Piratebay is a shadow of its former self, but it's still impressive that a public tracker this big survived this long... Even though I struggle to think of why anyone would ever use it nowadays...
Piratebay is a shadow of its former self, but it's still impressive that a public tracker this big survived this long... Even though I struggle to think of why anyone would ever use it nowadays with better options.
I won't give you the technical answer as you can just look it up on Wikipedia for that. I'll just say what it is with regards to how it's used in this context. (It has different uses/purposes than...
I won't give you the technical answer as you can just look it up on Wikipedia for that. I'll just say what it is with regards to how it's used in this context. (It has different uses/purposes than just this)
You generally have to pay to use it, and you're paying to access a server that has files stored on it. These files are uploaded by someone else, and they're generally obfuscated to the point where you don't know or can't tell what the files are without using an NZB indexer service. You generally have to pay for the indexers as well, but you can access some for free or to a very limited amount you can access some for free. These are basically like search engines for NZB files, and the NZB files are what points to the obfuscated files on the usenet servers.
So if someone uploads ksdjfldksjfdlksdjflkdsjlfsdkjdlsfkjfsdlkjsdffjsdlfkjsdldjlfkdsj.rar onto a Usenet server, rather than you having to go looking for all of these obfuscated files yourself and find them, you generally pay an indexer site that has done so and they have a search engine that you can search for titles as a normal person would. You might pay $10 a year or something to access an indexer (price varies), and sometimes you might want access to a couple indexers as they can vary in what they have indexed. And you might pay $20-50 a year for access to the Usenet provider which is part of the network of servers that store the obfuscated files.
Eventually people built automated tools for this so that it's not as cumbersome to do once you do the initial setup of the tools. You basically get your one year or lifetime subscriptions to the indexer and provider, install the software, plug in necessary info like API key (which allows these tools to connect to your indexer and provider) and then within the tools you just tell it what titles you want and it attempts to get things for you automatically based on criteria you have set up in the settings of the tools.
Of course I'm only using this method for copyright-free material as anyone might advise, though there are some unscrupulous individuals that acquire copyrighted material this way.
Why go through such a cumbersome process when I've been able to find anything I need via Internet trackers? Obviously, less likely to be tracked, but in all my years I've only ever had such a...
Why go through such a cumbersome process when I've been able to find anything I need via Internet trackers?
Obviously, less likely to be tracked, but in all my years I've only ever had such a thing happen once.
It's not that cumbersome once you get familiar with it, so the answer probably depends on someones familiarity with it. Once familiar, some might use it because the automation makes it so you can...
It's not that cumbersome once you get familiar with it, so the answer probably depends on someones familiarity with it.
Once familiar, some might use it because the automation makes it so you can expand your library of content more easily. Some might also use it just because other options become less familiar, as people in here are asking about what trackers to use. Some might also use it because doing anything at scale opens you up to more risk.
If unfamiliar with it, some might do it because it could be seen as a hobby, if you like tinkering with things some people don't view the setup as merely just a chore but as something to learn. Some might do it because public trackers can be unreliable or slow, or don't want to risk getting copyright strikes. Knowing what trackers to use and how to identify the right files could be seen as cumbersome to people who don't already know, so if all roads have a barrier to pass, one might choose one that just seems safer and better overall.
There's plenty of people out there who just use random sites that have a video player embedded and play the movies or shows directly in the browser, why use a tracker at all if you could use that? They're all different tiers of quality, risk, discoverability, availability and numerous other criteria you could come up with.
Also it's worth noting that what you are looking for, and how often you are looking for things, could be quite different than others. Maybe you download something off a tracker once or twice a month, maybe you only get certain kinds of content that for whatever reason isn't as policed by copyright enforcement organizations as other people. In all your years, you might have only downloaded 1/50th the amount of content other people download and that may have exposed you to less risk of being caught on public trackers.
Finally, I'm also providing more of a broad explanation that makes it cumbersome because it makes you try to understand the concept before you've even used it. For people that actually want to use it, there are resources that they can be pointed to where they're told what to do, in what steps to do it, without necessarily needing to understand it. So that further explains why someone might do it, because once they acknowledge they're willing to pay a small amount to get a different experience than what they've been using, people are willing to guide them in the right direction to make it easier to get it all working.
This was a very well written paragraph, but if I’m being honest it doesn’t really answer the question of “why should I take all these steps when I can use a VPN and go to 1337 to get whatever I...
This was a very well written paragraph, but if I’m being honest it doesn’t really answer the question of “why should I take all these steps when I can use a VPN and go to 1337 to get whatever I need?”
Are you insinuating that the methodology you described allows you to circumvent the radar of ISPs that will ding you for copyright infringement?
I imagine there’s more to it, since a simple vpn will keep you well hidden but I’m curious what more your workflow offers over the simplicity behind going to 1337 and just downloading what I want/need
Now, if there’s stuff on the Usenet that’s not on 1337 then that’s different, but I think most relatively mainstream stuff can be found on there
I'm biased towards myself, but to be fair, that wasn't the original question. Perhaps I understood the question in a way that most people wouldn't and thus my answer wasn't addressing the question...
This was a very well written paragraph, but if I’m being honest it doesn’t really answer the question of “why should I take all these steps when I can use a VPN and go to 1337 to get whatever I need?”
I'm biased towards myself, but to be fair, that wasn't the original question. Perhaps I understood the question in a way that most people wouldn't and thus my answer wasn't addressing the question as most would have interpreted it. The original question was also a bit more general than yours, so the extra parameters allow for more specific answers.
In order to torrent something, you first need to know how to find the proper torrent places to begin with. How do you know 1337 is a proper place to go? How do you know what VPN to use or that a VPN is even necessary at all? How do you know 1337 isn't going to serve you up malware? These are all cumbersome barriers to the uninitiated, yet to you, they seem natural and Usenet seems like the cumbersome barrier.
I don't believe there's a significant difference once you're using a proper VPN with torrents and usenet, at least on a smaller scale, but that's why I point out that there's some barriers you don't necessarily realize once you're already familiar with torrenting.
One of the differences is probably that there's less risk of messing up with Usenet and getting a copyright notice, because you can forget to turn on your VPN while torrenting or forget to turn on the kill-switch if it loses its connection. Another difference is probably speed, because most people using VPNs and public trackers are probably not bothering to seed the things they download, and so a lot of those swarms can suffer from too much leeching and not enough seeding. Usenet provides more reliable speeds and in some cases may produce significantly better speeds than public tracker swarms on a VPN. As I mentioned, probably not significant differences to some, but those are the ones I can think of.
Mind you, I haven't used a public tracker in probably 14 years or so, so there may be other things I'm not remembering. I was using a private tracker for awhile before transitioning into usenet. The automation setups that I've used with usenet I believe can be used with torrents, so I didn't even list that as an advantage of usenet, though I'm not sure if there are limitations with that and it could be the case that automation works much better with usenet setups than with torrent setups. Why did I switch from primarily using a private tracker to usenet? Because I don't have to seed with usenet, because it gave me access to more content, not just titles but quality. I didn't list this as an inherent advantage over torrents because torrents sometimes have better options too, it depends. So torrents still can supplement usenet in some cases.
One thing that wasn't mentioned by @grumble4681 is speed. The download speed when using UseNet utilizes as much bandwidth as is available to you - my downloads from UseNet have been exponentially...
One thing that wasn't mentioned by @grumble4681 is speed. The download speed when using UseNet utilizes as much bandwidth as is available to you - my downloads from UseNet have been exponentially faster in some cases.
If you mean public trackers, Usenet (from what I hear) will have better retention and sometimes a better selection. If you mean private trackers, especially top-tier ones, Usenet will not add...
Why go through such a cumbersome process when I've been able to find anything I need via Internet trackers?
If you mean public trackers, Usenet (from what I hear) will have better retention and sometimes a better selection. If you mean private trackers, especially top-tier ones, Usenet will not add anything but redundancy IMO.
I've used RuTracker successfully for a long time. You'll need a translation feature/extension on your browser to read the posts, but it's good for filling in the gaps left by 1337.
I've used RuTracker successfully for a long time. You'll need a translation feature/extension on your browser to read the posts, but it's good for filling in the gaps left by 1337.
From what I've been able to find, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of official rules or stances other than what's in the TOS, and what is in the TOS is basically boilerplate legal...
From what I've been able to find, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of official rules or stances other than what's in the TOS, and what is in the TOS is basically boilerplate legal protection wording, which is to say that tildes complies with the law and removes any infringing material and such.
Since tildes is just Deimos, and doesn't really have any significant revenue (thus not really any activity can be seen as just a cost of doing business), one must consider their actions within some level of responsibility to not flagrantly skirt the rules in such a way that it may invite legal problems, but at the same time within reason that copyright trolls should have no reasonable claims over general discussion.
In that way, I would expect that first and foremost, not linking to other things probably drastically improves the situation. Mentioning a name of a site, such as this whole submission does by acknowledging ThePirateBay's existence, would seemingly not be out of bounds.
It's worth noting that Reddit recently had to fight copyright trolls over some bullshit about users posting on the site that they had used a certain ISP to download copyrighted content and this copyright troll tried to force reddit to give up IP addresses or other info about the users, even though the users did not link to any content or were even being targeted for copyright infringement directly. Supposedly the copyright troll only wanted to talk to these users to get their testimony to use in a lawsuit against the ISP, but in any case Reddit was in the middle of this and chose to use resources to protest giving over this information.
The line between reasonable and unreasonable becomes murky in such situations, because it's not reasonable that such speech should be stifled because copyright trolls abuse the legal system, but it also wouldn't be fair to expect someone like Deimos to be able to stand up to such things on his own. I suspect that the rarity of this situation means that users should not feel the need to stifle themselves to this degree, especially absent any more strict or specific wording about what can be talked about regarding piracy.
If you have concerns about it though, requested information can probably more safely be sent through private messages to users if it doesn't seem like something many people are asking about and this even further reduces tildes risk to copyright trolls.
Context is likely important too. If someone asks where they can get XYZ copyrighted movie, and someone tells them some relatively unknown site that gives people illegal access to the content, that's probably prohibited discussion even without links. If someone asks what sites compete with The Pirate Bay, without discussing specific copyrighted material, and you provide the name of an alternative, I'd suspect that would not be prohibited discussion.
Torrenting isn't itself illegal and it has legitimate uses... I understand TPB isn't what you'll consider "legitimate" but it's a gray area, if you don't mind PMing I'd love to hear what you may...
Torrenting isn't itself illegal and it has legitimate uses... I understand TPB isn't what you'll consider "legitimate" but it's a gray area, if you don't mind PMing I'd love to hear what you may offer but if not that's ok too :)
I use Prowlarr with a host of trackers, private and public, but I'm away from home for a few days and I don't have access to any of it, neither can I remember it all from the top of my head. That...
I use Prowlarr with a host of trackers, private and public, but I'm away from home for a few days and I don't have access to any of it, neither can I remember it all from the top of my head. That said, for public trackers obviously 1337 is the number one alternative, rutracker is decent for general stuff as well, there's therarbg for series and movies, a revival project of the original rarbg that just got started a few days ago, no clue how good it is though...
There's a huge list of public and private trackers and other sources on the FMHY website if you're interested.
It's popular but it shouldn't be considering the astonishing number of fake uploads and malware there. Not saying you can't use it, but there's much safer and more up to date trackers, you're...
It's popular but it shouldn't be considering the astonishing number of fake uploads and malware there. Not saying you can't use it, but there's much safer and more up to date trackers, you're doing yourself a diservice by using it outside of old stuff you can't find anywhere else.
Ernesto Van der Sar The Pirate Bay celebrates its 20th anniversary today. Founded in 2003 by a collective of hackers and activists, the small Swedish BitTorrent tracker grew to become a global...
Ernesto Van der Sar
The Pirate Bay celebrates its 20th anniversary today. Founded in 2003 by a collective of hackers and activists, the small Swedish BitTorrent tracker grew to become a global icon for online piracy. The rebellious torrent site has a turbulent history and clashed with law enforcement authorities on multiple occasions. Despite these setbacks, it remains online today.
Birth
During the summer of 2003, Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån was making a name for itself; sharing news and educating people on how they could share media online.
What the group’s members didn’t realize at the time, is that the plans they made would create a ripple effect that still has an impact decades later.
Like many other people mesmerized by the unbridled ability to share files over the Internet, the new BitTorrent protocol caught Piratbyrån’s eye. From one thing came another, and Piratbyrån decided to start their own tracker.
When this idea was first brought up isn’t clear, not even to the site’s founders, but at the end of 2003 The Pirate Bay was presented to the public.
“We have opened a BitTorrent tracker – The Pirate Bay. From there, you can download and share games, movies, discs, TV shows and more,” the short announcement reads, translated from Swedish.
Admin's post
Earlier today, Pirate Bay admin Spud17 posted a message in the Pirate Bay forum to celebrate the 20th anniversary.
“Most of the current TPB Crew have been here for well over 10 years, many for much, much longer, and we’re proud to be associated with the world’s most iconic torrent site,” she notes.
“We volunteer our time freely to help keep the site clean, nuking the fakes and malware to kingdom come, and help edit/move/delete torrents as and when uploaders request help in the forum’s Account Issues subforum.”
Piratebay is a shadow of its former self, but it's still impressive that a public tracker this big survived this long... Even though I struggle to think of why anyone would ever use it nowadays with better options.
Mind sharing what those better options are? Rarbg went down, and the only alternative I can think of is 1337.
Usenet ;)
What is it?
I won't give you the technical answer as you can just look it up on Wikipedia for that. I'll just say what it is with regards to how it's used in this context. (It has different uses/purposes than just this)
You generally have to pay to use it, and you're paying to access a server that has files stored on it. These files are uploaded by someone else, and they're generally obfuscated to the point where you don't know or can't tell what the files are without using an NZB indexer service. You generally have to pay for the indexers as well, but you can access some for free or to a very limited amount you can access some for free. These are basically like search engines for NZB files, and the NZB files are what points to the obfuscated files on the usenet servers.
So if someone uploads ksdjfldksjfdlksdjflkdsjlfsdkjdlsfkjfsdlkjsdffjsdlfkjsdldjlfkdsj.rar onto a Usenet server, rather than you having to go looking for all of these obfuscated files yourself and find them, you generally pay an indexer site that has done so and they have a search engine that you can search for titles as a normal person would. You might pay $10 a year or something to access an indexer (price varies), and sometimes you might want access to a couple indexers as they can vary in what they have indexed. And you might pay $20-50 a year for access to the Usenet provider which is part of the network of servers that store the obfuscated files.
Eventually people built automated tools for this so that it's not as cumbersome to do once you do the initial setup of the tools. You basically get your one year or lifetime subscriptions to the indexer and provider, install the software, plug in necessary info like API key (which allows these tools to connect to your indexer and provider) and then within the tools you just tell it what titles you want and it attempts to get things for you automatically based on criteria you have set up in the settings of the tools.
Of course I'm only using this method for copyright-free material as anyone might advise, though there are some unscrupulous individuals that acquire copyrighted material this way.
Why go through such a cumbersome process when I've been able to find anything I need via Internet trackers?
Obviously, less likely to be tracked, but in all my years I've only ever had such a thing happen once.
It's not that cumbersome once you get familiar with it, so the answer probably depends on someones familiarity with it.
Once familiar, some might use it because the automation makes it so you can expand your library of content more easily. Some might also use it just because other options become less familiar, as people in here are asking about what trackers to use. Some might also use it because doing anything at scale opens you up to more risk.
If unfamiliar with it, some might do it because it could be seen as a hobby, if you like tinkering with things some people don't view the setup as merely just a chore but as something to learn. Some might do it because public trackers can be unreliable or slow, or don't want to risk getting copyright strikes. Knowing what trackers to use and how to identify the right files could be seen as cumbersome to people who don't already know, so if all roads have a barrier to pass, one might choose one that just seems safer and better overall.
There's plenty of people out there who just use random sites that have a video player embedded and play the movies or shows directly in the browser, why use a tracker at all if you could use that? They're all different tiers of quality, risk, discoverability, availability and numerous other criteria you could come up with.
Also it's worth noting that what you are looking for, and how often you are looking for things, could be quite different than others. Maybe you download something off a tracker once or twice a month, maybe you only get certain kinds of content that for whatever reason isn't as policed by copyright enforcement organizations as other people. In all your years, you might have only downloaded 1/50th the amount of content other people download and that may have exposed you to less risk of being caught on public trackers.
Finally, I'm also providing more of a broad explanation that makes it cumbersome because it makes you try to understand the concept before you've even used it. For people that actually want to use it, there are resources that they can be pointed to where they're told what to do, in what steps to do it, without necessarily needing to understand it. So that further explains why someone might do it, because once they acknowledge they're willing to pay a small amount to get a different experience than what they've been using, people are willing to guide them in the right direction to make it easier to get it all working.
This was a very well written paragraph, but if I’m being honest it doesn’t really answer the question of “why should I take all these steps when I can use a VPN and go to 1337 to get whatever I need?”
Are you insinuating that the methodology you described allows you to circumvent the radar of ISPs that will ding you for copyright infringement?
I imagine there’s more to it, since a simple vpn will keep you well hidden but I’m curious what more your workflow offers over the simplicity behind going to 1337 and just downloading what I want/need
Now, if there’s stuff on the Usenet that’s not on 1337 then that’s different, but I think most relatively mainstream stuff can be found on there
I'm biased towards myself, but to be fair, that wasn't the original question. Perhaps I understood the question in a way that most people wouldn't and thus my answer wasn't addressing the question as most would have interpreted it. The original question was also a bit more general than yours, so the extra parameters allow for more specific answers.
In order to torrent something, you first need to know how to find the proper torrent places to begin with. How do you know 1337 is a proper place to go? How do you know what VPN to use or that a VPN is even necessary at all? How do you know 1337 isn't going to serve you up malware? These are all cumbersome barriers to the uninitiated, yet to you, they seem natural and Usenet seems like the cumbersome barrier.
I don't believe there's a significant difference once you're using a proper VPN with torrents and usenet, at least on a smaller scale, but that's why I point out that there's some barriers you don't necessarily realize once you're already familiar with torrenting.
One of the differences is probably that there's less risk of messing up with Usenet and getting a copyright notice, because you can forget to turn on your VPN while torrenting or forget to turn on the kill-switch if it loses its connection. Another difference is probably speed, because most people using VPNs and public trackers are probably not bothering to seed the things they download, and so a lot of those swarms can suffer from too much leeching and not enough seeding. Usenet provides more reliable speeds and in some cases may produce significantly better speeds than public tracker swarms on a VPN. As I mentioned, probably not significant differences to some, but those are the ones I can think of.
Mind you, I haven't used a public tracker in probably 14 years or so, so there may be other things I'm not remembering. I was using a private tracker for awhile before transitioning into usenet. The automation setups that I've used with usenet I believe can be used with torrents, so I didn't even list that as an advantage of usenet, though I'm not sure if there are limitations with that and it could be the case that automation works much better with usenet setups than with torrent setups. Why did I switch from primarily using a private tracker to usenet? Because I don't have to seed with usenet, because it gave me access to more content, not just titles but quality. I didn't list this as an inherent advantage over torrents because torrents sometimes have better options too, it depends. So torrents still can supplement usenet in some cases.
One thing that wasn't mentioned by @grumble4681 is speed. The download speed when using UseNet utilizes as much bandwidth as is available to you - my downloads from UseNet have been exponentially faster in some cases.
If you mean public trackers, Usenet (from what I hear) will have better retention and sometimes a better selection. If you mean private trackers, especially top-tier ones, Usenet will not add anything but redundancy IMO.
I've used RuTracker successfully for a long time. You'll need a translation feature/extension on your browser to read the posts, but it's good for filling in the gaps left by 1337.
Qbittorrent has inbuilt search feature. You don't need any website. :) plus it is the best BitTorrent client.
I mean, can I even? I don't know how Tildes handles piracy talk...
From what I've been able to find, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of official rules or stances other than what's in the TOS, and what is in the TOS is basically boilerplate legal protection wording, which is to say that tildes complies with the law and removes any infringing material and such.
Since tildes is just Deimos, and doesn't really have any significant revenue (thus not really any activity can be seen as just a cost of doing business), one must consider their actions within some level of responsibility to not flagrantly skirt the rules in such a way that it may invite legal problems, but at the same time within reason that copyright trolls should have no reasonable claims over general discussion.
In that way, I would expect that first and foremost, not linking to other things probably drastically improves the situation. Mentioning a name of a site, such as this whole submission does by acknowledging ThePirateBay's existence, would seemingly not be out of bounds.
It's worth noting that Reddit recently had to fight copyright trolls over some bullshit about users posting on the site that they had used a certain ISP to download copyrighted content and this copyright troll tried to force reddit to give up IP addresses or other info about the users, even though the users did not link to any content or were even being targeted for copyright infringement directly. Supposedly the copyright troll only wanted to talk to these users to get their testimony to use in a lawsuit against the ISP, but in any case Reddit was in the middle of this and chose to use resources to protest giving over this information.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/reddit-beats-film-industry-wont-have-to-identify-users-who-admitted-torrenting/
The line between reasonable and unreasonable becomes murky in such situations, because it's not reasonable that such speech should be stifled because copyright trolls abuse the legal system, but it also wouldn't be fair to expect someone like Deimos to be able to stand up to such things on his own. I suspect that the rarity of this situation means that users should not feel the need to stifle themselves to this degree, especially absent any more strict or specific wording about what can be talked about regarding piracy.
If you have concerns about it though, requested information can probably more safely be sent through private messages to users if it doesn't seem like something many people are asking about and this even further reduces tildes risk to copyright trolls.
Context is likely important too. If someone asks where they can get XYZ copyrighted movie, and someone tells them some relatively unknown site that gives people illegal access to the content, that's probably prohibited discussion even without links. If someone asks what sites compete with The Pirate Bay, without discussing specific copyrighted material, and you provide the name of an alternative, I'd suspect that would not be prohibited discussion.
Sure, seems reasonable enough.
Torrenting isn't itself illegal and it has legitimate uses... I understand TPB isn't what you'll consider "legitimate" but it's a gray area, if you don't mind PMing I'd love to hear what you may offer but if not that's ok too :)
I use Prowlarr with a host of trackers, private and public, but I'm away from home for a few days and I don't have access to any of it, neither can I remember it all from the top of my head. That said, for public trackers obviously 1337 is the number one alternative, rutracker is decent for general stuff as well, there's therarbg for series and movies, a revival project of the original rarbg that just got started a few days ago, no clue how good it is though...
There's a huge list of public and private trackers and other sources on the FMHY website if you're interested.
The Pirate Bay is still relevant and popular. I use it constantly myself.
https://torrentfreak.com/top-torrent-sites/
It's popular but it shouldn't be considering the astonishing number of fake uploads and malware there. Not saying you can't use it, but there's much safer and more up to date trackers, you're doing yourself a diservice by using it outside of old stuff you can't find anywhere else.
IDK dude, I am a happy customer. But I wouldn't open it without Ublock Origin.
Ernesto Van der Sar
The Pirate Bay celebrates its 20th anniversary today. Founded in 2003 by a collective of hackers and activists, the small Swedish BitTorrent tracker grew to become a global icon for online piracy. The rebellious torrent site has a turbulent history and clashed with law enforcement authorities on multiple occasions. Despite these setbacks, it remains online today.
Birth
Admin's post
Happy Birthday and Thank You to anakata, TiAMO, and brokep, the PB founders.