Just wondering what a rough split is of people using either Usenet, torrents, or both?
I’ve only just discovered Usenet and while it is paid, it is very cheap and much more convenient than torrents.
Using torrents as well with the *arr suite set up for my various Linux ISOs.
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I think usenet users are a vocal minority.
It used to be the opposite. But the normies showed up and the fight club rules are out the window.
Usenet as daily driver works 99% of the time. Only use VPN/torrents for extremely new or very obscure shows. $5/month pays for unlimited Usenet and VPN.
5$ for vpn and usenet? where can one hypothetically get this?
This UsenetServer discount link gives you 1 trial month for $1, then $50/year after that, and includes a 1TB TweakNews block and a paid PrivadoVPN account.
Just want to let you know that Privado VPN is not a private vpn, please read their privacy policy before buying into their services.
Looks ok to me, what in particular do you take issue with?
This was discussed on reddit a bit ago. The same company in place now ran IPVanish and they logged and rolled over on the user. No reason to think they wouldnt do the same with privado and if you are ultra worried tin foil hat-ish, would they do the same with their usenet? who knows. https://torrentfreak.com/ipvanish-no-logging-vpn-led-homeland-security-to-comcast-user-180505/
Good to know I guess, but yea that’s a bit too speculative for my taste.
yes seems silly they would do it for usenet but i would have said the same thing a few years ago about vpn. i guess things are fine until they arent… my main surprise in the vpn case was their willingness to work with the feds. they told them once we dont have anything and then THEY contacted the feds and said hey, ask again why dont you.
Only use VPN/torrents for extremely new or very obscure shows
Interesting, I would have thought torrents would be better for older stuff due to their theoretically infinite retention. Like, can you find, say, LOTR: The Return of the King on Usenet at the moment? Someone has to have uploaded it in the past ~2 years (retention period) or something for it to be available, right?
Afaik most usenet providers have a retention period of 3000+ days (some even reaching 4000+). I’ve downloaded multiple things from the 90s without any problems. The oldest media in my collection is from 1957, so retention really isn’t a problem I would say.
I managed to get Thomas and Friends from 1987
Retention doesnt matter for anything released beyond the retention as it was reuploaded anyway.
LOTR = anything from 4K HDR 7.1 Atmos, down to DVD is available (theoretically, as you can have items that exists, but can’t be fully downloaded so don’t work, because of DMCA and other things). The oldest release I see is 5800 days old and the newest is 4 days old. So people keep reuploading stuff if it’s popular enough. (I still can’t find some episodes of Ben 10 tv show lol)
Always went for the free option
Usenet can be as free as torrents though
Could you explain futhrer? I though that usenet was behind a paywall
I have made a bot that gathers accounts on the internet. You can pm if you are interested
I have no idea what to do or how to even get started with Usenet, so I just use a VPN and torrent as needed.
I am also in that basket. To me Usenet seems like another, older protocol that achieves practically the same thing. If someone is more knowledgeble, feel free to correct me or explain further.
I don’t even know what Usenet is, so I’m 100% torrents, which I keep seeding ad infinitum as I don’t have storage issues. My most-seeded thing is nearing 150 ratio lol
20% torrent and 80% stremio with real debrid.
Stremio and RD is just so easy. Torrent for anything I really want to keep forever in very high quality.
I’m 100% torrents if I need it. Fmovies or other sites seem to have the majority of what I want to watch.
Is there a guide on how to use usenet? What does it offer that torrents does not? Is it nitch stuff?
I used the wiki on r/usenet, which was pretty helpful.
From my understanding, you need 3 things:
- Usenet Provider (these are servers that host all of the content - you pay them to have access to download the content)
- Indexer (this is kind of like Google but for the usenet providers - they will find and give you the .nzb file which will be used to access the content from the usenet provider above - you pay the indexer for their service)
- Usenet client (This would be akin to a torrent client like Qbittorrent - it is the program which you use to download the content from the provider, using the .nzb file provided by the indexer)
Benefits of Usenet I believe are the high speed of downloads, generally accessibility to older and more niche content, and ease of use. You don’t need to fish through torrents hoping that the seed/peer numbers are enough to actually get all of the content in good time. I’ve found a lot of stuff there lately that I have not been able to find via torrenting sites, but are important childhood media to me/my wife.
Usenet is hurt a lot by takedown notices unfortunately. So lots of older popular stuff doesn’t work. That said, things like Anime or something that isn’t given a takedown seem to be on there about forever. The server speed is a benefit for sure.
I’ve heard dmca is an issue there. I’m not sure how stuff stays up there.
If you belong to a very limited and kinda secret indexer, then this problem isn’t much of an issue
I was an avid Usenet user, until torrents were invented.
I’ve never needed to go back.I’m mostly downloading fairly recently released stuff, so there’s no shortage of torrents on public trackers.
I also don’t want any payment details associated with anything not explicitly legal, so that’d be a further deterrent from Usenet. Sure, I could use crypto, but even that links me to a wallet that might someday be traced back to me, so I’ll pass.
I have wondered this as well. Seems like it is pretty linked.
Tbf, Usenet and indexers are strictly speaking, legal.
Right, but whatever I’m doing on there really isn’t.
As a matter of fact my current jurisdiction doesn’t even pursue copyright infringements, but I still don’t want to be linked to anything commonly seen as shady.
Fair enough, I was under the impression that if you are using SSL, all an ISP or VPN provider could see is that you are connected to whichever backbone provider you were connected to. I.e. The content of what you are downloading is encrypted.
You could be downloading stuff that is not illegal, and I don’t think that is necessarily knowable by anyone except yourself.
I may be way off here, I’m not an IT person, but that was my understanding of SSL.
I’d say as a general rule any encryption can be cracked, but usually it is not worth the time and effort to do so.
This is incorrect. What you’d are doing while purely downloading is legal.
Bit torrent exposes you to liability not because you are downloading but because you’re sharing which courts have decided is distributing/performing, no matter how small the block you upload.
This is not an issue with Usenet.
And you say that knowing my jurisdiction and its applicable laws?
Wait, you have to pay for using Usenet?
Well since someone has to host the data, someone needs to pay for it :P
It’s funny you put it that way, because torrents are based fundamentally on the idea of freely hosting the data so nobody has to pay to access it.
Torrents are based on the idea that everyone using them pays for it with their bandwidth and hardware cost. Except for those leechers who don’t share.
I’m paying more for my seedbox than for my usenet subscription. If I used my own hardware I’d pay with stress on my hardware, e.g. the disks aging and failing earlier because of seeding. The power consumption is also not negligeble, altough the server is also used for other purposes.
With private trackers this idea of an equal exchange is more obvious because of ratio requirements.
Edit: I’d say it’s similar to open source in that no single individual has to pay for it, but someone does have to, for it to exist. Most often with their (valuable) time and knowledge. If no one helps out and does their part (through money or time+knowledge), a project won’t survive for long. Same is true for torrents.
You pay for traffic. There are some free versions out there, but they limit you to 10-25 GB or something. Might be an option for the 1% you can’t find on public trackers.
Yes just like paying for vpn and/or seedbox to safely torrent.
You can get free accounts from sites like Eternal September, but you only get access to text groups, which are mostly full of spam anymore. If you don’t download much, it’s best to just get a block account.
I use both. It depends on what I need, really.
Torrents only here… I have 8gbps internet. I’m privileged, so I seed (10x or one year). I don’t see a point to paying to be part of a usenet in my situation. I have a few private trackers I’m on. I should see about getting into a few more though to spread the bandwidth wealth. 4 seedbox vms to roundrobin the new torrents that get added.
I used to when usenet was free from every single ISP, there was an active community behind every single alt.binaries.* group, and it wasn’t “subscribe to this usenet provider that gives you 5 years of posts from every group and you download things by this oversimplified NZB crap” instead of relying on and engaging with the community to post new and interesting things all the time.
Soulseek, anyone? I only ever do books and music, and Soulseek has everything I need
Usenet here. 4 paid indexers and the Usenet sub. Still cost less in a year than cable or streaming services cost in a month. Get everything I want and look for easily.
I pay for one Usenet provider/indexer. I also still use tons of torrent sources.
90% of the time, stuff that I’m monitoring gets downloaded via Usenet for currently airing or rather new shows.
50% of the time when actively looking for stuff from the past 5-10 years I use Usenet, the other half is torrents
90% of stuff older than that, I only find torrents
100% of non-English stiff I get from torrents (I’m subscribed to an English Usenet indexer though, so that tracks).
In short: Why not use both?
Do things on usenet get purged? Would you expect the stuff showing up today to still be accessible in 5-7 years?
Yes, they do!! With torrents, it just takes a single seeder to keep the torrent alive, but Usenet isn’t peer to peer - you’re downloading stuff from a centralized server(s), and they simply cannot keep everything alive forever.
IMO it’s fine though. Usenet provides you with very timely access to all the “newest” stuff, in excellent, very consistent quality.
And for older stuff, there’s torrents.
Even without seeders, you can sometimes be lucky and resurrect old torrents that have been kept in cache by providers such as real debrid
Usenet provides you with very timely access to all the “newest” stuff, in excellent, very consistent quality.
So do some encoders and web-rippers.
And usually Usenet does lend quite a bit of releases you usually see on private indexers or some publics.And usually Usenet does lend quite a bit of releases you usually see on private indexers or some publics.
Right, that’s also true.
