this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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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?

I just wanna have my own home streaming service.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.