So, i want to give a try to usenet world.
I have the *Arr setup with torrents now, and works great, but why not experiment a bit further?
So many questions…
First of all: will i find italian contents? Or its all US/English stuff?
I got an account on NZBFind, bit thats only an indexer right? I need also to find an access provider to usenet? If so, which access provider do you recomend? I want somewhere i can test for a few weeks or a month or so before committing, so no credit card upfront.
Update: trough techradar got an offer on newshosting for 5.99/mo with 3 monts free. Paid with PayPal then cancelled the recurrent immediately (so paid 0 so far). But at the moment not yet sure i made it working in my *Arr setup properly.
- Usenet provider. I suggest if you make the jump, then Newshosting is a great option. Why: 5557 days of retention, up to 100 connections, and unlimited download (on highest plan $15/month).
Also Newshosting offers a FREE TRIAL. From there T&C - “Free Trial ends in 14 days or 30GB used, whichever comes first.” You might have to do a CC upfront, but just cancel it the next day, and run the free 2 weeks.
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Will you find Italian content. YES, there is tons of it. How do I know? Because I host a Usenet indexer/scraper, and I see everything that is scraped on my server. English, German and Italian are among the top 5 languages.
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NZBFind. That is a scraper/indexer. You still need a Usenet provider. The indexers just provide you with the NZB, you need the usenet provider (configured in NZBGet or whatever your download *arrr is) to get all the “parts” (binary posts) and assemble them together.
Just signed up for newshosting Paid like $89 for a year.
Edit: because of this comment.
Thanks!
Welcome! Thanks for also pointing out that yearly is cheaper that monthly subscription.
there are plenty of newshosting resellers that use the same exact servers that are much cheaper than $15 a month or even $10 a month. use one of the backbone maps to see all of the various ones.
i dont think any service is going to give you free weeks or a month with no strings attached. if they did everybody would use them and not pay. you can just buy 1 unlimited month of frugal usenet for 5 bucks (not a subscription) and call it good.
There are plenty that will give you a free something. It might be a week/1GB whichever is first (A good way to look around). There are a lot that give you a free day with no limit (other than number of connections).
Keep an eye on black friday deals, they are usually the best around. You may get lifetime deals on the cheap from indexers, cheap blocks/subs from server providers. It’s a steep, but rewarding learning curve. Can’t help you with Italian content though.
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Nzbgeek, nzbplanet, dognzb and Drunken Slug are the best indexers in my experience. Really only need 1 or 2 of these.
Providers are both trickier and simpler. most are just resellers and theres really only 2 backbones for the providers. There’s a diagram somewhere of all of the different providers and which backbone they come off of. I got NZB ninja a decade ago cuz it was the cheapest at the time but really any of them will do.
There’s more than 2.
Here’s a map:
I use Astraweb because I can buy 1000GB at a time that doesn’t expire so I avoid the monthly fees. Works well for me as I don’t do a high volume and it removes any feeling of pressure to use it more than I need.
Astraweb is the absolute worst to be recommending. DMCA’s are instant. Connections are 50 (this isn’t bad, but there are many others that offer 60 or more).
Astraweb is the same exact servers as Newshosting that you glowingly recommended up thread. cant be that bad i guess. ;)
ownership and operation are the difference.
but they are literally the same servers operated the exact same way. a take down happens on newshosting will be reflected at the same exact time on all resellers, astraweb included. astraweb moved over to nh / omicron a few years back where prior they were their own system and i remember when the dmca thing was a big thing for them but that was like a decade+ ago. newshosting or any reseller are all connecting to the same servers, look at the IPs and how close they are, follow the traces to the same location.
Well for someone like myself that is low volume Astraweb is great because they offer the option of buying GBs instead of monthly fees.
That’s fair. I did use them for a while, but in my case (which was very heavy duty), I saw takedowns way faster than others. Not saying they are bad, but they are “super compliant” to complaints.
Dumb question: how can you get DMCA’d?
I thought it’s all encrypted and servers are no log?
So your connection can be (using port 587 for example) is encrypted. That is not the problem.
The problem is unencrypted or open filenames. Its the content that is DMCA’d on usenet, not the end user.
If you post up to usenet a file (being really simplistic since most people dont post) called “Deadpool3-h264.mkv” it will be taken down pretty quick on some services.
The problem is only with the users like you, who wanted to get it. The solution to this is threefold, get yourself onto a private scraper (one that only does occasional free signups) or be really fast on content grabbing, thirdly a site that has good de-obfuscating scraping ability. (there are a few out there that are open. pm if you are interested).
Ah, okay, thank you.
So the problem isn’t for the downloading party but for content availability on the server.
I don’t think you’ll find many providers that offer free trials, although I stand to be corrected. But some will accept crypto so if you don’t want to give your credit card details you could try that.
I use eweka.nl & nzbplanet, works fine
Italian content? Some, but not much. Way less that torrents.
I speak from experience.
I’m tempted as well, but I don’t like to leave a payment trail from me to them. And if you say “bitcoin”, it’s not anonymous. Monero is a damn pain in the ass to get for what I’ve seen. Can I just send them cash in an envelope?
Grab a disposable/reloadable credit card.
Or use privacy.com
blocknews, frugal usenet and usenetnow take cash in the mail, an option at checkout. maybe others will but they dont make it obvious so you would have to contact them directly. but honestly i wouldnt worry aboutr using your card. paying for usenet access is just as legal as paying for isp access.
meh, they are all US based, I’ll try to find one EU based that allows cash payments. And I do worry. Remember, only the paranoids survive! :D But thanks for the info, I think I’ve found something suitable.
US versus EU servers as far as server content goes will be the same thing.
it’s not a matter of content, it’s that consumers’ privacy protection is not really a thing in US
true, but if you are paying in cash with presumably a burner email of some sort, what is there to worry about getting out? also, historically, europe (and organizations located there) has been the bigger pricks when it comes to usenet servers and in some cases, users.
I did not know that (about the history), I will check that out, thanks!
Bitcoin is anonymous insofar as you make sure the wallet itself can’t be traced back to you. In other words it’s all about how you operate it
I appreciate that, but it would be another part of my infra that I have to manage. I have enough stuff to worry about already, if I can just send some money in an envelope would save me a lot of time!
How and why is Usenet still a thing? Damn.
Faster, encrypted, no need to seed. Yep, sure is terrible.
Ssshhhh
You forgot, Speed, Zero Day, The backbone that distributes warez weeks ahead of any shitty p2p.
What’s the point of paying for piracy?
Depends on your view. Some see it as a way to preserve media that could otherwise be gone forever. Some see it as a reasonable price to pay instead of paying 15 different companies hundreds per month. Others don’t mind supporting the individuals and small groups who run the servers but don’t want to support large corporations.
He means whats the point in paying for usenet when p2p torrenting is free. And from my understanding its for people without enough bandwidth to seed.
And there’s no dead torrents. I could have probably added that too
it’s a service issue. if it was $5/month for every streaming service including music and current tv, would you pay for that service? how many hoops or hassles would you be willing to tolerate for that price point and access?
I don’t have speed issues with torrents / soulseek for that tho. Can still be encrypted.
if you’re paying for a vpn, then paying for usenet is no different.
IF YOU ARE JUST OUT THERE RAWDOGGING TORRENTS IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2023 then you are a fucking legend.
myself, i don’t pay for either, but i do use xdcc still and i use i2p which supports torrenting.
if you’re paying for a vpn, then paying for usenet is no different.
But I’m not. The only thing I’m going is requiring encrypting from all peers and using this blacklist.
Guess I’m a fucking legend 😂 😂
FUCKING LEGEND
Encryption doesn’t protect you from being identified. Encryption prevents eavesdropping unto the connection from a third party. DMCA lawyers don’t need to do that to identify you as a seeder. All they need to do is request the content from you, watch you send to them, and make a record of your ip address.
The blacklist, maybe protects you. No idea. Though it can easily be circumvented by a motivated group.
90% of my collection came from torrents, but I got tired of receiving copyright claims. (no vpn)
Switched to usenet mostly for that, but the other thing is the speed; torrents are typically 1-2mbps maybe 3 if you’re lucky and if you’re not it can take days to complete. Usenet gives me a consistent 60mbps always, limited by my write speed. If it’s not ready to watch within 20min of being requested, it’s because it couldn’t be found.
The day I switched from 17odd torrent indexers to a single usenet indexer, I triggered a mass search through radarr+sonarr and grabbed 2.3tb of media they had failed to find previously with torrents, completed downloading in under 36hrs.
torrents are typically 1-2mbps maybe 3 if you’re lucky and if you’re not it can take days to complete
That’s not my experience at all, I’m usually downloading at around 200-350Mbps (can’t do more that’s the limit of my connection) on TV shows etc.
I’ve occasionally run into higher rate torrents like that, but they were few and far between in the 7ish years I ran my media server on torrents.
Usenet though, the speed is always consistent regardless of the content.
Even so you still have to seed, meet lame ratio rules, hope that old torrents are still seeded etc.
Torrents certainly still have their place, but Usenet is just generally superior in all aspects, and for a few dollars a month the service it provides is unparalleled.
Torrents certainly still have their place, but Usenet is just generally superior in all aspects,
Yeah something payed, closed and not open is certainly better. lol
Clearly you don’t understand Usenet, it’s open, you can start your own provider and indexer if you like. Nothing stopping you.
I’d rather not, so I pay to support those who do a good job of it.
