So far, public trackers have been working fine for me, but think I’ve finally run into some niche shows that have been hard to find or only been able to find individual episodes instead of a single collected season torrent. (Nothing too special, just some baking shows.)

I’m wondering if it’s finally time to look into private trackers or Usenet.

If you use them, what did it take for you to finally look into these more time or effort intensive piracy options?

A movie you wanted to see that was too old to be seeded on public trackers? TV shows too old or niche? A game, an obscure music artist? Something else? Was it just curiosity? Or something you did immediately upon getting into piracy? I’m just curious myself lol.

  • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    4·
    13 days ago

    Semi-private trackers like TorrentLeech are a great step up from public trackers and they are relatively easy to join (e.g. seedbox promo). More content is available and well-seeded for longer periods of time.

    It’s not difficult to keep your ratio, even with a 50MBit/s connection (torrents > 15GB are freeleech anyway), as long as you seed 24/7. Or buy a seedbox for a while, build a few TB of buffer (autobrr) and never worry again.

    Edit: Usenet is great because it’s fast, and depending on your (non-english) language, it’s a completely different league than public trackers. But I’d argue for english content TL (and a few others) is good enough.

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        13 days ago

        Semi-private just refers to how easy it is to join them. E.g. rutracker is considered a semi-private tracker, because it requires an account, but always allows registrations and does not enforce any ratio.

        In that sense I was wrong in calling TL a semi-private tracker, because TL does require maintaining a ratio. But given it is possible to simply join via their seedbox offerings, it is not as private as some other trackers, which require proofs of good behaviour on other trackers and/or an application process.

        Edit: Public: no registration required
        Semi-private: registration required, but always possible; lax ratio rules
        Private: registration required, mostly through invites/applications; anti-leech ratio rules