Great. Another piracy notification from my upstream ISP. This time for downloading a backup of a movie I already owned. Zoom-able scans below, with all the important bits redacted for privacy. This is the second notice, and the wording is getting more and more threatening. Seems like I'll need to hide my illicit internet activities.

Hiding Your Internet Activites

I'm checking out Your-Freedom.net's IP hiding service. I need to upgrade the Java on my system to the latest version (1.6 at the time of this writing) so the proxy app can run on my machine. I'll post again later as this project advances. This is a paid service that runs it's own Java Router locally on your machine, and feeds all your bandwidth through an IP somewhere else in the world, virtually hiding your IP. As I tend to download a lot of stuff (something along the lines of 40-60 GB per month), this paid service seems only fair.

A Recent Option (update Jan 20, 2010!)

My favorite torrent site has just announced a partner project, IPredator. For a mere 5 euros a month, you get a anonymous IP via a private VPN running over the PPTP network. I just signed up for a three month trial (only $20 converted), and have them already working on my main downloading machine! Simple install, a barren website that tosses any and all data, never storing anything (me likey!), and a decent service with OK bandwidth! I'll report again as this goes along. I might need to sign up for a year next time around!

How about Free?

You can use TOR (The Onion Router) which is exactly what I need, but not recommended for BitTorrent traffic, as it's generally a lot of bandwidth to hide an IP. There are proxy apps for most major OS's and it's best for those trying to keep their anonymity when speaking out again governments or corporations.

My other option is in using another new technology implementation: I2P. According to the Wikipedia, I2P used to be short for the Invisible Internet Project, but is now simply an open-source version with more encryption in between partner points. As a new technology, they have yet to be fully vetted, and full security is still unknown.

Covering Your Tracks

I imagine even a tiny effort to hide your IP is enough to stop most 'turncoat seeders' whose only mission is collect 'pirate IPs' to send off to their legal department. Of course, if you avoid large swarms of downloaders on popular and new (and obviously copyrighted) releases, you can avoid getting these same notifications from your ISP!