So far, public trackers have been working fine for me, but think I’ve finally run into some niche shows that have been hard to find or only been able to find individual episodes instead of a single collected season torrent. (Nothing too special, just some baking shows.)

I’m wondering if it’s finally time to look into private trackers or Usenet.

If you use them, what did it take for you to finally look into these more time or effort intensive piracy options?

A movie you wanted to see that was too old to be seeded on public trackers? TV shows too old or niche? A game, an obscure music artist? Something else? Was it just curiosity? Or something you did immediately upon getting into piracy? I’m just curious myself lol.

  • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    The only effort it takes to join private trackers is usually in the quick application you have to do. After that, there’s no more effort than normal.

  • Xianshi@lemm.eeEnglish
    8·
    12 days ago

    Personally I dont bother with private. I’d rather the access is available for everyone. Personally I think i2p is a much better focus for the community in the long term.

    • Tregetour@lemdro.idEnglish
      5·
      12 days ago

      The public internet is for P2P exchange as well, no matter how much gov/corp tries to stymie it. I2P has its merits, but it would be sad to see it take off purely because people ceded the former territory for an obscure network layer.

  • ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    11 days ago

    Honestly public trackers are awesome. All you want for free and I get more leaches so I can help more people. I only use private for niche interests such as Asian movies and audiobooks

  • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    13 days ago

    I like private trackers for music because what I’m looking for is niche and I’m a lossless whore. I like private trackers for movies/TV because I don’t have to use a VPN and I can find remuxes or tiny X265 rips to fill my Plex server with. I can’t remember the last time I used a public tracker.

    • Gregor@gregtech.euEnglish
      2·
      12 days ago

      Don’t private trackers have less content? And they also gatekeep? Sorry I know nothing about this

      • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        41·
        11 days ago

        The have significantly more content (in my experience), and the gate keeping is pretty much just having standards to keep the community safe, and the media seeded.

  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    Private trackers tend to have more hard to find content available, especially if the tracker specializes in that kind of content. They often have the ability to make requests if they don’t have what you’re looking for too. On the good ones, the requests tend to be filled quickly. The content is well moderated, so you are much less likely to find malware or bad or low quality releases. The downloads are usually a lot faster too. Many people use seedboxes, so 1gbps+ download speeds are not uncommon.

  • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    I joined one mostly for content in my native language for my kids, it’s as good as impossible to find on public trackers. Initially I intended to only use it for that, but I have since abandoned public trackers completely and exclusively use the private tracker now. I don’t find more time or effort intensive at all though, not sure what you expect to do beyond seeding to meet the tracker requiremens, I seed everything I’ve downloaded, so it makes no difference to me and I haven’t noticed any difference whatsoever in effort to use a private tracker compared to a public one.

  • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    12 days ago

    Semi-private trackers like TorrentLeech are a great step up from public trackers and they are relatively easy to join (e.g. seedbox promo). More content is available and well-seeded for longer periods of time.

    It’s not difficult to keep your ratio, even with a 50MBit/s connection (torrents > 15GB are freeleech anyway), as long as you seed 24/7. Or buy a seedbox for a while, build a few TB of buffer (autobrr) and never worry again.

    Edit: Usenet is great because it’s fast, and depending on your (non-english) language, it’s a completely different league than public trackers. But I’d argue for english content TL (and a few others) is good enough.

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        12 days ago

        Semi-private just refers to how easy it is to join them. E.g. rutracker is considered a semi-private tracker, because it requires an account, but always allows registrations and does not enforce any ratio.

        In that sense I was wrong in calling TL a semi-private tracker, because TL does require maintaining a ratio. But given it is possible to simply join via their seedbox offerings, it is not as private as some other trackers, which require proofs of good behaviour on other trackers and/or an application process.

        Edit: Public: no registration required
        Semi-private: registration required, but always possible; lax ratio rules
        Private: registration required, mostly through invites/applications; anti-leech ratio rules

  • traches@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    13 days ago

    Private trackers tend to be more curated and better organized. Decent filenames, consistent organization and quality, correct metadata, no missing episodes or tracks, no RAR files, etc