I’m in my first month of Usenet. I own several popular BluRay Movies but thought I’d save time ripping them manually and instead see what I could get off Usenet (NZBGeek + Eweka) now that my niece is visiting and needs entertainment.

I noticed a number of popular titles are consistently difficult to obtain (“aborted, cannot be completed”), even when live within only a few days, or even hours.

I assume this is a very vigilant DMCA takedown bot. How commonplace is this? And why does it only apply to some titles and not others?

Is it worth continuing with Usenet? I thought paying for content would ensure a certain “quality” of experience. So far, I’m a bit disappointed.

  • GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    Usenet, while way better than torrenting, still requires multiple indexers and providers for this reason. I have 3 of each and rarely ever run into this issue except for very niche releases.

    • navi@lemmy.tespia.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 months ago

      I’m inexperienced with Usenet, but why is it better than torrenting?

      I have 5-6 trackers which provides me basically everything I need and it sounds like Usenet might be similar in that regard.

      • GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        3 months ago

        The main benefit is that you don’t need to use a VPN, so you get full download speeds. Also the availability and download speed isn’t dependent on seeders, so more obscure content tends to survive longer on Usenet.

        • navi@lemmy.tespia.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          3 months ago

          That’s interesting about the life time. I’ve actually heard the opposite, where niche/old things can be easier to get from specific trackers vs Usenet because of their lack of popularity.

          I suppose it’s probably mostly about which websites you are a part of and if they specialize in specific content.

          • GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            It really does depend, so I mainly was speaking from my personal experience. But this is also why using both is recommended for *aar, because then you get the best of both worlds.

          • borari@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            Yeah, Usenet servers all have a maximum retention time, usually around 3000 days or something like that. Any articles older than the retention time of your server won’t exist for you to grab, but stuff is usually reuploaded frequently. With torrents a super niche thing requires someone seeding the content all the time for it to be consistently accessible, while Usenet requires someone to reupload it once every 5-10 years (barring takedowns) which imo is more consistently stable, but as the other poster said having both ensures your bases are covered. I personally don’t really torrent anything beyond oddball bbc2+ documentaries at this point though.

    • cerulean_blueOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      I’m just trying the scene out, but so far I’m put off by having to pay for both indexers and providers, and now I need multiple of both to get what I thought was basic content (a film about a boy wizard).

      Maybe it’s a different problem causing my downloads to not even start, but the help page suggests DMCA as likely cause.

      • GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        It’s understandable, sure. It’s also a little more complex up front. For me personally, the pros outweigh the cons and I’d much rather use Usenet over torrenting, even with the cost.

        I definitely think it’s DMCA, unfortunately.