Details of the Lawsuit Against TorGuard
TorGuard is a VPN service provider with a no-logs policy. The company claims that it does not collect any log data, including traffic, connection, and IP logs. However, it is this policy that landed TorGuard in hot water last year, when over two dozen movie studios filed a lawsuit against TorGuard for promoting piracy and copyright infringement. The studios also flagged TorGuard’s marketing and claimed the company profited off its customers’ piracy. The same group filed a similar suit against LiquidVPN earlier that year and sought damages of up to $10 million. As part of the settlement, TorGuard has agreed to use “commercially reasonable efforts to block BitTorrent traffic on its servers in the United States using firewall technology.”
TorGuard Could have Stopped Piracy on SOCKS5 Proxy Servers
Most no-log VPN providers claim safe harbor protections. This means that they cannot be prosecuted for the wrongdoings of their users, as they do not have access to their customers’ data. While TorGuard also claims to not have access to its user traffic, the lawsuit reveals this is not necessarily true. From 2012 to 2021, the company leased servers and IP addresses from a hosting provider called QuadraNet. TorGuard offered its customers SOCKS5 proxy services through some of these servers. A SOCKS5 proxy is similar to a VPN, in that it hides a user’s IP address and allows them to use the internet with a proxy address. However, unlike a VPN, traffic routed through such a server is not encrypted. This means that a hosting provider can view the network traffic. If you’d like to know more, we’ve created a guide explaining the differences between proxies and VPNs.
Film Studios Sent Approximately 100,000 Infringement Notices
In the lawsuit, the film studios claimed that TorGuard and QuadraNet could have addressed instances of piracy on SOCKS5 servers. The plaintiffs sent approximately 100,000 copyright infringement notices to QuadraNet. In these notices, they shared confirmed instances of piracy at SOCKS5 IP addresses that were assigned to TorGuard. However, QuadraNet did not respond or forward these complaints to TorGuard in a timely manner. “TorGuard values intellectual property rights of others, as stated in TorGuard’s publicly posted policies. Had QuadraNet sent these notices to our DMCA agent, TorGuard’s ordinary business practices would have been to immediately take steps to stop further piracy,” the company stated. Furthermore, QuadraNet did not null route any of the IP addresses which received multiple infringement notices. As a consequence, TorGuard terminated its working relationship with QuadraNet.
