You don’t need a VPN with Torrentio + Real Debrid. You are not torrenting - they already torrented it for you, and you are streaming the cached file directly from the RD servers. I think the only “catch” is that it’s not free (obviously) so I don’t think you can call it “free lunch” lol. Torrentio addon specifically scrapes the debrid service - now, if you were to install, say, TPB addon for Stremio, it would be torrenting, so you don’t want to do that without a VPN.

myanonamouse has sheet music

My VPN comes out to about $2/month (got a promotional offer). What other service, exactly, can I buy for 2 dollars?

Maybe on some trackers you have to resort to these cheats, I don’t know. On many private trackers, you get bonus points just for seeding a torrent - doesn’t matter if anyone downloads from you, the points just accumulate hourly. Then you exchange the points for upload, which counts toward your ratio just like it would if you had physically uploaded that amount.