this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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I'm in my first month of Usenet. I own several popular BluRay Movies but thought I'd save time ripping them manually and instead see what I could get off Usenet (NZBGeek + Eweka) now that my niece is visiting and needs entertainment.

I noticed a number of popular titles are consistently difficult to obtain ("aborted, cannot be completed"), even when live within only a few days, or even hours.

I assume this is a very vigilant DMCA takedown bot. How commonplace is this? And why does it only apply to some titles and not others?

Is it worth continuing with Usenet? I thought paying for content would ensure a certain "quality" of experience. So far, I'm a bit disappointed.

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[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Usenet, while way better than torrenting, still requires multiple indexers and providers for this reason. I have 3 of each and rarely ever run into this issue except for very niche releases.

[–] navi@lemmy.tespia.org 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm inexperienced with Usenet, but why is it better than torrenting?

I have 5-6 trackers which provides me basically everything I need and it sounds like Usenet might be similar in that regard.

[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The main benefit is that you don't need to use a VPN, so you get full download speeds. Also the availability and download speed isn't dependent on seeders, so more obscure content tends to survive longer on Usenet.

[–] navi@lemmy.tespia.org 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That's interesting about the life time. I've actually heard the opposite, where niche/old things can be easier to get from specific trackers vs Usenet because of their lack of popularity.

I suppose it's probably mostly about which websites you are a part of and if they specialize in specific content.

[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

It really does depend, so I mainly was speaking from my personal experience. But this is also why using both is recommended for *aar, because then you get the best of both worlds.

[–] borari@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah, Usenet servers all have a maximum retention time, usually around 3000 days or something like that. Any articles older than the retention time of your server won’t exist for you to grab, but stuff is usually reuploaded frequently. With torrents a super niche thing requires someone seeding the content all the time for it to be consistently accessible, while Usenet requires someone to reupload it once every 5-10 years (barring takedowns) which imo is more consistently stable, but as the other poster said having both ensures your bases are covered. I personally don’t really torrent anything beyond oddball bbc2+ documentaries at this point though.

[–] Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Which three providers/backbones dyou have?

[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

For indexers, I have DrunkenSlug, nzbgeek, and nzbplanet. My backbone providers are UsenetExpress, FrugalUsenet, and Giganews. You can use https://whatsmyuse.net to make sure you don't have overlapping backbones.

[–] Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

Stellar, thank you

[–] cerulean_blue@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I'm just trying the scene out, but so far I'm put off by having to pay for both indexers and providers, and now I need multiple of both to get what I thought was basic content (a film about a boy wizard).

Maybe it's a different problem causing my downloads to not even start, but the help page suggests DMCA as likely cause.

[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

It's understandable, sure. It's also a little more complex up front. For me personally, the pros outweigh the cons and I'd much rather use Usenet over torrenting, even with the cost.

I definitely think it's DMCA, unfortunately.