Man even in the 90's nobody was scared of having their IP address known because there's not a helluva lot you can do with one anyway, and the average regular person is using a dynamic one that resolves to a local CO and not usually their actual home address.
It was quite normal to scare the normies by having a forum signature that displayed the IP address of the machine loading the page because something that basic was enough to make them think you were a hacking wizard.
Those who were especially paranoid, used proxies (maybe VPNs but I never even heard that term until NordVPN started advertising all over the place).
surely it costs more to fight this dogshit legal battle, both in money and PR, than to simply let enthusiasts watch your films. they're already handsomely profiting, why do these fucking pigheaded hogs think it is their right, it is their duty to wring out every cent they can? fuck off.
IANAL but withholding evidence from a court order can hold you in contempt of court. I remember hearing a story of a person who was accused of having CSAM on an encrypted hard drive, and refused to decrypt it, and is in jail until he decrypts it. Just because you're a person doesn't mean you can ignore a warrant.
information itself is a liability. best to have a policy of 'we keep no IPs in logs, so are happy to hand over whatever'.. dump data the moment you dont require it
yeah, this sounds like a much more sustainable solution. Do it the way signal does it. Collect as little as necessary, and delete it as soon as you dont need it.
I looked into that guy somewhat recently, he was in jail for something like five years then eventually released. Kind of a sickening situation all around.
With the federation does that also mean that the ip records are replicated? Because that would be a lot of parties that can be threatened, with only one required to give in...
edit:
just wanted to share a great observation that was made by UlrikHD in our admin channel:
"So if a company wanted to demand the ip of every member on a piracy community, they would have to contact every instance federated with that community then
good to know"
As long you don't do the "known illegal" stuff you don't need a VPN.
However if you upload copyrighted material a vpn is one of very many steps to ensure that the police won't get you. A VPN alone does not provide any security. It delays at best the police