Do you use a VPN? Is so which one do you reccomend?

[melancholy]

Luckily, our local ISP gives two shits about DMCA notices. I got myself a year-long ban on another ISP back in the day for getting three strikes.

I got my third strike last year. I had to call Spectrum and play the part of the clueless dad who had to promise to yell at the no-good kids for ruining my Saturday morning.

I switched to Usenet that day, haven't downloaded a torrent since and I've pirated more in the last year than I ever did before.

As for a VPN, I still have Surfshark, for all the good it did me.

I wish I knew how to use Usenet. People make it sound like a paradise but I’m clueless how to start.

[pixel]

Luckily, our local ISP gives two shits about DMCA notices. I got myself a year-long ban on another ISP back in the day for getting three strikes.

I got my third strike last year. I had to call Spectrum and play the part of the clueless dad who had to promise to yell at the no-good kids for ruining my Saturday morning.

I switched to Usenet that day, haven't downloaded a torrent since and I've pirated more in the last year than I ever did before.

As for a VPN, I still have Surfshark, for all the good it did me.

I wish I knew how to use Usenet. People make it sound like a paradise but I’m clueless how to start.

Ditto. I'd really like to get the best automation solution set up with Overseerr being a priority.

[Skynet]

I wasn't going to do it again, but I just ordered 2 more years of Nord because of this https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/792071

I should still get onto usenet as mentioned above, but with the cashback a dude in the comments was basically paying sub $9 for 2 years worth of Nord

[Calavera]

I wish I knew how to use Usenet. People make it sound like a paradise but I’m clueless how to start.

Same here, no clue where to begin.

[Roofus]

I wish I knew how to use Usenet. People make it sound like a paradise but I’m clueless how to start.

Same here, no clue where to begin.

Getting set up is a little more complicated but once you do, it's not all that different from torrenting. Like torrents, you need a client and a tracker. The tracker is like your torrent site; you download a special file (a .torrent for bit torrent, a .nzb for Usenet) that tells the client where to get the file you actually wanted.

The main difference is that BitTorrent peer-to-peer and Usenet is not, so you need a provider. This has some advantages: Copyright holders don't (can't?) bust you for downloading, you can download at your full connection speed (I had to cap my download box because it saturates my 500 megabit connection) and since you're not relying on other users, you can get older and less popular things.

Unfortunately, Usenet is not free. It's not super expensive (less than your typical streaming service) but something to think about. The tracker I use is $12 per year and the provider I use is $10 per month.

Here's what I use:
Client: SABnzbd
Tracker: NZBgeek
Provider: Newsgroup Ninja

They have just about everything you can imagine. Different trackers specialize in different things but for me NZBgeek has just about everything I want. I haven't needed a torrent since I switched and only a couple times have I had to resort to a release blog.

[Calavera]

Thanks for the infor @Roofus. I might have to try it someday. I didn't realize it was a paid service. $10 isn't bad at all but right now I can find pretty much anything I'm after on the sites I use.

*edit I didn't realize you had to pay for both the tracker and provider. So $22 a month. Still not awful but I'm going to stick to the free sites for now. As it is I already download way too much stuff that I end up never using! lol

[Roofus]

Thanks for the infor @Roofus. I might have to try it someday. I didn't realize it was a paid service. $10 isn't bad at all but right now I can find pretty much anything I'm after on the sites I use.

*edit I didn't realize you had to pay for both the tracker and provider. So $22 a month. Still not awful but I'm going to stick to the free sites for now. As it is I already download way too much stuff that I end up never using! lol

The tracker is once a year