I’m a bit surprised to see so many torrent posts. Are most people still using Torrents? Are most piracy users aware of programs like sonarr or radarr?
You’re surprised that most people use the free option that requires less hassle to get going?
Torrents… Fast, free, and easy
my man
What is fast for you? On usenet it maxes out my internet speeds. Can’t get any faster than that. And I pay like 5 bucks a month for usenet. Fully automated, max speeds. It’s worth it.
I just paid $70 for a 3-year PIA subscription to mask my torrent usage from my ISP. So, an average of a little over $2 per month. Well-seeded movies only take about 10 minutes to download, more obscure stuff admittedly takes longer. Also, torrent streaming exists, so you can start watching even faster if that’s your thing.
Admittedly, I’m not familiar with Usenet or how it works. I’m just saying that torrents are cheap, fast, and easy. Do you have a crash course on how to use Usenet? I’m curious.
You can find tutorials out there but the jist is.
- Subscribe to a suenet provider. I use Tweaknews, but there are some that can get as cheap as $3 per month. Especially around black friday, the plans go on sale.
- Get a downloader such as sabnzbd or nzbget and configure the provider in it.
- Get an indexer. Much like torrents, you need an indexer to grab release from. I use Nzbplanet, but there are lots of others like Nzbgeek.
- Then its a lot like torrents. You download the nzb file off the indezer and import it into your downloader. and it will max out your speeds. For example, all my content averages a download speed of 57MB/s (that is mega-bytes not mega-bits). And I have it throttled. It will max you out.
Once you get that far, then you can move on to the best part, How easy it is to plug in sonarr and radarr. then everything just auto-downloads for you and you dont have to do anything.
To me, if you are using a VPN to torrent, great, I have one too for obscure stuff. But most people are far better off using Usenet. It is way safer and faster, and is easier to automate.
So who’s hosting all of this movies? Who are you actually downloading from?
- 57 MB/s isn’t especially fast. I have plenty of torrents “max” my connection, you can easily download a popular torrent at gigabit speeds because they’re often well seeded. But the speed really isn’t that important to me. The difference between a 5 minute download and a 10 minute download is insignificant.
- Torrent downloads can be automated. If you have a favorite uploader you can easily subscribe to their releases.
- I don’t see how Usenet is inherently more secure than torrenting with a VPN…You’re just downloading files from somebody else’s server, it could easily get taken over and become a honeypot, or the owner could serve you malicious files. Both torrents and usenet are potentially vulnerable to that sort of thing.
- Torrents have the advantage (and disadvantage) of being decentralized. As long as a torrent has seeders it’s nearly impossible to take down. You’d have to individually attack each seeder, and there might be thousands.
My point was every single thing i download maxes out, the 57MB wasnt the point. Not every torrent will max out. Only the well seeded torrents, and on public trackers it will not max out. I’ve tried. Private torrents sure, but unless you have a seedbox, you’re ratios are going to be all out of whack. I do both Usenet and torrents, I’m well aware of all the advantages of torrents, and im well aware it can be automated. Usenet is just easier. No symlinking to maintain ratios.
And of course its more secure. 1st off, no VPN disconnects. Second off, point me to one single case where someone has been prosecuted for downloading off Usenet. Most of us here are probably from r/piracy, and see every day the dozens of “I got the letter” posts from torrenting. I’ve never seen a single letter from usenet.
Torrents are really great for obscure stuff that is really hard to get though. That’s pretty much all I use it for.
I’m a member of one private tracker; it’s private enough that I don’t need a VPN while downloading/seeding and I have had no issue maintaining ratios.
For public trackers, no ratios required. For VPN disconnects, you just need a torrent client that properly isolates to a single network connection, which effectively operates as a kill switch. There are also VPN clients with kill switches, but I tend to not use those because doing it in the torrent client is easier and more reliable.
Re: prosecution, I’m pretty sure nobody has been prosecuted for simple downloading in a decade. The feds only go after major torrent tracker owners, the ones doing the distributing. The dreaded letters are just that: letters. They’re a scare tactic from your ISP, they don’t actually prosecute or even kick you off your plan; they just make you watch a little video on how piracy bad.
Again, Usenet is only “secure” if you can fully trust the owner of the server you’re connecting to. It would be trivial for a government agency to set up a honeypot or take over an existing server and turn it into one. The reason they don’t seem to care is probably because fewer people are on Usenet; they’re going for the bigger fish.
Sure, most of this is true, but only for some people. The letters still come, and people absolutely do pay damages for torrenting, especially in Germany. Meanwhile none of this is true for Usenet, there simply is no misconfiguration you can make that will result in a letter. Sure it could but at this point it’s never happened. With torrenting it can and does happen all the time. No letters, no scare tactics, no ratios to maintain (I get that you dont have to but most struggle). No secret club you have to get into. No variable speeds.
I totally agree that torrenting is awesome and it used to be the way i did everything as well. But after getting on usenet I was completely shocked and I’m never going back.
And the reason they don’t care is because it’s so much harder to get people on it. Hence, it’s safer.
Torrents can also max out your speed if there are enough seeds, unless you live in a country where your ISPs are allowed to throttle specific types of traffic or something. Or I suppose if you have 10 gbit downlink then you prolly won’t max it off a torrent.
Idk what you mean by fully automated. If you mean sonarr, radarr and the like, they work for torrents too.
I might very well try usenet when I get fiber in my current location (haven’t had it in over a year, it sucks, don’t recommend) and a server for the arr suite, but in general I like my piracy being free lol
All I know is I don’t ever have to care about well seeded torrents, or maintaining ratios on private trackers, or getting letters from VPN disconnects. The 5 bucks a month is worth it just for that.
With a proper setup, which is not hard to do, you shouldn’t be getting any IP leaks or copyright letters. Just be sure your VPN has it’s firewall up and clients are set to only use the network adapter.
And yet, people still do. I don’t, I use a docker container for torrenting. With usenet there is no misconfiguration you can make to get nabbed. It’s safer.
Fair enough, none of that has ever been a thing for me.
Okay, extremely obscure things have dead torrents, but I’d wager you won’t find many of those ultra obscure downloads on Usenet either. I dunno about any letters either, I suppose my country is a bit too small for anyone to care, because I’ve been torrenting for nearly 20 years with no issues - and so have many of my friends.
The ratios I’ll agree with you on. It’s a damn competition on private trackers, really annoying because everyone else wants to seed too. I just use public trackers.
Ratio on private trackers isn’t really a big deal as long as you’re the kind of person that can keep a couple hundred GB worth of things seeding close to 24/7. Aside from actual ratio(the thing your torrent client reports), they tend to have a system that rewards having things seeding, whether anyone actually connects to you or not, that you can use to boost “ratio”. There’s also usually some options for acquiring some content without it counting against you, like freeleech(download data isn’t counted in your ratio) for low seeded or new torrents, or discounted/refunded credit for extended seed times, or seeding large amounts of data. Aside from the first few months in a new tracker, ratio isn’t a big issue.
My experience (and I’ll admit that I’ve only used a private tracker since rarbg went down) is that you can only get some seeding done within the first few hours of a new torrent going up, after that there’s just so much competition and so few people downloading, you might get a gigabyte of upload a week on a 50 GB freeleech torrent. It might just be specific to TL.
I do have a ratio nearing 10, but my upload buffer is still small enough that I don’t want to download anything non-freeleech lol
Not OP but well seeded torrents max out my server’s ethernet at 80 MB/s (bytes not bits)
Torrents. I don’t really find Usenet worth the money. I can get most of the stuff I want on public sites. Some others I can get on private trackers. Never really felt the need to use Usenet. And as others have pointed out, the arr apps work great with torrents.
And honestly, I find it a little scummy to pay for content to people who don’t own them. I don’t think piracy in itself is unethical, but I if you take money for stolen content, that’s not cool in my book.
I get what you are saying about paying someone who doesn‘t own the content.
However I‘d argue that you are not paying them for the content, but just for hosting it on their servers. So its more like a tool, as is your VPN if you are torrenting. And most people wouldn‘t mind paying a VPN just to pirate content.
Usenet, I agree, might take you some time to get invites to the good indexers, especially if you don‘t want to pay immediately, but in the long run it‘s definitly worth it.
I havn‘t played arround with torrents for quite some time, whats the most popular setup for torrents atm?
Not sure about the most popular setup, but I use a docker container that has
qbittorrent-noxandgluetunin it. It’s connected to some other containers with arr apps and such.And I think it’s a bit different than just paying for VPN. You can use VPN for many other reasons. But here, you know exactly what you’re paying for. I’d never pay to use any private tracker for the same reason.
I use torrents almost exclusively because of the price (free) and convenience. That is, I can get them easily where I live for no additional cost beyond my low speed internet. I have no extra money at all, at this time in my life, unfortunately.
Probably a dumb noob question, but shouldn’t one use a VPN for privacy when torrenting? Wouldn’t that add additional cost?
Live in a third world country and all software is free software. No strings attached
my brother 👏 our authorities are too busy using pirated software to crack down on it. can’t imagine some people live in countries where anyone gives half a shit about piracy.
Some countries just don’t care (even if they have laws on piracy), no vpn needed.
You can also torrent on i2p for added slowness and privacy. Usually fast enough.
You can get reputable VPNs for very cheap. Windscribe provides unlimited bandwidth for a minimum of $3 a month and Mullvad is $5 a month.
Usenet typically requires more expensive fees to join.
There are a few free ones that some like to use. ProtonVPN is an example.I am currently using Nord(paid). However I cant atest to the security of any of them. I have had no issues with Nord.
I use a free VPN (Windscribe’s free 15 GB) from time to time if I’m torrenting something very new. Otherwise I don’t use one.
Torrent
utorrent
lol
Torrents for everything, i’ve found it to be one of the safest ways as well, thanks to all of the other ship mates who seed with me.
Torrents. Because it’s free and fast (if what I’m pirating is famous enough). I started using sites like 1337x, nyaa,rabg🪦 etc… with qbittorent a few years ago and never had any reason to change.
Except for rarbg
RIP rarbg
Honestly had no idea usenet was still a thing. I’m old. Old enough to know usenet and have used it back in the day. But young enough to switch torrenting and not ever really learn another way
Now I have to look up some info!
Usenet costs money, that’s why I don’t use it.
same. I already pay for VPN. I can’t be bothered to figure out how usenet has changed in the almost 20 years since I last was on it.
Basically, automated everything for keeping track and downloading of movies, music, comics, adult content, etc.
Requires work to set up on a home server and costs money for usenet service and private indexers.
Once set up, you just plug in the shows, movies, music artists you want and the various services monitor indexers and grab what you want when it becomes available.
The nice thing is many of the *arr apps also can use torrent sites and interface with your torrent client so you don’t necessarily need to use usenet to use the system.
So, definitely positives and negatives.
What’s the problem with torrent?
Honestly nothing at all, I just prefer the speeds and reliability of Usenet (though I pay for that).
Private trackers have great speed and reliability as well. I’ve been using sonarr and radarr for years but have never bothered with Usenet due to the added cost. They all work great with torrents even though they were originally designed for Usenet.
Are most piracy users aware of programs like sonarr or radarr?
Sounds like you yourself aren’t aware of their capabilities, if you’re presenting a false dichotomy of torrents or *arrs
I’ve yet to try Usenet. I use Qbitorrent. I’ve heard of sonarr and radarr, but I haven’t used them.
Sonarr is phenomenal for downloading active TV shows. Just add the show and when a new episode comes out it gets it automatically. Radarr is great for downloading from lists. Let’s say you look up Spielberg movies and find a imdb list with all is movies. Add the list and radar gets all the movies.
I just cannot figure those pieces of software out. Gotta try again next month.
I think the best way is to use dockers. Hit me up if you need any help.
I use torrents and usenet. I have sonarr and radarr configured to fetch from both.
I like using both because they each have different strengths. Usenet tends to be faster, but torrents tend to have longer retention and a wider variety of content.
Sonarr and radarr can use torrents just as much as they can use usenet. I used them for both, now I dropped usenet altogether.
I find it easier to either DDL or torrent, plus a lot of the stuff I’m after recently proved hard tto find on usenet for whatever reason.
It’s more hassle to search usenet for my usecase and while it’s true that maxing out download speeds is awesome, I’m not in a hurry. I let the .arr apps do the work while I’m busy with life and when I get back home I have it all ready anyways.
Neither. DDL only
Usenet is DDL
True. Just prefer DDL where I dont have to pay
This is the way 😂😂
Usenet. Been using it consistently for over 10 years now. I only torrent when I can’t find something on usenet. So not too often. Plus Usenet just maxes out my download speed on everything. It’s so freaking fast compared to torrents. I gladly pay for that.
I have no knowledge of usenet. How do I get started?
A quick run down: Get yourself a Usenet client (akin to qbittorent for example). SABnzbd is the most popular, free, and open source.
Next you will need an Indexer (similar to a torrent site like The Pirate Bay). There are a lot of these and you will usually need to pay (most are like 10-20 per year, some are free, but it may be hard to find content on the only free sites) to access an indexer. A good paid one I used was NZBgeek. Another is NZB Finder which has free accounts (with some restrictions).
Last thing you need is a Usenet Provider (these are the companies that actually host the files you download). You will need to pay for this for sure and most people actually pay for 2-3 Usenet providers (most only host things for a certain time and content can get taken down due to DMCA). There are a ton of options to choose from and you can mix and match is so many diffrent ways, but Frugal Usenet is pretty popular (if you pay for yearly, they give you an account for another Usenet provider that you can use as a partial backup). I always paired it with UseNight (just has speed restrictions depending on time, but its a great backup) which is very cheap per year. I don’t want to get to technical, but I will mention it incase people want to take the Usenet dive. When buying multiple providers, do NOT buy them if they are from the same backbone! You can refer to this chart to help figure out the main ones. Content that gets taken down via DMCA is pretty much removed at the backbone level and will affect every provider under it (I know the free account from Frugal is the same backbone, but that’s just for backup in case of outages).
Sorry just getting used to notifications in lemmy so I didn’t see this till now. But @hydra@beehaw.org summed it up perfectly.
You need A client, an indexer, and a Usenet provider.
I use SABnzbd for my client, I’ve got several different index sites, and 3 providers. One of which is a yearly unlimited subscription and the other 2 are bucket plans where I buy access to a set amount of GB to download and once I use it, I either buy more or lose access. They basically serve as backup servers if something can’t be found on my main unlimited server. I use prowlarr in conjunction with radarr and sonarr to manage my indexers and shows and movies, and use SABnzbd as my download client, connected to my Usenet provider. It works beautifully once you get it set up right.
Can you tell me which indexers you use? I would like to subscribe to a few myself.
Yeah sure. I’ve used NZBGeek, DOGnzb, nzb.su, binsearch, filesharingtalk and drunkenslug. Some are invite only, if you’re interested I do have a few invites left for DOGnzb… If you’re gonna go down this road, you’ll definitely want multiple indexers.
This was the killer feature for me. That and not having to worry about getting takedown notices when I’m in the US. US ISP’s seem to entirely ignore the existence of usenet.
