• neo [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1404·
    1 year ago

    I prefer public trackers and torrents just because I don’t like gatekeeping piracy. I want those bits to be distributed as far and wide as possible. So anything I get and/or seed will be public.

    Even if there are bad peers that don’t give back (which there are many), plenty enough times it’s just people with shitty under served Internet connections. I’m fortunate enough to have a good enough connection where that doesn’t bother me.

    • greenskye@lemm.eeEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      I hate the whole meta of private trackers. When I’ve joined a few in the past the whole focus on needing to keep up your ratio has been a larger barrier to downloading than leechers ever were on public trackers.

      You can’t seed because several users have seedboxes with perfect connections and already have a billion-to-one ratio. I ‘theoretically’ have access to all this content, but I’m downloading ‘80’s workout video volume 7’ in the hopes that I can actually seed it for someone to get enough ratio to actually download something I wanted to watch.

      I was on what.cd back when that was still a thing, I poorly chose my first few downloads and then never had enough ratio to download anything else ever again until I was finally kicked for inactivity.

      Instead of actually fostering a working seed economy, most seem to just replicate a capitalist dystopia where a handful of users hog all the seed slots, earning more ratio credits than they could ever use while everyone else desperately tries to scrape together enough ratio to get something of value.

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.eeEnglish
        16·
        1 year ago

        This is a reason why I’m not on any private tracker. When there are 200 seeds all with better connection than me, then my ratio isn’t going anywhere. It creates this weird dynamic where you’re sometimes wishing people would stop seeding stuff; and that is clearly counter-productive.

      • neo [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        So by chance I was in university and invited into what by my roommate. I literally bought more internet bandwidth from my uni to handle an early freeleech event where I got to mega game the system (By accident! I didn’t really know what I was doing. And good thing it was a private tracker because I was on a bare connection. I didn’t know what A VPN was at that time, much less how to hide my identity online).

        I thought my ratio was totally unfair so I never really abused it, but that’s kinda the problem. Only by chance I had like a 500 ratio, whereas someone like you had no chance ever to catch up to the earlier established players. Even though I wasn’t a victim of the ratio, the concept of your story is just another reason why I dislike private trackers.

        That said, the best thing about what.cd was just how well organized and categorized it was. Library of Alexandria style shit, now lost to us. Plus the forums with some real music-heads were great, too, and you could really expand your music horizons by talking with those people. I liked that it was NOT a Reddit-style forum, so when something new dropped everyone had a say. Upvotes didn’t influence that kind of conversation. At any rate, I stopped pirating music so much maybe beginning in 2013 or 2014, but every time I look now the uploads are either 320kbps (overkill bitrate, garbage ancient codec) or FLAC (nice for archiving, but not what I want). So I end up DLing FLACs and then converting them into 128kbps Opus. It works, but my music horizons aren’t broadened without that what community. I guess all I mean is I don’t miss the private nature of what, but I do miss the community.

      • athos77@kbin.social
        102·
        1 year ago

        I’ve been a newbie on a bunch of private trackers, and there’s almost always some way to get ratio, you just need to figure out that site’s method, and be patient in not-downloading-everything until you can afford it.

        For example, like many sites, what.cd generally had freeleeches around the site birthday and the winter holidays: nothing you downloaded counted against you, and whatever you uploaded got added to your account. They also often had artist freeleeches when an artist died; if What was around today, the site would be going wild with Jimmy Buffett traffic. Other sites have bonus points, where you get points for seeding even if no one downloads from you; and then you turn in your points for upload credit. Still other places, you can cross-seed content to get past the newbie ratio restrictions, then move on from there.

        It is incredibly frustrating to be new on a site that has a whole bunch of content that you want, but if you’re patient or you figure out how the site does things, you can get a lot out of them.

        • greenskye@lemm.eeEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

          Ya, I just want to get content. I don’t mind giving back to the community for it, but needing to figure out some sort of ‘system’ is too much. I’m not looking for a mini-game.

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          61·
          1 year ago

          So you both agree that the system fucking sucks. Fundamentally, the hoops you have to jump through to do anything are far worse than the annoyance of bad seeds on public torrents.

          The counterpoint is that obscure torrents are better seeded on private trackers. If what you’re looking for is even mildly popular however, private trackers just suck.

          • athos77@kbin.social
            4·
            1 year ago

            Which is why, in my other comment here, I said:

            Do you need a private tracker? IMO, most people don’t. Most people are happy with what they have, or are happy with what they get from public trackers and other places. It’s really only if you’re finding yourself unhappy with public trackers - you’re not comfortable with the lack of privacy, for example, or you’re often looking content that you can’t find - that I would suggest looking into private trackers.

            Sounds like you’re just not the intended target for private trackers, and that’s fine.

        • Double_A@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          41·
          1 year ago

          That’s exactly the problem. You need learn how to game the system, instead of actually contributing to the network.

      • mark7869@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        although I’ve account on some private trackers but I never use them just for these reasons you’ve mentioned their economy doesn’t treat all equally.

    • SirKlingoftheDrains [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I exclaimed “YES!” and started clapping after reading your comment. Just hell yeah. Beyond the weird issues that come with the model of seeding to gain access, there is something fundamentally off about the idea of private trackers, and you nailed it. It is antithetical to the whole enterprise of sharing. This transactional shit serves as a price tag that only the privileged can afford

        • neo [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Many times that’s true, too. One of the saddest things in torrents is seeing two torrents with identical contents that were created separately, or one just recreated so someone can add their website to it or something, thereby dividing the pool of possible peers.

          I think one of the most interesting ideas in BitTorrent v2 is that hash trees are formed per-file, not per-torrent. So two torrents with identical contents could, if I understand this right, basically be considered one and the same. It would be cool to see more wide adoption and promotion of BT v2 https://blog.libtorrent.org/2020/09/bittorrent-v2/

        • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.caEnglish
          10·
          1 year ago

          I sort of agree. When everyone is trying to seed to up their ratio, getting stuff is easy and fast. But maintaining your ratio is a nightmare. The place is essentially starved of downloaders because even people who want stuff can’t get it for fear of ruining their ratio. The only reason I had a positive ratio on what.cd was that they occasionally had freeleech days where you could download freely and only uploads counted. On those days I would just get the most popular torrents on the site and upload the shit out of them.

          While these problems exist in any private tracker, I do still miss what.cd.

        • HeneryHawk@thelemmy.clubEnglish
          51·
          1 year ago

          I’m on a few private trackers, never paid a penny towards any of them, and have high ratios in all of them

          It did take me a little work and spent some time seeding stuff I didn’t really want but I got there with a shitty home connection (my connection is pretty good now but I built those ratios with dog shit speeds)

  • nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    652·
    1 year ago

    I don’t have much free time to play around and never had the chance to be in a popular private tracker . It’s quite imposible for me … I mean wait for slots? A random date? An interview … forget it .

  • IvanOverdrive@lemm.eeEnglish
    54·
    1 year ago

    Here’s my experience with 99% of private trackers:

    “You haven’t upload enough. Download a free-leech to upload more”. So I download it, and no one downloads it from me.

      • HeneryHawk@thelemmy.clubEnglish
        125·
        1 year ago

        You’re downloading old and/or unpopular stuff. For you to upload content someone has to be actively downloading that content (that’s how the bit torrent protocol works at the most basic level). If you choose some 5 year-old FL of a Game of Thrones pack with 7,000 seeders, that’s on you

        • allocsb@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          24·
          1 year ago

          The incentive structure just doesn’t seem designed well. It creates a zero sum game. When downloading you can either:

          1. Not seed to 100%. This damages your ratio

          2. Seed to exactly 100%. In terms of ratio maintenance across all seeders this option makes the most sense

          3. Seed past 100%. You build up your own ratio but deny other downloaders from reaching 100% which hurts their ratio. They must spend longer seeding the torrent to reach 100%, which further decreases the likelihood of subsequent downloaders from reaching 100% when seeding

          When you seed past 100%, you essentially have to rely on bad actors to create more upload work for good actors. If there are no bad actors then seeding past 100% is to the detriment of other good actors, who you want to protect because you also rely on them for system health. And private trackers aim to minimize the number of bad actors.

    • padge@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I got around this by just downloading some big freeleech porn packs or a couple new release shows/movies. My highest ratio item is an anime episode I downloaded minutes after release

    • GoumLeChat@jlai.luEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      Use Sonarr or Radarr, it will download content for you as soon as it is available on the tracker. Since people are mostly looking for new stuff it works really well to boost your ratio. I have at least a ratio of 10 (first episode is closer to 20) for every Ahsoka and Futurama episodes. For Asteroid City I’m currently at 18.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.ukEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      I’ve never had any need, except for audiobooks. Getting into myanonymouse is just a case of knowing the rules and passing a wee test. Maybe start there?

    • Azzy@beehaw.orgEnglish
      101·
      1 year ago

      It’s a good idea to start with MAM since they have interviews twice a week, and you can access invites for other trackers in the forums once you get to vip (which requires 4 weeks of membership, and a ratio above 2.0)

      One of the nicer things about it is that you can gain bonus points (which is how you buy extra upload credit and VIP) just by being an available seed. Due to the shear number of books on the site, you won’t be seeding often, but they make it desirable to keep it available in case someone needs it by giving you a certain number of bonus points per hour depending on various factors.

      • AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        164·
        1 year ago

        That’s a lot of work. I can’t imagine putting that much effort into downloading, not when Usenet doesn’t require anything but a couple dollars a month.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      opensignup pages like r/opensignups (now retired) but there are alternatives online, the AvistaZ/CinemaZ/PrivateHD discord has surprise invites and usually they open around christmas and/or black friday.

  • Krauerking@lemy.lolEnglish
    45·
    1 year ago

    Look I get that private trackers are probably safer and have a mored dedicated community but personally I still love anyone that keeps it public and keeps the knowledge of torrenting open and available as a tool for new people to discover.

    I just use the public torrents, I have an IP Blocklist, and I seed the shit out of the stuff I download if it’s got less traction on it.

    I will probably find a private group or something once I realize my obscure watching habits leave me out of finding stuff unless I can literally find it physical or get lucky but for now I’m a free pirate.

  • Conyak@lemmy.tfEnglish
    17·
    1 year ago

    Could someone explain the benefits? I use public sites and download everything I’ve ever wanted and rarely have to wait more than a few minutes for them to finish. I’m no expert by any measure so I’m probably missing something.

    • athos77@kbin.social
      16·
      1 year ago

      There are three types of private trackers: general, specialty, and niche. A general tracker has most of the newest of everything - tv and movies and music and games, etc. A specialty tracker focuses on a specific media - movies or comics or audiobooks or TV, etc. And a niche tracker focuses on a specific interest - British television, or horror movies, or dnb music.

      A general tracker has very similar content to public trackers, though they tend to be more secure. And like public trackers, while they’ll have the latest items, and old popular items, they tend to have retention issues.

      Since a specialty tracker has a narrower focus, it tends to have deeper archives for it’s content. A movie tracker, for example, instead of having just the most recent movies and a back-catalog of older blockbusters, will have those plus a catalog of older, more obscure, less popular content, and it will often offer that content in multiple formats and sizes.

      And a specialty tracker goes even deeper for those that have a particular passion for the subject that’s covered.

      Do you need a private tracker? IMO, most people don’t. Most people are happy with what they have, or are happy with what they get from public trackers and other places. It’s really only if you’re finding yourself unhappy with public trackers - you’re not comfortable with the lack of privacy, for example, or you’re often looking content that you can’t find - that I would suggest looking into private trackers.

        • athos77@kbin.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          I don’t speak German and I don’t watch anime, so I’m probably not the best person to ask. Your best bet would probably be German tracker; if it doesn’t have the content, they can likely direct you to where it is.

          The other option would be to join a tracker that specializes in movies, but they tend to be somewhat difficult to get into; I would be hopeful that German trackers are easier.

    • dystop@lemmy.mlEnglish
      101·
      1 year ago

      First is speed. I’ve been able to get speeds of ~50MBps (not Mbits) on private trackers, granted this is dependent on Internet connection more than anything but I get 20-50% of that speed on public trackers.

      Second is retention and breadth of selection. If you’re trying to download the latest Marvel movie then every tracker is gonna have that, but if you’re looking for an older movie then it’s much harder to find on a public tracker. And if you do find one, it’s likely to be seeded by 1 person and you can only squeeze 10KBps out of it.

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      It’s more of a broader benefit for everyone, but there are seems to usually be (a) rule(s) stating you have to seed a minimum amount of torrents to a specific ratio, which I don’t fully understand how that works past it helping torrents from completely dying.

      Other than that, I don’t have a clue since I have never been apart of one.

  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    141·
    1 year ago

    Can any of you guys with access to private trackers search for “keroro VF” or “Keroro titar” or “Keroro french”. Me and several people been looking for it, some for almost half a decade but to no avail. It’s a lost media so if you can try finding it on there we’ll be very grateful. Thanks in advance !

    • sighchedelic@artemis.camp
      6·
      1 year ago

      I also have a request for the theatrical release of Mallrats. All I can find anywhere is the directors cut which is a completely different movie

        • sighchedelic@artemis.camp
          1·
          1 year ago

          Are you allowed to say what site this is on? I’ve only used the bay and torrdroid results to look in the past (admittedly,I haven’t looked in a while since it never gave me the right copy)

          • metaStatic@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            I believe usenet is vague enough

            I can strongly recommend nzbgeek as an indexer. they only have a 3 day trial so get everything setup and ready before signing up.

      • FuyuhikoDate@silkky.pubEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        What is the difference between those? Never watched mallrats and now i wanna Know where I should start ^^

        • sighchedelic@artemis.camp
          2·
          1 year ago

          The directors cut is literally a completely different movie. Every scene is an alternate scene that they filmed that I believe creates a whole different storyline. I’ve never made it past the first 10 minutes

      • Usually_Lurker@artemis.camp
        11·
        1 year ago

        These exist in my super quick search.

        I also probably have the DVD release of Mallrats in my DVD. Rack.

        Mallrats.1995.1080p.BluRay.H264-REFRACTiON

        Mallrats.1995.RA.COMPLETE.BLURAY-REFRACTiON

      • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Thanks a lot , any help is very much appreciated ! can you tell me the name of the ones you tried so i can tell the team they’re not available there. Again, thanks

      • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I searched the whole internet and i didn’t find it. Nyaa got dead torrents of the french fansubs of the 2014 reboot of the original 2004 show.

        We’re looking for the french dub of 2004 original show. only the first 3 seasons out of 7 were dubbed. They aired till around 2013 on different french kids channels then it dissappeared forever. DVDs were planned but never released.

        Another site i tried and is supposed to have everything is animetosho but no luck either.

        • athos77@kbin.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          I’m not on nyaa, but if they allow requests, you might try making one for this show. There are also some French-oriented trackers that I suppose might be a possibility, but I don’t speak French and never had anything to do with them so I’m not at all sure.

    • jellyfinandchill@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      28·
      1 year ago

      Private trackers have seeding policies in place that mandate or incentivize keeping torrents alive for extended periods of time. As a result, you see fewer dead torrents and much faster download speeds.

    • NateSwift@beehaw.orgEnglish
      28·
      1 year ago

      Private trackers often have rules requiring seeding that keeps all/most of the torrents with a healthier seeding pool.

      So faster downloads and less dead torrents. Sometimes greater variety

  • BlazingFlames6073@lemdro.idEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    I don’t know what this is. I guess I’ll read a link one of the comments provided here.

    Edit: Nvm. The link didn’t explain anything

    • padge@lemmy.zipEnglish
      51·
      1 year ago

      A private tracker is a torrenting site, like TPB, but is invite-only or has some other barrier to get in. They’re usually safer and faster, bur you have to seed. Also YMMV, obscure things might either not be on there, or have few/no seeds.

  • jetsetdorito@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    I got suspended for inactivity for all my private music trackers after I got Spotify, I miss them and want to go back now :(

    rip waffles.fm