The Picard ManeuverThe Next (De)Generation
Nurse_RobotSelfish, but much safer legally speaking
Yep, in my country it’s illegal to provide copyrighted material, but it’s legal to download for personal use. Sorry.
That’s what VPNs are there for! Ze German setup: gluetun and qbittorrent via docker, qbittorrent only going over gluetuns network.
This way we can return what we take tenfold and still come out on top!
You can also bind qbittorrent to the specific wan interface created by the vpn so it won’t seed or download if the vpn is off
It doesn’t see the interface if qbit is running in a docker container. That’s what gluetun is for.
Hiro8811As long as the VPN isn’t a front for residential proxies and routing bot traffic over your endpoint, doing god knows what.
What sketchy ass VPN’s have you been using?
Get something from a well known provider like Proton, iVPN, or Mullvad.
Proton and Mullvad are probably fine yeah, Nord and Surfshark are definitely very sus though, Nord even has known ties to Oxylabs.
“most of them are (if advertised heavily)” is quite a claim without data to back it up.
At least for the one I tested none of them sent additional traffic over my connection. That’s just one data point and I only looked to ones with port forwarding but still far away from your claim.
There are a shitload of VPN tests out there and testing id your connection gets used by third parties for not traffic is even possible for a layperson.
Please stop fear mongering without remedies or specifics.
Eh, “thing I really want, but provided for free” combined with “thing we really want you to use, for free” -
We should maybe put fear mongering directly on that, I think. Free things, that cost real money to provide, that cost no money to use - we should maybe fear monger a little.
Yeah that’s way more specific and can get behind - I don’t even test any “free” VPNs.
I didn’t intend to imply that VPNs are free.
Good chance I’m just annoyed and arguing with the wrong person, probably even about the wrong thing lol.
My b. I appreciate you.
ValmondOnce you’ve had a legal letter due to an accident and over eager lawyers with easily costs beginning at several thousands you might change your opinion.
And yes, I had that. For 3 hashes of 3 files of a TV series.
No it doesn’t. Because it’s not an opinion but a description on how to not get into the situation you’ve described - i.e. about personal security.
What I’ve described prevents a link between you and your online actions - that’s the whole point. It’s the defense against surveillance and can be applied on situations with way higher risk than just a fine.
Oh yeah! It’s sad that users have to have a technical education to use the Internet if laws and what at least I perceive as “right” fundamentally differ.
At least for the moment it’s only copy right for me personally - there are countries and laws where this need is way more fundamental :(
I haven’t really torrented in awhile. I was lucky enough to get in a private megalinks forum site before they closed registrations!
Salt of the earth.
Usenet
Can I share over usenet without having to port forward? My ISP doesn’t allow port forwarding. I’ve been able to download from usenet, but don’t really want to if I can’t also share.
NVM was confusing it with soulseek
Darkassassin07This was one of my biggest motivations for moving to usenet. I don’t like exposing myself by seeding. I have a giant folder full of copyright notices forwarded by my ISP because of it, and I don’t want to pay for a vpn as it’s far more expensive than usenet and just moves the problem/target to the vpn provider.
But an ssl connection to a usenet server goes unnoticed… Plus WAY faster download speeds, far more consistency in available files, and less spam/garbage content (at least in my experience, anecdotal).
Torrents took anywhere from an hour to multiple days before either completing or giving up and trying a different torrent. And then there’s the seeding process ontop.
NZBs (usenet) take at the very most, 5min to finish or fail, at which point a new one can be tried automatically by sonarr/radarr if it had failed. Requests for media are now pretty much always ready to watch within 25min of requesting, and most of that is waiting for the library scan to trigger (I’m using SAMBA so filesystem updates can’t trigger scans automatically, they’re on a timer instead)
How do I get started with Usenet? I’m on a private tracker right now which has excellent speeds (maxes out my 500 Mbit connection usually, so I can’t tell what speeds I might achieve if fully utilized), but it would of course be nice not having to seed.
I don’t have time atm, I’m literally leaving for work rn; but I’ll write up some details later tonight if nobody else has.
Things you need:
A Usenet provider such as EasyNews or Astraweb. Usenet services host the content. Be aware that some services like GigaNews just rehost from the same pool of servers as a lot of others, also a tad scummy. There’s a lot to look into here for features like connection limits, retention, and download speed. You can also purchase “block accounts” which let you buy blocks of data to use on demand with no expiration. Astraweb is great for this as a secondary source since they have their own servers and can host different content than other hosts. Look for promo codes online when signing up for one as you can usually get solid rates via referrals for like $7-$15 a month. Block accounts can run like $25 for 100GB of download.
A Usenet downloading client like SabNZBD for downloading NZB files (pronounced: newzbins)
An Indexer, such as Drunken Slug, NZBGeek, NZB Finder, or OMGWTFNZBs. Indexers help you find the content you’re looking for in the giant pool of hosted content on Usenet services. Usually good to have more than 1 indexer, even if using a free account on another. Usually run about $15 a year.
Usenet can be tied into Arrs programs like Sonarr and Radarr for automated downloading which makes things a lot easier especially when you set up your library correctly. See Trash Guides for help with this.
Personally I recommend running this all through Docker, but it’s not necessary.
Also even with Usenet, I’d still recommend a VPN. Can never be too safe.
You’ve done a pretty good job here, so I’ll just add this:
A map of providers and some info on their benefits.
www.ngprovider.com/current-usenet-map.php
There’s also a ton of info about usenet, how it works, and what to look for, on that site.
Wow, I’ve never seen this before. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much for this.
So like, I’m looking to spend at least $15/month unless I can get a discount via a promo code? Might as well start paying for Netflix at that point. Right now I’m running up $0/month with access to anything I want at top speeds for my high speed connection. I don’t know if using Usenet is worth it for my situation.
IIRC there’s some cheaper ones out there around $5, but it’s been a long time since I’ve shopped for a Usenet service. The way I look at it is I’m not having to pay for Netflix, Prime, Peacock, Disney +, HBO, HiDive, etc. just to watch the shows and movies I want. I do pay for Crunchyroll, but that’s mostly because I don’t want to pull and store long shows like One Piece, but that might change with their recent price increase.
The way I look at it is I’m not having to pay for Netflix [etc]
Right, same with my private torrent tracker but for $0/month. I don’t think Usenet is for me, I guess. Maybe if my tracker gets nuked somehow, which it hasn’t after like 20 years, then I’ll have to consider Usenet. 😅
For me, Usenet isn’t about availability; but speed, risk exposure, and convenience.
Torrents take longer, even with lots of quality seeds and fast network speeds; mostly because of the seeding process. Plus, while you are seeding: you have to publicly expose yourself as a content host, even if just through a VPN. Hosts are what copyright holders target, they don’t GAF about the people downloading, they try to take down the hosts to stop the spread. Finally you have to keep the content you downloaded in the format you downloaded, at least until seeding is done.
I prefer to use Tdarr to automatically transcode downloaded content into h265 (HEVC) to reduce it’s size. Most content is found in h264 (AVC); converting it, on average, reduces its size by ~30% while maintaining good quality. Overall this step has saved me at least ~7TB so far (Tdarr reports it’s saved 4.8TB, but I converted a ton of stuff with Embys convert feature before implementing Tdarr). That conversion can only be done after seeding or the torrent breaks as the original files are no longer available to seed. Usenet removes the seeding step completely, so I can do whatever I want with the files as soon as they’ve downloaded, which in it self only takes 5min.
VPN is probably a good idea regardless of what you use, yeah. I haven’t used a VPN in 20+ of pirating. 😅 Probably a bad idea. 🫣
Torrents I’m fine with seeding. I never stop seeding my downloads. More data for the people!
I only download H.265 releases, so no need to reencode. I just dump all my downloaded movies in a movies/ directory, and all my shows in series/{Show Name}/{season XX boxset}/. Plex recognized everything fine, and now Jellyfin does as well after ditching Plex (because Plex don’t give af about their users, as I’ve noticed, story for another time).
I’m surprised Usenet content is mostly just H.264. sounds a bit behind the times.
Anyway, filled one 4 TB recently which is like ten years old, recently been getting closer and closer to filling a 10 TB drive, and got a completely unused 24 TB drive waiting to be installed. Bought while storage was still cheap. 😅 Should be set for the coming years.
That together with the top speeds of my tracker, and free price, hard to beat unless you’re worried about your ISP cracking down on you (which I’m not really as I’m based east of the pond).
I think I’ll hold off on Usenet for the time being.
I appreciate all the advice! 🌹
I don’t understand why usenet is a thing. It really liked it in the early days and it was basically like lemmy. Groups for different topics and also federated. Now it’s used to distribute warez but since it wasn’t made for it so stuff has to be base64 encoded and split into pieces…
I think most people don’t realize that Usenet is older than the World Wide Web. It’s still a thing because it wasn’t corporatized like the Web was.
AT&T used to include Usenet access as part of your Internet connection since both Usenet and the Web are on the Internet but they quit doing that some years ago (back in the halcyon days of DSL).
so stuff has to be base64 encoded and split into pieces…
You say that like it’s an issue. With modern Usenet binary downloaders (SABnzbd) and indexers, you don’t have to browse groups. In fact you most likely can’t. The indexer provides you with the map where the files are located (the nzb files) and SABnzbd finds them, starts downloading them, checks if all files are downloadable and keeps going or stops if there aren’t even enough files available to attempt a repair.
All of that is abstracted from the user. You tell Radarr/Sonarr what movie/series you want and it will handle everything, from querying the indexers to passing the nzb along to SABnzbd and to automatically restart the process if somehow the download fails.
It’s a shame no one uses Usenet for its original purpose though. It was reddit before the internet itself.
From a user perspective it’s not a problem. I’m just sad what an abomination my beloved pre-reddit has become. Also it’s super weird like using bicycles for international shipping instead of container ships without telling the user and hiding the whole process in the background.
Yeah I totally get what you mean. Keep it mind that Usenet was already abandoned in the traditional sense by the time the warez scene took it over. Silver lining is that warez is keeping it alive. We could still keep it going in discussion groups.
Are you still using Usenet as it was meant for? Do you know of any newsgroup that are particularly active to this day?
I’m not using it any more and I last time I tried it was overwhelmed with spam. I agree that warez are keeping it alive nowadays.
On a side note: There are still a few active BBSs around.
RebekahWSDGod I love Kelly’s comics.
AceFuzzLordThe last time I was seeding, on my desktop, my system was set up not to go into sleep mode and also didn’t have problems where my monitor wouldn’t just stop displaying the screen.
Now, under Linux Mint, under Wayland for my preferred client, I have to constantly be there to ensure the display doesn’t decide to stop displaying since Wayland is still experimental in Cinnamon under LM Zena.
Otherwise I would go back to doing it.
Dozzi92
CyberEggThe last drive of mine running windows is currently an offline setup right now because I ain’t updating it to windows 11 and ain’t connecting to the internet while not getting security updates.
I could do it on that windows 10 drive when I allowed the OS an internet connection, but now I’m dealing with the consequences of not suggesting that my dad switch from windows 10 to MX Linux on his laptop.
Though, I will agree windows would work just fine.
So does a headless qbittorrent setup running on my 13yo t440p that’s on and plugged in via Ethernet 24/7 🤷
I have qbittorrent set to quit when the DL is done. I tried to seed but spectrum is on that shit, they shut off Internet access. I can’t afford a VPN right now, my wife and I both work and we are struggling. Thank you, seeders.
I’m a leecher, and I truly am sorry. I dl TV shows that are off the air and aren’t available on dvd
I don’t care if you seed or not, but if you’re torrenting then you’re seeding a little bit while downloading. Quitting quickly doesn’t mask you completely. It might pay to look into your options more.