Thread about Real legal consecuences for pirating media, specially in the USA

TL:DR, show me any compilation of Non propagandistic, real antecedents/info that prove people don't go to jail for downloading pirated material, if anything, it's for its distribution.

I need, for a current discussion I got into, and for future reference, information regarding whether or not someone has ever been arrested, and actually sentenced for the mere act of downloading some movies without paying for them, as far as I know, distributing is what can get you in trouble.
So far I think that's how it is for videogames, and companies like Nintendo have tried and failed on punishing people for downloading stuff others have pirated.
Is using a VPN and Tor Browser inside a virtual machine in a PC you only use to pirate really necessary or there's nothing to fear if you pirate things in the USA?
I read somewhere that people who are getting investigated for different crimes might get piracy added to the list if it's discovered they have non licensed software, is this real? Is it one of few (if not the only) case where having just downloading without distributing might get punished?

(If you are gonna discuss the case of Torrents please let it be as a separte kind of case [to, for example, getting the stuff from someone else's cloud storage], both seeding, and not.)

Attached: FBI anti-piracy.png (300x276, 120.76K)

they only care if theres money involved like youre pirating stuff and selling it

>TL:DR, show me any compilation of Non propagandistic, real antecedents/info that prove people don't go to jail for downloading pirated material, if anything, it's for its distribution.
i torrented a game by accident without a VPN and left it seeding for a week. i got angry email threatening to shut down my internet from my internet provider. thats all the consequences I received. if you are actually worried about being sued you can get insurance so you get a lawyer.

just set the torrent upload speed to 0, that should do it from legal standpoint

>consequences of pirating in the US
living in the US and being a muttoid quasi-nigger golem
>tfw you till prefer it over socialist hellscape e*rope

>living in a country where you can be imprisoned for pirating

they only can care if you're profiting or distributing because otherwise there is always the argument that the copyright holder isn't doing their best to stop their content from being freely available. After all if I can just go on bing and find thepiratebay, whos to say the copyright holders simply aren't just giving stuff away themselves? How is it they can go after someone downloading content but not the people sharing it? Logically/legally, they cant.

That's the question, IF you can get jail time for Downloading, and, if it's something that has anyone being arrested for in the past.

But I need evidence, or paranoid people won't believe me and think they might get someone knocking at their door.

>Is using a VPN and Tor Browser inside a virtual machine in a PC
You just need a VPN, you don't need tor or a VM for pirating. The worst thing that'll happen is you get a letter from your ISP, who will eventually turn off your service if you get too many DMCA notices.

If you pirate in the USA what will happen is your ISP will first give you (or your mother if you're a NEET) a warning. Then a second warning. Then they will close your account and you'll have to find internet elsewhere.

Some ISPs have more strikes than three, but that's basically the approach. Copyright holder bitches to the ISP, ISP doesn't want none of it so tells the user to stop. If the user doesn't stop (or do it more smartly), they cut off their relationship to avoid getting dragged into a lawsuit. No one goes to jail, but now you have no internet.

But doesn't this only happen when you Seed a Torrent, can they tell if you just leach it?
What about a download from MEGA, Google Drive or Media Fire?

They can still see that you downloaded it.
DDL sites don't report who downloaded the content when they get a DMCA request.

Generally, yes, they only go after people they show your IP is contributing to the distribution and if you're downloading it from a direct source you're fine. But beware of the "only leaching" thing, because if your IP shows up in the seeder list, even if you are contributing 0 bits per second, then they'll probably still go after you.

Im from Israel and piracy laws here are not actually enforced. I used a VPN for my first ever torrent, a 31GB zip of gay porn, haven't used one since. Still no consequences.

Who will go after you?

Kek
First, that wasn't very relevant to the discussion.
Then, it was a lot of information.

I've gotten several dozen warnings from comcast and they never do shit.

generally your ISP gives you multiple warnings until they either throttle or cut off your service. if they are the only ISP in the area then you're screwed.
feds don't give a shit unless you're running a major piracy operation or distributing, like that retarded youtuber awhile back who got raided by the fbi for making an illegal iptv server.

wtf! i love Israel now!

There's a company that does this. The copyright holders are contracted with this company who trawls the seed lists and other p2p info for instances of copyrighted content for their clients. They will collect the IPs of anyone distributing that content and will trace the IP to the ISP. They will alert the ISP of your violation then the ISP will alert you.

There's not really a "what if he/she doesn't do X or what if you can prove that this isn't actually copyrighted by the company" because the ISPs don't want to get sued and don't want to put any effort into it. This is all automated and pretty much set in stone as "the process" by now.

I got angry copyright letters from my ISP spectrum for pirating the gochiusa movie(s) and/or the konosuba movie.
I torrent exclusively via GitHub actions now.

It varies ISP to ISP how seriously they take it. I'd google your ISP. Some of the big ones will straight cut you off at 3. Others are only putting in lip service.