they have to give out your info so that legal action can be taken against you.
If you use a VPN, they only know that somebody using this VPN is sharing copyrighted material. Since VPNs usually do not log who sends what, they can't be made to give out users data, so you're safe.
Other users do not have your IP address. It is not like torrenting.
Wait then why does nicotine+ have a button when I right click on a peer, "users>Show IP Address," which returns "IP address of user [REDACTED] is [REDACTED], port 40447 (CA/Canada)" (In case you're wondering, I'm the one that redacted it. I'm looking at my most recent peer's info).
Thanks. It isn't an option in the official SoulSeek client so I never knew.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Soulseek/comments/dmofyp/finding_an_ip_for_iligal_use_or_shared_content/
Oh yeah nic+ is way better. I didn't know the official didn't let you.
Yeah idk why you spread misinformation like that. File up/downloads are done via a p2p connection (see a reverse-engineered documentation of the p2p connection process) and thus the IP addresses are obviously known. Maybe not directly visible in the SoulseekQt client itself, but definitely through third party network connection monitors like Wireshark. It's pretty trivial for anyone using Soulseek to get IPs of the people they download from.
You do know why. I said.