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When enough people realize that it's that easy and it gets sufficiently widespread it'll eventually become a target.
Either they'll shut it down or laws will become restrictive enough to make using it illegal. It'll be the '90s and early 00's again they'll be dragging students and housewives into court.
There will always be enough people out there who refuse to put their payment identity online that torrents aren't going anywhere.
Hell, even torrents couldn't kill news groups.
Even late 00's. I started young enough to know that old song and dance. Disgusting behavior, imo. The underpaid suddenly have their lives ruined, jail time, and millions in debt just because they sought a way to save a little money. Family lives ruined for what would be considered pocket money for big corp. The people that sell pirated content, sure, but they've destroyed people that were just using it.
Which is why I'll never stop being a pirate. They've made examples of us for years by slaughtering the already destitute. Now the masks are coming off and their outstretched hands for your money, money that the common people don't have in a repression, isn't even subtle anymore. Those that never even looked to piracy are now seeing why its been done for years as subscriptions and buying content become more and more greedy.
Its a double edged sword, really. We need more people to realize and see the greed that's rolling off these companies. That will, in turn, get a lot of piracy tools outlawed and we'll have to get really sneaky and fly under the radar for a bit (much like the '90s and '00s). Imo, its a necessary evil. I'm just upset because I know we'll lose more good people. And trust will be at a low soon. I remember the rumor that YIFY sold out because every tracker for YIFY rips was suddenly infested with feds and being watched closely.
[...] what happens when everyone starts using it and torrents are no longer downloaded and properly seeded?
It's already happening. More and more people stream torrents and don't seed back which kills public torrents. Imo Debrid is not as big of an issue as they don't necessarily tax the P2P network as much as someone only streaming torrents and automatically dumping them directly.
Additionally downloading torrents after you watched them does not make much sense as you'd tax the network without benefit (unless you seed to say a ratio of 2+).
If you currently have torrents there's nothing stopping you from continuing to seed them if you don't need the storage. Long term seeders are especially important for keeping torrents alive and you won't need to redownload content you've watched just to seed it.
As long as you seed to 1.0 ratio (e.g. 1GB up, 1GB down) per torrent you don't hurt the network. More means you compensate for someone not seeding.
I try so hard. I leave things up for ages. It seems like once I’ve DLed something, no one else wants it.
Do you have a static IP address? CG-NAT has done a really great job of hindering torrents, since my understanding is that at least one side of the connection needs to have an open port. So, if you don't, then only the few people who do are able to download from you, which can make it seem like no one wants your stuff.
That’s probably it! My service provider is a huge dick and doesn’t allow me to do a lot of that. Well, at least not until I pay them more and I pay them too much already.
I had to switch off of Mullvad for this reason and move to a VPN that allows me to open a port so I can seed properly. Ever since, I've been able to connect with the majority and download/upload speeds have increased by quite a bit. I don't think you need static. AirVPN explains its better not to add exceptions to your firewall or open up your router ports on their port forwarding page. Just leave as is and switch your torrent client to use that port.
What VPN of similar price and quality would you recommend as an alternative to Mullvad?
I had to opt for AirVPN, but it could be a ticking disaster (see this reply here).
However, unless you're willing to pay a year for something, everything else is pretty high in price. AirVPN at least let me go for three months at the same price as Mullvad.
I had my eye on Windscribe, but just couldn't get behind $9 on a month by month or a year being the next step up for $5. It is an option if you can swallow the $70 for a year though. I just don't like that business tactic on principal.
This community has a lot of VPN recommendation threads too. You might be able to find a thread if you search the community.
Edit: If you do opt for AirVPN and are on Linux, I recommend running it through Eddie. Open Eddie, find the logo on the top left, click and find port forwarding. It will take you to the AirVPN port forwarding page where you can login and set a P2P port.
AirVPN and Windscribe are the two options I see come up more often. I'll look for other options as well, thank you.
Proton VPN has really good speeds, they offer Port Forwarding and their 2 year plan is 4.49 Euro per month
Unfortunately I can't afford the 2 year plan at the moment, but it's an interesting option indeed.
Just leave as is and switch your torrent client to use that port.
which port, if you don't open it?
You can let AirVPN choose the port. It will have an option to make it your 1 allowed P2P port. Then go into your torrent client and forward that port in the settings.
Same I fucking hate it
I leave things up for ages. It seems like once I’ve DLed something, no one else wants it.
Can relate
And that's fine!
Ever since my early Demonoid days I've made sure to seed at least 2.0 ratio. I think when I left, I was at 2.6. Now I just make sure to seed a week minimum, and two if the torrent is hurting for seeders. I'll remember this. What I'll do is stream via realdebrid on my TV while I seed the same on my PC.
Basically, I was downloading and seeding then using a USB to watch on TV, but my TV and Bluray player are super picky about the codec formatting. Realdebrid was my solution. When it comes to just watching by myself on PC, I still grab the torrents anyway.
At least a couple of years ago, rd was looked down upon because users only share within the rd network so despite using torrent technology and maybe even torrent releases only subscribers get the benefits.
If you want an off ramp from it, private trackers are easy to get into now. They want interviews where they give you the answers first and people still fail them.
What are you torrenting and watching on?
If you’re one of those people who just leaves their computer on at home all day you can go ahead and set up the arr stack in preparation for getting that pi5 you mentioned.
No matter if you stick with rd or switch to something else: If you have a spare old computer lying around you can use that too. People will say “no, your power bill!” but the cost is almost always negligible and the hard drives you add for more storage will be the same power draw no matter what. For me, running twelve drives in an old gaming case with a 4th gen i5 comes out to a little under a buck more a month than my rpi3 in the same (not really, I couldn’t plug the sas expander and hba into it, but with the drives in a set of external enclosures) configuration. And the rpi was less stable. And less upgradable. And less powerful and less efficient as I started to use the cpu more.
A free/$20 “junk” pc starts to look a hell of a lot better in the long term when it’s competing against a platform that can only be cheaper per month at idle.
At the moment I'm torrenting and seeding through qBittorrent but now I have a bit of streaming through Torrentio via Stremio w/ realdebrid. I do a lot of older shows that seem to be hurting for seeders, as I like to rewatch my favorites.
Completely true. The most power consumption usually comes from the screen, unless you're compiling something from source on the daily and ramping that CPU to 100%. Even then, screens have come a long way from the CRT power guzzlers. Running through SSH will negate screen cost and seeding takes nothing except network, which at the moment is still unlimited (barely, thanks to ISPs being allowed to throttle you now).
I do have a little XP system sitting in the attic. I last booted it up a couple years back and was impressed it ran, is it hadn't been turned on in nearly 14 years. The problem is space, unfortunately. I have barely any space left in my tiny apartment for even a headless tower to run.
My PC runs and seeds nearly 24/7, barring some system restarts (I distro hopped to base Arch and am still settling in and changed prefs). One of the first things I learned in my PC Repair class was that turning your computer on and off is actually worse for it, especially if you aren't running spinning drives.
According to my teacher, cooling down and heating up the PCB in your rig causes hairline fractures over time. One day you'll flip that switch, a pulse of electricity will go through them and something will be toast. Not to mention you'd run up more of an electric bill. Like how a purely gas-driven car uses more fuel from starting and stopping. I've always left my PC on and, like I said, even my 14 year old setup still runs fine.
I will continue to prefer a seedbox (rented or shared/dedicated vps).
At least I can use private trackers.
I use private trackers exclusively for content I want to "own" or want in the highest possible quality. Stremio/RD is great though for my wife to be able to search new media and potentially stream in okay quality without fucking with sonarr. Or popular TV you're maybe not sold on but would try an episode. Or for old SD content, like tossing on a 90s show for a few episodes. To be honest, I live in a world of ad block and Stremio is sometimes the only way I even know something is out...
Anyway, they complement each other well.
This is kinda what we do. But in our case we use both because personal storage is not cheap in this country and thus our self-hosted storage is limited. All out favourites that we watch repeatedly stays on the home server but we use Stremio and Torbox (because no way we're going to use RD after theyb doxed customers) for one offs, shows were trying out, etc.
For me, I am too much of a control freak in regards to ratio vs quality.
If a family member requests it, I'll take a manual look.
Only a few profiles were actually tuned (mainly only the anime profile) to be run unattended and automatically.
I've never looked into private trackers, tbh, but I may keep an eye out and see what is possible. I'll stay in with the community and maybe something will pop up, but I'm pretty happy with public. I've known my way around torrent safety since '07. The only cease and desist I've ever gotten was because of my ex at the time.
From what I understand, private trackers are something that sort of comes to you rather than asking for them. Back when Demonoid was by invite only (I haven't been there in a long time so I'm not sure how it is now), I made friends with the right people and got in early. I managed to stay in because I was a good seeder and well trusted.
Oh wow, I missed a lot. I guess Deimos went missing? Then it looks like Demonoid got a sort of community fork, but it doesn't seem to exist anymore. Huh. I'm reading that the fork didn't focus on private trackers as much as just getting the old crowd back, it seems. Wild how things have changed.
To get in you could in theory join communities like r/openSignups and other similar communities.
The tracker TL will probably open signups soon during Easter.
Ohhh! Thank you! Once I can get my Pi NAS going and have ample storage, I'd be extremely interested in archiving eventually. I should honestly start now, seeing as I have a large amount of music. I don't have many full albums, usually just picking up songs that interest me, but all the metadata is properly tagged using MusicBrainz Picard.
TL has more of a focus on visual media.
Personally I use nyaa for japan/asia focused music, web searches or soulseek for anything else (primarily flac and failback to mp3).
If I feel inclined, I'll buy the album/tracks.
Yeah, I have heard a lot about Soulseek and I'll have to check it out. That's another service that I wasn't aware of until recently. I do need an alternative to ripping off YouTube music soon, but for now it gets the job done. I also have my army of patched and FOSS apps for streaming (never use one; they always have downtimes, so having multiples let you jump around when waiting for fixes).
If you have Spotify, there are tools to rip directly from it (like actually from spotify. Unlike those find on spotify but actually download from youtube tools)
I found a decent GUI ripper for YouTube Music. I was using CLI before, but in this case a GUI was a lot faster. I've ripped a lot from Spotify, and I think my newest patched app lets me download directly. I agree, though; 90% of Spotify streaming apps and rippers are just taking from YouTube but using the Spotify indexer.
I'm curious -- I've looked at this a little in the past, but paused once the payment requirement showed up. Doesn't feel like it really matters at all about using a VPN or otherwise to try and hide my identity, if there's a charge on a credit card that proves I use a torrenting service... ? How are people sorting that out, or are we all just pretending you can't get tracked through a payment?
Honestly I just use my card. They can track my payments, but there's still nothing outlawing payment (yet) for services and they can't prove you're using those services for illegal purposes. However, realdebrid offers payments through crypto, not sure about the other debrid services.
Its so much faster to stream using debrid than over torrent, and as another mentioned here it taxes the network less. I'm 50/50 on it, because I'd much rather promote seeding what you take, but Stremio with the Torrentio addon setup for debrid is the fastest method with the most coherent UI I've used to date, and it lets you continue from where you left off, a lot like most streaming services.
Not everyone will start using it just because the price is right, it is a subscription. Also, not everyone wants to stream and forget. There will likely always be seeders of public torrents available especially for popular or mainstream content. You can always revive a dead torrent if you have access to private trackers, usenet, ddl filehosters (debrid supported)
I'd like to do this, to be honest. There are a lot of good torrents from previous generations that are dead and with the newest upsurge of piracy I'd like to see them get a little more limelight again. It seems I have a lot of research and catching up to do in this community.
You may want to look into other Debrid services as RD has said their going to start removing material (unless something changed since a month or two ago when they announced that, I switched off and stopped paying attention)
Damn, I hate when I find these things out too late, lol. Ah well, hopefully I can squeeze out these 3 months without incident and move to another service. Between AirVPN and RD I seem to be picking the providers that are standing on glass stilts.
re OT question: I remember trying out Azureus a bit back in the day, and with its "legit content distribution" section getting to watch this video:
YouTube - Benny Benassi - Satisfaction
But I didn't stick with it, mainly used µTorrent and eMule.
Memory unlocked. Thanks.
You're welcome :)
lol! Wow, I forgot about this song. I didn't either. I used it for a while, but I remember something going down with it that caused some anger among users and I went back to uTorrent.
I left the torrent scene for a bit and came back around 2016 using Tixati on Windows. Now I'm on Linux running qbit and that's probably where I stay.
Yeah, I too remember there was some anger but not the reason for it. Licensing issues, maybe? Anyway, with the kerfuffle, bloat, and Java requirement, it didn't have enough to keep me from µTorrent.
Also been using qBittorrent for the last few years, on Windows and the last two years on Linux. With search plugins for key sites, so I can avoid the popups that even uBlock Origin can't prevent.
(Due to an unpatched security vulnerability in the repo version of qB, currently using AppImages of latest versions of both qB and qB-enhanced. Only difference I personally notice is that qB-enhanced follows my system theme, dark.)
I remember azure client (the blue frog one if I'm remembering). It allowed for streaming video files as the torrent was downloading it.
Yeah, I remember the streaming ability. I never used it for that, I liked it because it was more focused on ratios. Then they started enforcing ratios which you could skip by paying. Basically your download rates would be cut unless your ratio was good. My ratio was always high, but I couldn't really stand how they started muscling people.
I think they tried backpedaling, but most of the scene had already moved back to uTorrent. That's probably why they changed the name to Vuze. This was all a long time ago though and I'm at the age where I'm finally starting to lose some memory of my younger days. They say it's downhill from 50, but really its downhill from 30.