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Thoughts on private trackers
What are y'all thoughts on private tracker, or p2p in general? How private trackers compete with usenet, scene ftps etc.
What are y'all thoughts on private tracker, or p2p in general? How private trackers compete with usenet, scene ftps etc.
I spent a combined ten years on Oink's Pink Palace and What.CD, and the quality standards on them were truly faultless. You could find any music you could think of, in any format or quality you wished. If you couldn't, you'd make a request and someone would fill it within a day (except for that legendary unreleased Aphex Twin album always on top of the requests pile).
Those places were not for leechers though. You had to know what you were doing. You really had to contribute, or you'd soon find your account suspended. The ratio requirements, especially on OiNK, were pretty high. Haven't used a private tracker for years now, so I don't really know what's going on with them these days.
WCD turned me into a quality snob, and thankfully it was resurrected in the form of REDacted (almost an exact clone). Once you get the hang of ratio requirements and uploading, contributing becomes quite addicting. Your ratio eventually sustains itself even on a tracker that strict anyway if you're diligent.
I wasn't aware that the private tracker scene is shrinking. A few weeks ago there even was an article that piracy is on the rise again due to the splitting of content. So the mention in your first paragraph already seems to be in effect. And truth be told, I think that private trackers will always have their place to keep high-quality content going because ultimately, that's where the content for the public trackers comes from. It's always been usenet->private trackers->public trackers. And people who seek 4k or high quality 1080p content will always find a place in those private trackers.
I think that piracy will always be around, especially for the niche sites, for 2 reasons: People like free stuff, and people like stuff that they can't buy (either because of price or because of availability). Those will be the people who'll keep the trackers going. Hell, a Romanian private tracker just celebreated their 12th anniversary and offered unrestricted sign-ups in that period. Most of the site is in English and the rest you can read with google translate. And it works, even if their rules for seeding are very lax.
Versatility, too. I might have a certain film readily available on Netflix, but Netflix has a limited choice of subtitles, keyboard shortcuts, no range repeat options, no speed option, you can only go back/forward 10 seconds with the arrow keys (no ability to change the amount of time skipped), no trackpad gesture support, can't change subtitle format (font, stroke, size, position, color) etc, etc, etc... basically no customizability at all. Plus the autoplaying ads for shows and Netflix originals I don't care about, and that annoying thing they do where they dim the screen and overlay text over the video when you pause it to read stuff. And several other complaints...
So, even though I have a Netflix account, I still prefer to torrent Netflix films and watch them on a video player that's much more customizable and fitted to my needs and without having Netflix completely controlling the way I consume content.
I couldn't agree more on this. Autoplay is possibly the most annoying part of a Netflix subscription (along with strategic content obfuscation) and like you, I torrent a lot of content that I otherwise have paid access to. Tbh, it's just nice to have all my non-live media in a single app across every platform anytime rather than bouncing around from one to another. Movies, TV shows, music, documentaries, music videos, concert videos, podcasts, audiobooks, personal photos, home videos, etc. - all served through one app that won't secretly remove offerings based on contractual expiration. And there's still a good amount of live content--mainly sports--I access with that app since I have my OTA routed through it.
Consolidation is as valuable to me as the versatility you discuss in your comment. Pirating isn't just accessing content you don't want to pay for.
I'm fairly certain that the Subtitle font is determined by your browsers default font choice for serif fonts, but I agree with the rest of your post.
Thoughtful comment. Though I would like to suggest that the parent comment referred to very general oriented trackers as opposed to trackers which specialize in fulfilling a niche. I feel this is important to note because the p2p scene was never about "growth growth growth." I wanted to contend the notion that the overall scene is shrinking because even if that was truly the case (which is not easily quantifiable), it wouldn't really matter: the people who never had more of a passing and casual interest in what those communities have to offer were never the target demographic.
The people who contribute - by participating in the forums, checking logs, uploading torrents, talking on IRC et al - to these private trackers do so because they have an interest in the niche that the tracker is filling. This is how a subculture on the Internet begins and I will be forever grateful that these places exist.
There are people who still use IRC though Slack, Mumble, and Discord exist. People even still use Soulseek and Usenet. My point is that there are still completely valid and encouraging reasons to participate in these trackers beyond the naive yet understandable explanation of simply getting music and what not for free. Netflix and Spotify will never fulfill that role.
Correct, because even though platforms like Spotify and others (Netflix less so) try to be a social one, it rarely works out. It's a similar parallel to what happened in online video games when the majority of AAA publishers switched from letting users host private servers to dedicated matchmaking, even if such servers are crucial for creating your own communities where everyone knows each other. Now such intimate communities barely exist anymore.
I just don't pirate enough these days to use private trackers anymore but I used to use them a fair amount back in the day. For niche subjects especially they are usually much better than public trackers and because of their seeding policies even super old torrent are usually still active (even if it's just a couple of seeds). I also think their invite model is a pretty good way to ensure they don't get shut down as readily as public ones.
I still prefer usenet binaries to torrents overall, but after newzbin got shut down I pretty much gave up on using it for piracy and couldn't justify the cost of subscribing to a Usenet provider anymore. That same money goes towards a VPN now instead.
p.s. I also used IRC DCC/XDCC bots and FTPs a lot way way back in the day since I was pretty heavily involved in 0-day trading, and BBS' even way before that, back when modems sounded like this when first connecting and were still measured in bauds. I have been at this for a long time. :P
I think private trackers are a gift to humanity. I use them for various content like films/documentaries/tv shows/anime as well as more niche stuff and have 0 complaints.
It can be hard to get the first invite to a reputable private tracker, but after that you can reach other trackers through the forums.
As far as comparing them to usenet, I think private trackers are better because they're not scene exclusive. There's trackers out there that focus on the most obscure of topics, whereas usenet generally just has the newest movies and tv shows that get released -- with private trackers you can things like movies from the 1910s that a handful of people care about.
I'm definitely not against legal solutions, but we're very far away from a centralized video platform with everything available to everyone. Netflix seems like the best option, but it's missing so much content, at least in my country. I gave the trial a shot, but it's really not worth it, when I can just setup sonarr/radarr + plex and have literally any content I want.
Sadly, it seems that the legit streaming market is heading more and more towards the cable business model: lots of split up providers, each with their own subscription (Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, BBC iPlayer, etc.) and they're planning on bundling content with ads, too.
I've made the switch from piracy to legit services for music with Spotify, and I honestly don't regret it; it's great. Sure, WCD had more content and a better community, but I just want to stream some playlists on the go, not download mongolian throat singing or something -- and I'm guessing I'm in the majority of music listeners here. The convenience is way worth it with Spotify. The same cannot be said for any video streaming service, yet.
I have had a quite successful experience with BubbleUPNP + foobar2k + foo_upnp for this, I can stream anything from my music library at home (or download ahead of time, if I'm so inclined) onto my phone, my work computer, etc. It does require some technical know-how to implement (mostly, port-forwarding and you need a static IP, or at least a dynamic IP that doesn't change all the time), but it's well worth it. Heck, you could even do remote music streaming with Plex if you are willing to put up with their fairly poor interface for music (that shit laaaaags once you get a couple thousand tracks in there).
I definitely have uses for Spotify et al. (though, typically I prefer bandcamp if at all possible), but streaming stuff I already have a preferred copy of isn't one of them :p
I'm on iOS, as it so happens.
One could do Plex for music, I guess. I've never used it for music and I didn't know it was so laggy.
My pirating is effectively zero these days (and primarily usenet based now), but my perception is that the private trackers that did exist are now dead or dying, and I haven't heard of too many that are active—but this might be because I'm not paying attention.
I don't know about that. The big ones are still doing well. PtP, GGn, BTN, etc. WhatCD even survived its shutdown to a degree through REDacted.
☑️ was not paying attention
Didn't even know about any of these, but now you gave me the ammunition to search for them. I'm mostly thinking about way older ones, like...when I was in high school years ago. My willingness to pay + my current workflow for what I don't pay for probably negates the need for anything private.
Due to their nature, private trackers don't usually last very long. Especially for music, the community has gone through a number of exoduses (exodi?).
WCD lasted what like, 10 years? Longer than 99% of music start-ups in any case :p
Ah, a fellow bB user. It was my first private tracker. I run the tildes recruitment thread over there.
I came from WCD and Waffles and only just got into bB this year. Seems like a good community so far though.
I have a private torrent I use almost exclusively to pirate the latest Game of Thrones asap. Sometimes I use it to find a piece of software I want to checkout whether purchasing the "pro" license is worth it (e.g., sketchup). That said I would never use a public tracker because it's turned a bit of a limewire situation where it's hard to trust the source and you have to be extra careful not to contract a virus.
Does your GoT tracker have a good archive of episodes? I've been having trouble finding one that goes all the way back.
BTN (BroadcastTheNet) is what you want. I don't have any invites or I'd offer you one. They're very strict about seeding, but as a result they have everything. They have every season of GoT, in multiple different formats - from SD up to 720p, 1080p, and even an h.265 4k Bluray version weighing in at, Cthulhu help me, 330GB for one season. Even that has 15 seeders right now though. Out of morbid curiosity I looked up the oldest series I could think of offhand - M*A*S*H. They've got every season of that, also in 1080p if you want it.
BaconBits (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) is a good gateway drug to private trackers, if you're interested. If you build up a ratio there, in the forums you can find people offering invites to other trackers. That's how I got accounts on BTN and PTP for TV and movies respectively.
It's pretty good many things are needed for a long time and if not you can always request a seed and someone will full fill it. I don't have any invites available but I can shoot you a message if I get some any time soon.
I'm on karagarga and I don't use it much, but there's ton of movies you can't find anywhere else on there. I never managed to upload much though, so my ratio isn't great. Legal offer for movies still sucks ass.
I searched for old movies that were on PTP but not on KG and uploaded those; might want to look into doing that.
I've always been interested in checking one out, but the amount of effort doesn't seem like it's worth it. I mostly torrent sofware and films, and it's pretty rare for me not to be able to download the file through public torrents. I guess, if I tried a private tracker, I'd have my mind blown over how much easier it is to get certain files there compared to public trackers, but those hard to get files aren't that frequent for me to require a private tracker. Plus, even if I managed to get in, I don't think I'd could preserve a high ratio since I only have a disappointing laptop with pretty low storage capacity.
The only film I can think of that I couldn't download through public trackers is a Japanese low budget cult film from the 1970s.
Sofware is often harder, but if you wait long enough, or give it a few more tries, you can usually manage, too.