Are most of you using Torrents or Usenet?

Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 160 points –

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?

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Torrents.... Fast, free, and easy

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.

  1. 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.
  2. Get a downloader such as sabnzbd or nzbget and configure the provider in it.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

Fair enough, maybe I'll check it out. That's the kind of explanation I was looking for, by the way, thanks.

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)

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.

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-nox and gluetun in 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.

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.

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.

You can also torrent on i2p for added slowness and privacy. Usually fast enough.

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.

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.

I enjoy torrents, searching and deciding which is the best quality + storage combo is right for me is the fun part

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 use the Starr apps with torrents. I kinda just forget all about it since it all just works.

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.

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.

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.

Torrents work great for my needs and I prefer them. Haven't really messed with usenet much.

Are most piracy users aware of programs like sonarr or radarr?

Of course we are, hell that's what I use with my torrents. They aren't just for usenet lol

I still use torrents sometimes but almost exclusively use Usenet these days. For Plex/jellyfin servers it’s pretty unbeatable.

Torrents are mostly stuff like audiobooks from audiobookbay and myanonymouse and games from repackers like Fitgirl.

I mean usenet costs money and torrents don’t.

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.

Torrents+Real Debrid and IPTV have taken care of all my media streaming needs.

I do have Sonarr/Radarr setup, but streaming via debrid works so well I haven't needed to use them much.

I use sonarr/radarr setup with real debrid and usenet torrents sent to rdtclient

Never heard of rdtclient, seems like that would be cheaper than Usenet. Might have to give it a try.

Torrenting with a seedbox for me. I'm aware of Sonarr/Radarr and other automation tools but I don't feel like I have the need for them. Some part of me enjoys the manual search and management. Never touched Usenet though it's in the mental "maybe try later" bin.

I'd recommend giving Sonarr and Radarr a try at least. Setup is pretty straight forward but it goes way in depth if you want to work out the little intricacies of managing your media.

Setting them up via docker is highly recommended.

Why is docker recommended?

Because setup is easier, Docker basically sets up a completely new environment for the app to live in mostly isolated from your main system, so all the stuff you installed on your system has no effect on it.

I've never used Usenet... I'm really not familiar with it, tbh. I just DDL or stream everything lol.

dumb q: what is DDL?

DirectDownLoad, is used to describe sites that offer download links without needing special software or protocols, might require lots of clicking through ads and downloading big files in multiple parts on different sites, since file hosts usually give a size limit to the files, think megaupload back in the day, you often hear the term warez for those too

I tried Usenet, wasn't a big fan of it, to be honest.

The way I see it, unless you live in a country where your traffic is constantly moderated for torrent traffic, there's no reason to not use torrents.

Also, IPv6 torrenting is for the most part unmoderated by ISPs, my friend who lives in California only torrents via IPv6 on qBit and he had gotten 0 emails from his ISP. However, YMMV depending on country.

I only ever used Usenet back in the day when my college threatened to shut off my internet if there was any more p2p traffic.

I just switched to Usenet after using torrents for the past couple of years. The difference is night and day

I use both. Rarr Stack and Sabnzbd and alldbird and a program that emulates qtorent.

Have found that some content is just easier to find on one platform or the other.

I use sonarr, radarr (3x), prowlarr and overseer. I get most of what I need from usenet. I have most public teachers too as backup. I want to get stuff in their original language, so it's fine.

But lately I'm looking for multi language (English+French) stuff and I'm having a hard time finding that. On usenet there's nothing and torrents, there are too few french trackers.

Yggtorrent

Yes I have that one, but I had a hard time automating it due to the required ratio. I want to get a few terabytes of uploads first to be on the safe side and I have a hard time doing that. I'm now around 500gb. I might just pay for it lol

Couldn't ever find people to get invites from for private torrents and didn't want to mooch in forums where no one knew me so Usenet it is.

Neither. Real Debrid

What is debrid?

A service that downloads torrents for you and then lets you download the files from them. Doesn't seed.

Real Debrid does seed, unreliably but it does. Debrid-Link seeds like a regular seedbox which is really nice. Unfortunately it isn't nearly as well supported as Real Debrid.

Torrent. Started using torrents in the 2000's. Stopped for a while, but now I'm back to torrenting. Searching for and curating my collection is part of the fun for me.

I use sonarr, radarr, overseer, prowlarr, and a bunch of other shit.

I exclusively use torrents. Everything is automated and in dockers. No reason to use Usenet IMO. It gets me nothing torrents don’t already do.

I use both private trackers and usenet added to Prowlarr along with Sonarr and Radarr. Usenet has priority, reverts to torrents when it can't find something or if I need some specific release

Torrents and muthafuckin' DC++!!!

Jesus, dc++ is still around???

@marx2k @doolittle wow literally haven't thought about that in 16 years I think.

About the same here. Its a cool idea and I really liked it but ended up stopping using it once I went with a headless Linux setup.

If dc++ can be done with a docker container and if i could hit my headless dc++ container er with an android app or even a web front-end that i also host, id get back into it.

I think the other issue i had was getting into various dc++ servers was a pain in the ass and downloading an album from someone would take days, if it finished at all. And the quality of the tracks would be questionable enough where it also had me running the downloads through other apps which verified the quality, track completion, renaming, etc.

Lidarr does all of this already.

So now that I think about it...

Eh maybe not dc++ again

When I was living on campus at uni 9–10 years ago we had only 5 GB data per month* but we also had a DC++ LAN with all the other on-campus students which didn’t count. It was semi-endorsed with a wink and a nudge by the inter-college IT people, and was an absolute dream for grabbing pirated movies and TV shows.

* this thankfully excluded a whole bunch of shit including government websites, uni sites, and anything from Google, including YouTube, so it was very possible to stay under. I think it went up to 20 GB in my second year.

DC++ is great but I can't get a decent working client for Linux that works with an IPv6 router (i.e. no port forwarding)

I'm using torrents much less since fmovies. I just stream my shows and movies now. Music is also getting harder to find so I went back to Soulseek. For everything else, I'm using Tribler, an open source torrent client using onion routing.

Never heard about tribler . Does it use tor for the traffic ?

Well to be fair it depends on personal preference rather than a technology being better than other. I used to torrent everything but nowadays I just subscribed to RD and with Stremio or Kodi + Trakt I got everything I need without having to worry for searching.

Torrents, I like the community and indefinite retention. And with 1gbps home connections becoming more common staying in ratio has become way easier.

Or be like me with a 1gbps download but only 15mbps upload speed. Thanks Comcast!

Been on torrent for many years, recently started using the *arr stack, it's fantastic. For torrents I source them from a private tracker, difference of quality and speed is night and day.

I see multiple private torrent tracker users in here. I primarily use Usenet, but is anyone willing to shed some light on the private torrent scene? Wouldn't mind having a backup for anything that fails on Usenet but don't have a clue where to even start research on good/reputable private trackers.

I'm on 4 private trackers. (All invite only, none currently available)

My experience has been pretty good. They're all relatively niche, and have a surprising ly deep library within their interest.

For me, the only drawback is that some days there can be a small group of seeders (and occasionally none) on certain files. But that can change day-to-day.

But the biggest bonus, I've never had to worry about getting a copyright warning on any thing I've got from any of them.

I've always thought private trackers were more dangerous since you can't use a VPN. Seems like all it would take is one fed or MPAA (or the like) agent joining and they have a treasure trove of info to investigate.

Invites (at least on the trackers I'm on) are seldom available, and are generally only available to long term members with very high ratios who generally have the most vested interest in keeping the tracker free of narcs.

This is also why private trackers are useless to 99.99% of piraters most of them have been completely sealed up for years. People claim there's ways to "work your way in" but it's too much bullshit to deal with with no guarantee. Ones that occasionally open up like TL are way too crowded with no way to maintain your ratio easily

I've only heard good things about Usenet but personally, I can find almost anything I want via DDL so that's where it's at for me

I just got Sonarr and Radarr setup with Overseerr and Jackett and got my family on Plex so we can cut the cord on Netflix. Overseerr supports downloading from Plex watchlists so they don’t even need to use Overseerr to auto download movies. I still need to figure out how to sort and download better ones since I’ve selected “seeders” as the download is sometimes prioritizing quality.

I’m in a private invite only torrent site, and most shows/movies have an amazing availability. Seeding is a requirement and becusee its private, my ISP doesn’t send me DMCA notices.

I’ve been on the torrents for ages but just started with Usenet this weekend. So I’m dual wielding with Usenet as first priority.

Torrent and ed2k/kad networks

A quick search told ed2k/kad are other p2p networks. What kind of files do you get from that? And can you automate it with sonarr or similar?

Well, the same files, but old files hold on better on ed2k/kad (easier to share and seed for as long as you can). But I know torrent is by far more popular, and usually I download new things from there and then seed on both networks through mldonkey. And no, you can not have the *arr suite on ed2k/kad, only torrent and usenet with specific clients.

I rely on usenet for 90+% of content acquisition, but I have torrents for stuff I can't easily find or older content that is not recent release.

I mostly ddl tbh. Works for the fast majority of my needs. There are times where Torrenting is the only thing possible tho

You can use sonarr and radarr without indexers. There's even built-in support for major trackers without need for additional apps like Prowlarr.

That said, I use autobrr to handle the monitoring of releases and let the other apps filter out what they actually want

I don't DL that much and it's usually just books so I still use torrents and a VPN.

Usenet. If only because I don't have access to any good private trackers and the public ones I used to use are dead. And I have access to good enough indexers to get the job done.

With my new setup though I run everything through a VPN tunnel so if I ever found some good trackers again I'd not be against it.

I use both actually. I find Drunken to be a great fallback if none of my PTs have the content.

I also use it to help upload season packs to fulfill requests on PTs on occasion.

I mainly use usenet, but I torrent anything I can't get on usenet. Maybe my indexer or server just sucks. I use Sonarr, Radarr, and SABnzbd plus Frugal Usenet and NZBgeek for usenet downloads. Qbitorrent plus VPN for torrents.

I just pay for a monthly Plex share, got tired of managing files and subtitles and not having a good dedicated set up for it.

If you're paying anyway, consider trying a Debrid service alongside something like Stremio or Syncler.

DC++ and Soulseek gang here plus some personal contacts and sites mainly DDL

Yeah I like the smell of my own farts. I got PT access too but I try to minimize use these days. Usenet is great but I have too much ego to pay for anything currently outside of internet connection and storage.

Just discovered Soulseek (Nicotine+). proper old school p2p actually feels like sailing the high seas.

I love the variety of Soulseek and not having to worry about preserving files in a specific folder system for seeding, but the speeds really kill it for anything larger than an album or two. Wish we could have the best of both worlds: speeds from multiple users and the flexibility of just sharing file systems.

DC++ does it but it’s even more selective than PTs. Maybe someone on here can start a hub for all the members here

You can also test ed2k/kad networks, it has the speeds of multiple users and the flexibility to have the files as you want.

Usenet for most things movies, music, tv, ebooks, etc.

I don't really pirate software or pc games at this point.

Torrents for things like rom collections and console games for emulators.

Also randomly will torrent things like magazine packs for old mags like computer shopper from archive.org for whimsy.

Had been on torrents for super long but never used a private tracker so reliability and speed was all over the place. Recently switched to Usenet and the speed and inherent security far surpasses my experience with torrents. Couple bucks a month and nearly maxing out a 1Gbps connection is fine by me.

I am a super casual pirate these days. Qbittorrent with jackett, and debrid for streaming gives me everything I need. I used to do Usenet and torrents with a bunch of private trackers but I like how easy it is not having all that crap. Managing my debrid and syncler subscriptions is about the limit of the regular admin I want to do. My only issue is public torrents feel a bit exposed but it's not something I worry about.

Personally I use both. I have Sonar set to pull from Usenet first, then a private tracker, then a few public trackers. I just like Usenet because it works really good with all my wife's reality TV shows. I always had trouble getting them with torrents.

It's fairly seldom I need to but if then I use torrents.

usenet by default and torrent as a secondary option

I've been torrenting for years, recently discovered Soulseek. This is the first time i'm hearing about sonarr and radarr.

I mainly use a private forum (DDL) and torrents (w/ debrid service). I also use a couple dedicated websites that are very helpful for direct download for audiobooks. With this, I have found pretty much anything I have ever wanted.

I use Sonnar and Radarr but with qBitTorrent as download clients

Good luck using sonarr and radarr for non-english content.