Apologies if this is a basic question, but I am curious to know what I am missing out on by not having access to private torrents? I have been able to find everything I wanted using public ones.
they are properly moderated so no fake torrents or malware (and anyone trying to upload those is immediately banned)
many have rules about formats, nfo files - another guarantee that your file is what it says it is
duplicates are not usually allowed - eg if an album already exists in FLAC format, you can’t upload another one
ratio requirements mean people almost always seed, and many use seed boxes which means speed is much faster. Movies download to my seed box in a couple of seconds typically.
You mean private trackers, yeah? The advantage is obviously they are not open to the public, which means copyright trolls need an account on the tracker to view the IP address of torrent participants. Secondly users are vetted for quality so the torrents on them are well seeded and trusted.
The advantage of a private tracker is also its disadvantage. You need to get through the vetting process. An invite and history are required to join which can be kind of a chicken and egg thing. It all takes some effort and facility.
If you don’t have your own full time torrent server with high upload bandwidth, it’s going to be difficult to get the seed ratios you need. Best thing there is to contract a seedbox. Even so you have to put the effort into working your way up to the ladder by getting a history of tracker accounts.
If you don’t have your own full time torrent server with high upload bandwidth, it’s going to be difficult to get the seed ratios you need.
I agree with this for some trackers, but many give bonus points based on passive seeding as well, which can then be exchanged to contribute to your upload ratio. Just having a large drive to use for seeding should be enough - that’s what I’ve done at least for nearly 8 years now.
Public trackers’ public nature means they’re more likely to result in your activity being seen / tracked by entities you don’t want it tracked by, for one. Ever gotten one of those letters from your ISP warning you not to download pirated shit? My understanding is that that’s usually the result of using an insecure tracker.
Curation, breadth of access (less important if you don’t have obscure tastes which it sounds like you don’t OP, and that’s fine), quality control, security to a small degree, and community. Also if you get upload credit you can use the requests option and have some of the most rabid nerds on this world looking for what you want.
Top reason which people will be in denial about though is epeen
In short most people don’t need it and probably will never get in the most selective ones. If you’re not satisfied with public trackers or too worried you’re likely better off with Usenet or real-debrid.
Content you may not be able to find elsewhere (for example, MySpleen has tons of old discontinued/out of print content), as well as you aren’t going to find copyright holders in private tracker swarms monitoring for IP’s to have infringement notices sent to.
Downside: If you don’t like seeding, you get to fuck yourself and get used to liking seeding or you lose your account.
Download speed. Many users of these trackers will use seedboxes to build ratio. This generally results in a faster download speed for peers.
Security. Many (but not all) private trackers have strict entry barriers, such as invite only or application based signups. This keeps copyright trolls out of their swarms, which eliminates the need for a vpn or other method of masking your identity. Depending on where you live this can range from a nicety to a necessity.
Longevity. Torrents generally live longer on private trackers.
Community. Some private trackers have a forum or IRC channel where you can interact with other community members.
Availability. Many private trackers will have a wider range of releases of a single media.
Quality. You will generally find higer quality releases on private trackers. That’s not to say that high quality releases don’t make it to public trackers, some do and some don’t.
Faster releases. Releases will typically come to private trackers first. May torrents originate on these trackers or come from scene groups and trickle down.
If you’re finding everything you want on public trackers then you probably aren’t missing anything. You could test the waters on TL or something next time they open.
These are all great points, but I just wanted to add to the point about security that private trackers are typically very good about managing/minimizing the prevalence of malware on their platforms, whereas public trackers can have all sorts of fun surprises depending on what you’re searching for.
As a non-AI Learning Model, I cannot conclude one way or the other with any certainty. What I can say is that ChatGPT responses tend to follow a similar pattern:
Consistent and clear responses: ChatGPT will often respond to prompts with very readable, well-formatted bulleted lists
Socratic reasoning: Items in those lists will have a logical structure from beginning to end
Finally, ChatGPT responses tend to end those lists with a summarizing statement that restates the previous ideas - that ChatGPT will often respond in lists, use a formal and logical writing style, and end with a concise summary of the previous statements.
It’s too bad I already wrote like that before ChatGPT was public. For fun I put in an essay of mine from a couple of years back into a detector that told me parts were generated by AI ☠️
Fuck, apparently I write like ChatGPT. I didn’t think anything was off about the original comment because I write in a very similar way. Information is always structured under headers or in bulleted lists.
A more charitable interpretation is that the text that people thought would best train ChatGPT tended to be thoughtful and well-written posts like yours. Maybe you don’t write like ChatGPT, but ChatGPT writes like you.
I frankly disagree. If I were to write a list of benefits of using private trackers (ergo, actually directly answer OP’s question), that’s exactly how I would write it and I’d very likely use a similar writing style.
Further, ChatGPT doesn’t use the “<Topic>. <Further elaboration on topic>” format from what I’ve seen, and IMO wouldn’t finish out the post with a recommendation to OP how they could get their feet wet with a particular private tracker.
Oink was awesome - strict rules on formats (FLACs. V0’s - no transcodes) , sharing ratios so everyone had to seed, pretty sure they had rules on file and folder structure. Used to love getting full discographies from there.
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.
For me it’s their speed and safety. I’ve been using them since over a decade and I’ve never had any issues wrt viruses etc
I’d like to know too
I think you get new releases faster and you can also request more obscure stuff too
In short, more privacy and a curated library of content.
You mean private trackers, yeah? The advantage is obviously they are not open to the public, which means copyright trolls need an account on the tracker to view the IP address of torrent participants. Secondly users are vetted for quality so the torrents on them are well seeded and trusted.
The advantage of a private tracker is also its disadvantage. You need to get through the vetting process. An invite and history are required to join which can be kind of a chicken and egg thing. It all takes some effort and facility.
If you don’t have your own full time torrent server with high upload bandwidth, it’s going to be difficult to get the seed ratios you need. Best thing there is to contract a seedbox. Even so you have to put the effort into working your way up to the ladder by getting a history of tracker accounts.
I agree with this for some trackers, but many give bonus points based on passive seeding as well, which can then be exchanged to contribute to your upload ratio. Just having a large drive to use for seeding should be enough - that’s what I’ve done at least for nearly 8 years now.
Public trackers’ public nature means they’re more likely to result in your activity being seen / tracked by entities you don’t want it tracked by, for one. Ever gotten one of those letters from your ISP warning you not to download pirated shit? My understanding is that that’s usually the result of using an insecure tracker.
Or the lack of a VPN (specifically one that has a kill switch activated and to which the bittorrent client is bound).
Some trackers have exclusive content, or at least have content sooner than other places.
Access to content that isn’t on public trackers and is well seeded for the most part.
Better speeds, better access to niche content, arguably better privacy.
Curation, breadth of access (less important if you don’t have obscure tastes which it sounds like you don’t OP, and that’s fine), quality control, security to a small degree, and community. Also if you get upload credit you can use the requests option and have some of the most rabid nerds on this world looking for what you want.
Top reason which people will be in denial about though is epeen
In short most people don’t need it and probably will never get in the most selective ones. If you’re not satisfied with public trackers or too worried you’re likely better off with Usenet or real-debrid.
Content you may not be able to find elsewhere (for example, MySpleen has tons of old discontinued/out of print content), as well as you aren’t going to find copyright holders in private tracker swarms monitoring for IP’s to have infringement notices sent to.
Downside: If you don’t like seeding, you get to fuck yourself and get used to liking seeding or you lose your account.
The main benefits of private trackers are:
Download speed. Many users of these trackers will use seedboxes to build ratio. This generally results in a faster download speed for peers.
Security. Many (but not all) private trackers have strict entry barriers, such as invite only or application based signups. This keeps copyright trolls out of their swarms, which eliminates the need for a vpn or other method of masking your identity. Depending on where you live this can range from a nicety to a necessity.
Longevity. Torrents generally live longer on private trackers.
Community. Some private trackers have a forum or IRC channel where you can interact with other community members.
Availability. Many private trackers will have a wider range of releases of a single media.
Quality. You will generally find higer quality releases on private trackers. That’s not to say that high quality releases don’t make it to public trackers, some do and some don’t.
Faster releases. Releases will typically come to private trackers first. May torrents originate on these trackers or come from scene groups and trickle down.
If you’re finding everything you want on public trackers then you probably aren’t missing anything. You could test the waters on TL or something next time they open.
This is all good info. I still use a VPN with my private tracker though. You never know.
These are all great points, but I just wanted to add to the point about security that private trackers are typically very good about managing/minimizing the prevalence of malware on their platforms, whereas public trackers can have all sorts of fun surprises depending on what you’re searching for.
Chat gpt wrote this.
I disagree, chatgpt would never write something like that last two sentences
I dunno man, it’s more-or-less correct and that’s not something I’ve come to expect from LLM’s.
i’m not entirely sure if it is but i’m inclined to agree with you, it’s almost verbatim to chatgpt 3.0’s writing style
I wrote it lol. Fuck do I really sound that much like a bot?
When you bot-people take over, please remember I love bots and was always on your side
No, people are just saying this whenever a comment has bullet points lol. You didn’t have a tone similar to any LLM I know.
If you did write it, my apologies then. Take my comment as a compliment
As a non-AI Learning Model, I cannot conclude one way or the other with any certainty. What I can say is that ChatGPT responses tend to follow a similar pattern:
Finally, ChatGPT responses tend to end those lists with a summarizing statement that restates the previous ideas - that ChatGPT will often respond in lists, use a formal and logical writing style, and end with a concise summary of the previous statements.
As we consume more “AI” generated content, I think us humans are going to write and talk similar to an AI generated style in future
It’s too bad I already wrote like that before ChatGPT was public. For fun I put in an essay of mine from a couple of years back into a detector that told me parts were generated by AI ☠️
Fuck, apparently I write like ChatGPT. I didn’t think anything was off about the original comment because I write in a very similar way. Information is always structured under headers or in bulleted lists.
A more charitable interpretation is that the text that people thought would best train ChatGPT tended to be thoughtful and well-written posts like yours. Maybe you don’t write like ChatGPT, but ChatGPT writes like you.
Basically ChatGPT is very good at conveying information in an easy to read and helpful way. Unlike most people on the internet.
I frankly disagree. If I were to write a list of benefits of using private trackers (ergo, actually directly answer OP’s question), that’s exactly how I would write it and I’d very likely use a similar writing style.
Further, ChatGPT doesn’t use the “<Topic>. <Further elaboration on topic>” format from what I’ve seen, and IMO wouldn’t finish out the post with a recommendation to OP how they could get their feet wet with a particular private tracker.
Upvote if you have fond memories of Oink’s Pink Palace.
Boost if you were there when Trent Reznor dropped a chunk of his new album directly into the tracker.
Oink was awesome - strict rules on formats (FLACs. V0’s - no transcodes) , sharing ratios so everyone had to seed, pretty sure they had rules on file and folder structure. Used to love getting full discographies from there.
Only benefits for me are that they have faster download speeds and that I don’t need a VPN.