this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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A lot of my files were shitty 480p versions of movies from the Napster days. Now they're all 1080p, with a few 720p exceptions (mainly tv series episodes). All in all 500 something files in total. Now just watching uTorrent slowly download them all. Hopefully my VPN keeps the eyes off of me...

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[–] solitude@lemmy.one 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, Mullvad stopped offering Port Forwarding as well, along with iVPN (I think) and some others. I believe AirVPN is the recommended VPN which still has PF (I may have iVPN and Air mixed up). I understand one of the reasons why they stopped supporting PF (it allowed sick f*cks to share illegal child content with others), but it also pretty much destroyed my ability to find and complete a download of old/er files that I normally didn't have a problem with, and, like you mentioned, I could no longer seed back. It's the sole reason why I started using usenet. I could have tried one of the other VPNs I mentioned (Proton & Air, which I believe both have PF) but I chose to stick with Mullvad and add usenet instead, which I've really liked.

[–] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Yes I was actually sad to leave Mullvad, and the developer was pretty cool about giving refunds, so I'd definitely go back if things changed in the future.

AirVPN does have port forwarding and is what I wound up switching to. So far, everything is working fine and there are a decent number of servers available.

[–] solitude@lemmy.one 3 points 11 months ago

Glad that worked out with AirVPN, they're the main alternative to Mullvad that I was considering back then. I may still try them in the future. Yeah, I was shocked that Mullvad was so cool about handing out refunds. I've read about many other VPNs that wouldn't consider that. I guess with Mullvad being the official rebranded Mozilla VPN they can afford to let some people go and still have a smile about it.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Is this new in the past few months? I was using mulvad with qbitorrent a few months ago and it was uploading.

[–] rambos@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

You can download and upload with no port forwarding. For some torrents you might not find peers, but whats even worse you will seed less

[–] solitude@lemmy.one 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I can't recall when it actually stopped working (maybe around 3 months ago?), but here is the announcement: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports

Fairly soon after they removed PF, I searched for a show that was less than a year from release, rated over 80% on TMDB & over 8.0 on IMDB, and pretty popular. I couldn't complete a full season of it on any one format (720p, 1080p, x264, x265). Probably around 10 incomplete versions in qBit. Never ran into something that bad before, on a somewhat recent show. Started using usenet and had my files within an hour or so, in the format I wanted. I understand and support their decision, but it was a very good feature to have. If your looking for new material, PF won't affect you. I've read people suggest Tailscale as a way to supplement Mullvad (if you're running a server and want to remotely access it), but I know little about it.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

That was lucky timing for me! I was updating all my media around June.