To be that bothered about hiding the IP from the ISP though, he must be wanting to download more than just a legal file. Even porns legal (well, most of it), and the ISP probably wouldn't bat an eyelid with it.
ISPs do not throttle select torrents from being downloaded, they throttle ALL torrents being downloaded, even if it is a legit legal torrent download. Hiding your IP really won't do much, but encrypting your traffic would allow you to get past the throttle, as they would not be able to determine if the traffic was indeed a torrent.
Hiding your IP (aka using a proxy service) will however disguise the origin and destination of the your internet traffic.
For those type of anonymous browsing use SOCKS 5 proxy servers, most applications have a setting where you can input information for a proxy server.
I use Limewire to download the odd track or vid.
But I never got this paranoid about it cause the tracks i'm downloading are MP3 quality and no good to re-distribute anyways. Even if I wanted too. The Vids? Well they're not illegal full stop.
I have read this thread again and again and I just don't understand why I would need to go through so much trouble to hide my identity unless I was downloading something that was blatantly illegal.
I'm perplexed
Let me try to explain
ISPs are under pressure from different organizations to try to stop the illegal downloading of copyright material. ISPs see torrents as a main avenue of downloading these files illegally, and because of this they try to throttle (or slow down) the speeds of these connections. They determine if a transmission is a torrent transmission by looking for signatures in the traffic such as which protocol is being used, what ports and so on. They however, do not analyze the actual content of the transmission, to determine if what is being downloaded is music, a movie, or a legit download. They simply apply these standards to ALL torrent transmissions, thus if you are downloading a legit file, and your ISP practices torrent throttling, your connection will be effected. In order to get around this, you encrypt your traffic and/or take other means such as proxy servers and using dynamic ports to try to hide it that you are infact using a torrent to download files.
There is a large debate in the ethical information technology field regarding throttling, as to if the ISPs have the right to do these types of things. Personally I am against what they are doing, as it is not an effective countermeasure. However, if they had technology that could determine if the transmission consisted of illegal downloads, then I would be for it. However, doing this would require eavesdropping in on a connections content, which I believe is against the constitution, so I am actually against it
.