Hi,
Sorry if this has been posted before but I’m looking at trying Usenet instead of torrents.
I’ve done some Googling and honestly, it’s a little overwhelming knowing what Usenet provider to use, where to get quality indexers and which download client would be the best.
If anyone has any resources or advice to help me sail the Usenet seas I would be eternally grateful!
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I’m not sure about anything, but the client, as I’ve been usenetting without thinking much about stuff for almost a decade now.
- eweka.nl (share your access with friends and family - I’ve shared mine with like 8 people some time in the past)
- nzbgeek (lifetime API access was like 30€ - well worth it), I also know about nzbplanet, but I don’t have a premium account there. You can try these out without paying to see if their offer suits what you’re looking for, but you won’t get API access of course and you’ll be limited in the downloads.
Last, but not least: sabnzbd is the gold standard for clients. Runs on everything: from a raspberry pi to your Desktop PC.
Do you tunnel your usage through a VPN?
Nope. Usenet is quite safe legally, afaik, since you’re not uploading/seeding anything. IANAL, though.
yea that’s not true technically. the only reason usenet hasn’t been dismantled by infinite court cases is its obscurity.
Is this really true?
The basic premise is that you’re not infringing copyright if you’re only downloading.
You’re saying that’s incorrect?
Yeah that’s not correct, downloading pirated content is still illegal, but it makes no sense for copyright holders to go after 1 person for a movie that costs $20.
You go after the uploader strictly because you can sue for damages for each person/ip they uploaded to. It’s just strictly a monetary and legal thing as to why only the uploaders are taken to court.
Pretty sure even if you block uploads with your torrent client you will still get a DMCA for downloading from a public tracker.
In the US? Absolutely.
Downloading or uploading any copyrighted content without permission is not legal. It’s the same in most countries.
Usenet still uses SSL so ISPs can’t see what you download
No but content owners could directly DMCA stuff that’s hosted on usenet, they just don’t.
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How can data snippets with ID be copyright infringement? The hoster can not know which snippet is for what and is therefore bot able to Block Upload of copyright data And in the other hand, indexer only provide a nzb files, which are as well no copyright infringement Combine this with a country where only uploading copyright protected files to the public is forbidden (like Switzerland) and you are pretty save
can not know
Yes they can, the articles are named with the filename of the content that’s in it, and the data itself is unencrypted. But I wasn’t even talking about blocking uploads, just having content providers be able to take down existing content.
But get this, it’s even worse in Switzerland because the provider is also now forced to keep that same content from reappearing! This is called the “stay down” rule.
country where only uploading is forbidden
downloading computer games and software remains a crime
Yes but that doesn’t affect any of us.
Of course it is illegal for the providers.
It could if that DMCA or some court order resulted in revealing your residential IP, and then your monopoly ISP terminates you. SSL/TLS would not save you there.
Most Usenet providers offer secure connections so I don’t know if it’s necessary, but I use a VPN.
I do. Just in case.
Ironically through my seedbox provider :pI thought seedboxes were a torrent thing?
They are.
But my provider offers a VPN through the same connection.
Last time I looked most of seedbox and usenet providers offered this as a perk.
And the speed is very good. This time I don’t even need a VPN service. Though I am limited to one country I don’t have an issue with the limitation.Thanks. I feel like since I started posting on Lemmy, I’ve been like a bottomless pit trying to learn everything I can. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with me.
My pleasure :)
Feel free to ask.So far my card house of my Debian NAS + docker + traefik reverse proxy + *arrs hasnt fallen together so I am doing something right though I have still much to learn as well.
I think it’s 80 for lifetime now, 12 for a year
You never know how long these sites are able to stay up in the future, but it’s still way less than what I’ve payed on patreon over time.
I mean, compared to streaming, 80 for even a year is a bargain lmao
Lol, true. Although that doesn’t include the provider fees, etc.
Thank you! I’ll give that stuff a look!
You may also want to look into NZBget (download client) and nzb360 for mobile management if you happen to be an Android user – or LunaSea either way.
Funnily enough, I did actually set up LunaSea last night. Haven’t played around with it much so far but it looks pretty good
Sabnzbd for downloading, Frugal usenet for provider, Nzbgeek and drunkenslug for indexer
How much does all that cost? Or rather, does all that cost? I currently torrent but could see getting into Usenet if I don’t have to provide payment info.
Sabnzbd is free, you can install anywhere basically. The rest is not free unfortunately, someone has to host the files, as there are no peers in usenet. I think some, if not all, providers and indexers can be paid with crypto or even mailing them the money by post.
Provider is €50 a year. Indexers are around €10 a year, but there are lifetime subscriptions for some.
In return, you don’t need a VPN, download speeds are stable and there is no seeding.
Out of 220 files downloaded, I only needed torrents 12 times, rest is usenet.
Read up on benefits of one over the other before switching :)
My Prowler stats over the last 90 days are ~1600 usenet grabs vs ~40 torrents. Definitely worth it not have to seed and constant gigabit speed.
Also: SpotNet (with e.g. SpotWeb as a client)
I jumped into Usenet as an experiment and, once it was setup, it was ok. Although it is definitely not simple to get started and it seems you are constantly having to pay for stuff, even to access the trackers, which don’t even have all the content!
I decided I didn’t download enough and what I wanted was too hard to find, so I went back to Torrents. Way simpler for my occasional use.
Yeah I had the same experience. Tried it out, found it way too fiddly to set up, had to pay for stuff at every turn (and managing a bunch of subscriptions is a big part of why I hate using streaming platforms in the first place) and I really didn’t find it to be worth it just to cover the tiny fraction of things I can’t find on torrents (and which TBH I didn’t even find there anyway.) Went back to torrents as it’s like 2 clicks to download something and it covers 95% of what I need anyway.
To be fair, it’s entirely possible that I was just doing it wrong and not getting optimal results, but also I don’t want to start over and pay for a bunch of other stuff to find out.
Only get Usenet with a usenet deal. Usually on/around Black Friday.
Afaik deals are usually posted on r/UsenetDeals or similar called sub.Good to know, thank you!
What are the advantages of usenets?
In Germany they provide relief from the constant fear your vpn might leak and you’ll receive mail.
Expensive mail.
Higher and better retention of old stuff.
It’s great, although a little unfair, and perhaps illegal in some draconian jurisdictions, to use nets while fishing
You’re downloading from servers not other people, so you don’t have to worry about the number of peers
You can see the discussions that inspired the Comic Book Guy.
DM me if you want invites to private indexers. They are paid but cheap. I also recommend frugal Usenet because…well…I’m cheap.
I’ll bite. What is frugal Usenet?
A usenet provider
Cool, thanks. $5 -$6 / month is cheap.
Just a cheap Usenet provider. They’re cheap for what the provide but in my opinion on par with the more expensive “premium” providers. https://frugalusenet.com/
What’s the advantage of a private indexer vs a regular one? Why would I want one over another? I’m a complete Usenet newbie.
Main advantage is typically less DCMA take downs. The public ones are public access and therefore the bots crawl those and submit the takedowns faster than on a private indexer.
I use Premiumize, multihoster for most popular Filehoster with access to Usenet, Torrent and VPN. Usenet retention is about 1200 days. It has 1TB of Cloud Storage and you can use their inbuilt Downloader on their website to download stuff straight to their cloud (or your own Mega or Google Drive cloud if you prefer that), so you don’t have to install any Torrent or Usenet clients. (This is not an ad, I just really like their service and been using it for 3 years)
Sabnzb or NZBGet are good choices if you wanna use some client on your own. Just don’t use Momentum, they will steal your credentials.
Most popular indexers are NZBIndex, Binsearch and NZBKing but I prefer Boards like nzbgrabit, nzbforyou or The Hive.
Just a quick note that the dev for NZBGet stopped work on it a year or two ago. Probably better to stick with Sabnzb.
The dev did sanction the NZBGet fork tho (nzbgetcom/nzbget). So there is still a viable and actively developed NZBGet application for those who want it
Thanks for the info. I’ll check it out.
I have never heard of any of those indexers there’s no way those are the most popular
I guess it depends on where you’re from. As a German I only use the 3 biggest German NZB boards which are also free to use and they all redirect us to the downloads of the indexers mentioned. That’s why I assumed they were the biggest.
I just found out they’re not and that there’s way more popular indexers which you have to pay for which is hilarious to me.
Hilarious? Why are you so smug? Those indexers have so much more than the ones you listed
Why replace torrents? Why not use both? It’s a bonus if your usenet provider includes a VPN.
Good question, didn’t really consider that if I’m honest. Could use the torrents as backup/secondary
One thing I love about usenet is that it’s great if you’re just looking for one episode, song, etc and don’t want to download a whole collection.
If you’re planning to download media, check out the Server Wiki. It has guides on setting up all the software to automate the process.
Thanks, but I am currently using Radarr and Sonarr, just looking at alternate potentially faster sources
You can use those on usenet, too. Just add your new trackers and download client, the rest of the -arr stack can remain as is.
Perfect, thanks!
I switched in the fall, black Friday deals on account and several indexers. Looks like it’s gonna be just at $100ish per year. After configuring an arr ecosystem with overseer handling all user interaction and automation, I don’t think I’ll ever go back. Totally worth the price imho
That’s what I’ve done. The arr suite is pretty damn convenient. Last time I did this I had to manually go fetch everything myself.
Keeping my eyes peeled for deals and things but may have to bite the bullet and just pay for one to at least try it out
Same. I got lifetime memberships to 3 usenet provides but the *arr suite gets ~95% of my media from nzbgeek. Now the only recurring cost is for my provider. Downloads are so much faster and reliable than torrenting, and the automation is amazing.
faster only depends on the server automation is easier too because it all comes from one central server. this also means its easier too shut down just look at all the Usenet providers that have been sued and closed down. downloads of torrents go faster the more people use it and download seed also depends on the internet connection of the people in the swarm. if enough people seed a torrent it will always be faster then a central sever that is bottle necked with how many connections it can handle at a time and is very hard to shut down because as long as one person is still seeding you can still download and you could build up the users of the swarm again. with usenet you can shut everything down by taking one server down and your paying money for it to so if this happens you also loose your money and then better hope you did not pay with a credit card because now they have your info too.
You set this up in docker? I’ve been fighting docker all day, finally trying to set up some arr stuff. I’m not convinced that docker is the right way to go.
I have mine set up outside of docker
It’s absolutely the right way to go, have my whole stack setup with docker compose.
Usenet is old and centralized so a lot easier to shut down and is payed because you pay for server retention and access.
Usenet is considered decentralized, it is made up of many independent servers that talk to each other. take one down, and the rest continue on without problems.
yes only with participating servers so the network is a lot smaller like only servers from one provider peer to peer is a lot more limited and slower. usenet now is just extensions build on top of the original protocol like NZB files.
You forgot the first rule.
You’ll have to enlighten me, I’m a little out of touch after going straight for a while haha
You don’t talk about Usenet.
It’s similar to rule number two.
Ah, like another club that we can’t talk about
Everyone who is paying for pirating is doing things wrong. Don’t be stupid.
A lot of people are pirating not because of the money, but the horrible service of the streaming platforms
Doesn’t matter. Pirating AND paying for it is something only a fool would do. Don’t be a fool.
