It was so easy when I was growing up. I would just type my search into LimeWire and if it turned out to be weird porn I would delete it. Then we had The Pirate Bay, and I could go through reviews to see whether something was a virus or not. Now all public sites I am aware of are riddled with viruses, and I am warned that attempting to download any of them will result in me receiving threatening letters from copyrights holders in the post.
Here is what I have discovered today, trying to pirate things again:
The safest thing you can do is direct download from file share websites, but nobody says where these websites are.
If you want to torrent files, you need to subscribe to an exclusive private tracker. To get access to a private tracker, you need to get lucky, or you need to go through a painstaking process of levelling up over months and months of seeding torrents from semi-private trackers until you get to an actual good one that may or may not have the content you are looking for.
If you don’t want to do this, you need to pay for a UseNet provider, then you need to register for a similarly exclusive UseNet index service, probably paid as well. There is no guarantee you will find what you are looking for on here either, and there is a chance that your download will fail.
Whether you are using torrents or UseNet, you need a service to help you find the content in the first place, for example Sonarr, Radarr or Lidarr. Something called Jackett also fits into this somehow and apparently links to whatever indexes you are using.
If you are torrenting, you then need a torrent client such as qBitTorrent to actually get the files.
If you are using UseNet, you need a UseNet downloader such as jdownloader.
Alternatively, for either option you can pay for a Debrid service such as Real-Debrid or Premiumize to download the files for you, if you send them the links. Besides protecting your privacy and your bandwidth, these services are also great for bypassing the limits on the elusive direct download sites nobody can tell me any more about.
I don’t really think of myself as a stupid person but this shit is so confusing. It is harder than paying for drugs on the dark web with illegal crypto currency. Am I nearly there? Is this everything? If I pay for a UseNet provider and somehow register for a UseNet index, is it as simple as connecting the two together to something such as Sonarr to find the content and jdownloader to get it?
Am I the only one that still just uses a VPN with Pirate Bay and Magnetdl? I only download videos and music, no games, and I’m finding 98%of what I want in the resolution I want. Is it really worth setting up the rest of it?
Everything else just makes it easier to manage which depending on your preferences and how much content you’re dealing with that may not be a problem for you. I run the whole stack using Deluge as my downloader with a VPN. Radarr, Sonarr, and Lidarr automatically locate the torrents on the public tracker sites for me, send the downloads to Deluge, and imports the media into Jellyfin when the download finishes. I also use Jellyseer for discovering and requesting content, as well as allowing family members to request content. I also use Prowlarr to manage the trackers being used in the various arr apps. It’s a very robust and automated system but it all boils down to just downloading torrents over a VPN.
1337x usually has whatever I need. Although I mostly just pirate games and the occasional movie or series. I don’t have fuck you money to run a data center in my garage
I already am self hosting everything. I have an 8TB drive over half full at the moment, and filling up fast now that I have a 4K TV. I also have an Openvpn server so that I can access my content when I’m away. I’ve had this setup since before torrents were even a thing.
Hold fire on that 4K business, if you haven’t yet I recommend you do a test to see if you can actually tell the difference between Torrent 1080p & Torrent 4K. Out of my friends & family on a few can see a difference, but if they can they do say T4K looks better, but only slightly. So weigh up if the 2x or 3x larger file is worth the improvement.
Sorry if I sound aggressive or preach-y, just trying to save a fellow sailor some space on their ship is all.
It’s only select movies that I’m getting in 4K, and any Star Trek that comes out in 4K or maybe the Star Wars 4K77 fan edit that was just released. But even then, they add up fast. I can barely tell the difference, but for some stuff I just want the best available.
Edit: I also did this when 720p VS 1080p was a thing. For a vast majority of stuff, 720p is fine and I’m not going to update that stuff. Most stuff released today isn’t even available or 720p anymore, so I’ve defaulted to 1080p for most new stuff.
Stremio + torrentio plugin + real debrid subscription.
I used Usenet and then torrents for 20 years or so but this stremio stack allowed me to get rid of all that *arr crap, also VPN, and private trackers et cetera. Not to mention a hot, power hungry home server.
Others will be along to disagree with me any moment, but for me this stack is infinitely better.
Downloading and storing stuff doesn’t make any sense in the era of unlimited data.
Someone has to seed though. I don’t know much about seedboxes but it seems like a seed box + plex combo is a solid way to go.
The home server route is way more complicated than rd+stremio for sure, but is still necessary in some contexts. I keep one just for kids content bc there’s no way to separate it out using stremio that I’ve found so far. It’s a bit of a pain to set up but with docker it’s not so bad. Stremio + rd for everything else.
Docker silos your apps into VMs called containers so if it malfunctions, the entire server doesn’t need to reboot only the docker container. You can also wall off select containers’ network access through VPNs and allow others through. Seems to work a bit better than split tunneling for me
1337x.to, qbittorrent, vpn if your isp cares. Dodi, fitgirl, johncena141 for games. For audio, video, books, just don’t be dumb and open bee_movie.mp4.exe and you’ll be fine.
It’s better than having some streaming service delete your show while your in the middle of watching it. It’s also better than finding out you can only watch in SD because they don’t approve of your CPU, GPU, monitor, operating system or web browser after paying for a subscription.
I used to download stuff from XDCC bots on IRC. That was even weirder than Usenet, you’d send the bot a specific chat command for it to serve you a file.
I feel like ‘my own home streaming service’ is effectively what I have in comparison to those days.
Maybe I’ve unknowingly downloaded a bunch of viruses but I just tied qbitTorrent to my vpn and downloaded tons of movies from 1337x, torrentgalaxy, or ocassionally from PirateBay if I found a good one. I’ve been fine, but maybe I’m actually not. Who knows?
Either way, no letters or Summons so I’m doing all right.
If you want to torrent files, you need to subscribe to an exclusive private tracker. To get access to a private tracker, you need to get lucky, or you need to go through a painstaking process of levelling up over months and months of seeding torrents from semi-private trackers until you get to an actual good one that may or may not have the content you are looking for.
Uh, no. Tpb, rutracker, nyaa… Work well. If you want more curated stuff then yes, private trackers might be worth it, but you can still find a ton of things on public trackers.
Whether you are using torrents or UseNet, you need a service to help you find the content in the first place, for example Sonarr, Radarr or Lidarr. Something called Jackett also fits into this somehow and apparently links to whatever indexes you are using.
No. You can just search in one of the trackers and add the torrent to your download client.
If you are torrenting, you then need a torrent client such as qBitTorrent to actually get the files.
Yes, obviously. If you want to ddl you’ll likely need a web browser, too.
I just wanna have my own home streaming service.
If you don want to automate it then just search for stuff manually and move your downloaded media to your library folders like it has been done since forever.
My man might be wearing the ol rose-colored glasses when it comes to the Limewire “heyday” of piracy.
I remember many times accidentally infecting my computer with a virus through that thing. That repair process was a HUGE pain in the ass.
I was stoned one night looking for concert footage and instead I got a video of a woman getting her head blown off at close range. That shit FUCKED. ME. UP. for a hot minute.
I remember I was trying to find the video of an ad that was on TV (don’t ask me why, I’m probably autistic). YouTube didn’t exist yet. Instead, I downloaded a CSAM video - I was a child myself at the time, and that thing scared me and fucked me up.
Today it would never happen by using a torrent tracker, even a public one probably
Yeah no I agree using LimeWire as a kid was wild, it’s just I stopped pirating when OG TPB got taken down and never really figured out how to get back into it.
Honestly nothing has changed since the OG tpb days, you can even still use tpb. BitTorrent should be replaced with qBitTorrent or something I think, I haven’t exactly changed my client in years. You have more choices of VPNs now if you care about that I guess. Some of the other old good trackers are defunct, but I think Reddit still has an actively maintained wiki of good public trackers…
Don’t need invites. The tracker consiytently opens every major holidays (now upcoming: Easter). And if not, they open usually during Summer or Black Friday/Week and Christmas.
We still have torrents, only thing thats new is option to set up *arr stack for next level torrenting. Piratebay is still working, torrents and/or usenet are way better with speeds we have today… I never liked LimeWire. Just use VPN my dude
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Really can’t get the point of the post
I’m enjoying rutracker + tpb. Very easy, very fast, always find what I want
Am I the only one that still just uses a VPN with Pirate Bay and Magnetdl? I only download videos and music, no games, and I’m finding 98%of what I want in the resolution I want. Is it really worth setting up the rest of it?
Everything else just makes it easier to manage which depending on your preferences and how much content you’re dealing with that may not be a problem for you. I run the whole stack using Deluge as my downloader with a VPN. Radarr, Sonarr, and Lidarr automatically locate the torrents on the public tracker sites for me, send the downloads to Deluge, and imports the media into Jellyfin when the download finishes. I also use Jellyseer for discovering and requesting content, as well as allowing family members to request content. I also use Prowlarr to manage the trackers being used in the various arr apps. It’s a very robust and automated system but it all boils down to just downloading torrents over a VPN.
1337x usually has whatever I need. Although I mostly just pirate games and the occasional movie or series. I don’t have fuck you money to run a data center in my garage
I found TheRarbg to have better results compared to 1337.
And often 1337 is not accessible… probably because of cloudflare
Try stremio w/realdebrid and torrentio unless you want to self host this is the way
I already am self hosting everything. I have an 8TB drive over half full at the moment, and filling up fast now that I have a 4K TV. I also have an Openvpn server so that I can access my content when I’m away. I’ve had this setup since before torrents were even a thing.
Hold fire on that 4K business, if you haven’t yet I recommend you do a test to see if you can actually tell the difference between Torrent 1080p & Torrent 4K. Out of my friends & family on a few can see a difference, but if they can they do say T4K looks better, but only slightly. So weigh up if the 2x or 3x larger file is worth the improvement.
Sorry if I sound aggressive or preach-y, just trying to save a fellow sailor some space on their ship is all.
It’s only select movies that I’m getting in 4K, and any Star Trek that comes out in 4K or maybe the Star Wars 4K77 fan edit that was just released. But even then, they add up fast. I can barely tell the difference, but for some stuff I just want the best available.
Edit: I also did this when 720p VS 1080p was a thing. For a vast majority of stuff, 720p is fine and I’m not going to update that stuff. Most stuff released today isn’t even available or 720p anymore, so I’ve defaulted to 1080p for most new stuff.
Just use soulseek
For movies? lol
yes
Oh man.
Stremio + torrentio plugin + real debrid subscription.
I used Usenet and then torrents for 20 years or so but this stremio stack allowed me to get rid of all that *arr crap, also VPN, and private trackers et cetera. Not to mention a hot, power hungry home server.
Others will be along to disagree with me any moment, but for me this stack is infinitely better.
Downloading and storing stuff doesn’t make any sense in the era of unlimited data.
Someone has to seed though. I don’t know much about seedboxes but it seems like a seed box + plex combo is a solid way to go.
The home server route is way more complicated than rd+stremio for sure, but is still necessary in some contexts. I keep one just for kids content bc there’s no way to separate it out using stremio that I’ve found so far. It’s a bit of a pain to set up but with docker it’s not so bad. Stremio + rd for everything else.
Anything is better than watching fucking ads
why use a docker at all? What is the potential benefit?
The config files make it easy to repeat functioning setups and guaranteed software compatibility
Docker silos your apps into VMs called containers so if it malfunctions, the entire server doesn’t need to reboot only the docker container. You can also wall off select containers’ network access through VPNs and allow others through. Seems to work a bit better than split tunneling for me
I just download from whatever site’s available on the megathread…
You can still use ed2k/kad network, it works fine.
you are gonna have to spell it out for me cause I have no idea what you just said
eMule/aMule/Mldonkey works like old limewire, it is from the same age, but still kicking
oh interesting
1337x.to, qbittorrent, vpn if your isp cares. Dodi, fitgirl, johncena141 for games. For audio, video, books, just don’t be dumb and open bee_movie.mp4.exe and you’ll be fine.
It’s better than having some streaming service delete your show while your in the middle of watching it. It’s also better than finding out you can only watch in SD because they don’t approve of your CPU, GPU, monitor, operating system or web browser after paying for a subscription.
… or having episodes missing or original music removed/changed.
Just subscribe to Netflix and Disney+ and Hulu and Prime and HBO and yada yada yada to get a season each of the show your watch.
Fucking what were they thinking xD
They were thinking the same thing the same thing the cable execs were thinking.
“If they have to buy both our service and others, then other service are not my competition.”
”We’re going to rape these motherfuckers”
Or changes to rent status after taking a break and coming back the next day
I am pretty sure I am not allowed to own Monero as I had to jump through a LOT of hoops to get it
Edit:
Apparently it is not, I just wasn’t allowed to buy it easily because of reasons
y r u bullyin me
Feels like you’re describing growing out of p2p
I used to download stuff from XDCC bots on IRC. That was even weirder than Usenet, you’d send the bot a specific chat command for it to serve you a file.
I feel like ‘my own home streaming service’ is effectively what I have in comparison to those days.
Maybe I’ve unknowingly downloaded a bunch of viruses but I just tied qbitTorrent to my vpn and downloaded tons of movies from 1337x, torrentgalaxy, or ocassionally from PirateBay if I found a good one. I’ve been fine, but maybe I’m actually not. Who knows?
Either way, no letters or Summons so I’m doing all right.
Yeah torrenting isn’t really all that hard tbh. Near enough same method as me, always been okay thus far
Uh, no. Tpb, rutracker, nyaa… Work well. If you want more curated stuff then yes, private trackers might be worth it, but you can still find a ton of things on public trackers.
No. You can just search in one of the trackers and add the torrent to your download client.
Yes, obviously. If you want to ddl you’ll likely need a web browser, too.
If you don want to automate it then just search for stuff manually and move your downloaded media to your library folders like it has been done since forever.
My man might be wearing the ol rose-colored glasses when it comes to the Limewire “heyday” of piracy.
I remember many times accidentally infecting my computer with a virus through that thing. That repair process was a HUGE pain in the ass.
I was stoned one night looking for concert footage and instead I got a video of a woman getting her head blown off at close range. That shit FUCKED. ME. UP. for a hot minute.
Todays situation is better in my opinion.
Yeah.
Chechen war videos were not fun to get when you were looking for porn as a teenager.
I remember I was trying to find the video of an ad that was on TV (don’t ask me why, I’m probably autistic). YouTube didn’t exist yet. Instead, I downloaded a CSAM video - I was a child myself at the time, and that thing scared me and fucked me up.
Today it would never happen by using a torrent tracker, even a public one probably
Yeah no I agree using LimeWire as a kid was wild, it’s just I stopped pirating when OG TPB got taken down and never really figured out how to get back into it.
Honestly nothing has changed since the OG tpb days, you can even still use tpb. BitTorrent should be replaced with qBitTorrent or something I think, I haven’t exactly changed my client in years. You have more choices of VPNs now if you care about that I guess. Some of the other old good trackers are defunct, but I think Reddit still has an actively maintained wiki of good public trackers…
I have a few torrentleech invites, any hexbear users can hit me up with a dm for one.
Second torrentleech. It’s free, you just need an invite and you have to follow their rules (but that’s valid on any private tracker)
Don’t need invites. The tracker consiytently opens every major holidays (now upcoming: Easter). And if not, they open usually during Summer or Black Friday/Week and Christmas.
Can you use a VPN on TL?
Thanks, I will hit you up if I get confident it will not go to waste
We still have torrents, only thing thats new is option to set up *arr stack for next level torrenting. Piratebay is still working, torrents and/or usenet are way better with speeds we have today… I never liked LimeWire. Just use VPN my dude