this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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As I get more and more invites to private trackers, I'm finding that I find myself spending more and more time on public tracker websites.

I'll only use private trackers if I can't find what I'm looking for on a public tracker. Private tracker rules can get pretty onerous and I prefer to just avoid the whole scene if possible.

If I'm honest, this opinion surprises me. I didn't expect to prefer public trackers. I always thought that private trackers were so cool and exclusive. I don't think that way anymore.

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[–] mateomaui@reddthat.com 63 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Public, because I’m a lazy bitch leecher with a mobile data cap.

[–] GingeyBook@lemm.ee 36 points 11 months ago (10 children)

How do you go about getting invited to a private tracker?

I seed all my Linux isos on public trackers but I'm not active in any communities

Will an owl show up someday with a letter?

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 11 months ago

Yes. you just need to visit an open invite forum/thread like on reddit or on the interwebz.
Keyword: Open Signup

[–] UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago

imo get to know somebody who's in to invite you, and you will become that somebody that ppl would want to meet.

[–] akilou@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 months ago

Pm me and I'll send you an invite

[–] SEND_NOODLES_PLS@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

I've been having difficulty joining private trackers as well, but mostly I've just been trying to apply to a few that I think I'd like to join. Don't quite understand why I don't get an invite though. I maintain a perma up seedbox, and wouldve thought that was mostly what's important for private trackers.

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[–] splendoruranium@infosec.pub 29 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I strongly disapprove of private trackers. I'm forced to take part in some only because the content isn't available anywhere else. And the private trackers generally forbid re-sharing their content on public trackers, which unnecessarily gatekeeps the content and perpetuates the problem.
If it doen't help to make everything accessible to everybody then it's not a valuable part of the sharing ecosystem.

[–] athos77@kbin.social 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Do they forbid sharing the content, or do they forbid sharing the torrents? If it's just the torrents, you can just create a public torrent with a different piece size and cross seed.

[–] splendoruranium@infosec.pub 4 points 11 months ago

It's the content, presumably in order to maintain exclusivity of the little private club. That's part of the problem, I suppose. Private trackers aren't just an anonymous one-stop supermarket like some public trackers, they're often small personal hangouts, actual communities. In of itself that sounds great, but it always carries the danger of content being held hostage for what - at least in my eyes - amounts to pointless, snobby elitism.

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[–] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Most trackers are fine with you sharing their content. Heck, most trackers don’t even produce most of their content.

But let’s suppose they do. If you wanna share it, they cannot ever trace it back to your account, unless you are dumb and use the same username or something, but even then you can argue that it wasn’t you.

[–] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 2 points 11 months ago

No, they forbid you sharing their TORRENTS, not their CONTENT.

[–] GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Private is so much better, availability and speed wise. For most, as long as you build ratio with freeleech torrents, you're fine.

[–] K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 11 months ago

Freeleech is my ratio lifeblood lmao

[–] Knuk@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

I haven't had to get a torrent out of freeleech except for an ebook and now I've got a ratio in the millions

[–] CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I'm the occasional pirate, I don't download more media than I watch and therefore never saw the appeal of private trackers. They have their perks, no doubt, but most of what I need can be found on the internet.

[–] SchizoDenji@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you only watch English content, 100%. But if you are into foreign language stuff then private trackers do have some scene releases that aren't available on public ones.

[–] CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

I rarely watch anything in my native languages, the content we produce is bad, so I never needed anything beyond what public trackers offer and very rarely subtitles.

[–] UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

private all the way, only public Torrent that I seed is the Arch ISO.

imo it offers better security, anonimity, and possibly acts as a dummy filter, as uploads get checked. I also like my rank that I get when I'm actively seeding a bunch c:

[–] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not sure how it provides better anonymity when all your activity is linked to your account. Should this account somehow be linked to you, a malicious actor would know everything you (potentially ever) downloaded.

[–] UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

You are right, I was thinking about randos. When I pub torrent an agent can just log all the IPs and I'm fked, when it's private it should be free of these people. I get that it probably isn't but, nothing is perfect.

[–] Type1@midwest.social 11 points 11 months ago

I've applied for half-a-dozen private trackers, but they've all turned me down. Definitely seems counter to the entire idea of piracy IMO.

[–] eating3645@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If you permaseed you don't need to know individual tracker seeing requirements.

[–] Leax@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How many torrents are you usually sharing at the same time? I find it affects my Internet speed at some point, even if I limit the upload rate...

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[–] SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 11 months ago

I can't permaseed for tv shows due to storage limits, so I use autoremove-torrents to automatically delete stuff based on the tracker.

[–] skele_tron@feddit.de 10 points 11 months ago

I used to want to get in on some private trackers, esp cult movie related ( karagarga ) but was always put off by elitism of those rules and systems.

Instead i opted to upload to pirate bay and like a trve pirate - no questions asked, download what you will - seeded some very obscure movies that i collected. Had to pull the plug after more than 10 yrs because i was emigrating, was a good time.

[–] SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 11 months ago

I'm kinda in the same boat, except for a specific private tracker. It's a local private tracker which has a ton of exclusive stuff in my native language, and most of the users also speak it so there's a communal aspect to it. But otherwise, yeah. I also tend to prefer public trackers, especially for more mainstream stuff.

[–] canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am on a few private trackers but they don't offer anything that the public trackers don't already have covered for my use case, outside of porn.

I am more of a DDL pirate anyways. I have a seedbox for torrents but I tend to stick to mega links, even if there is a slight delay in getting the media. Typically what I find is that all the re-encoded high resolution h265 content comes later and is more abundant on the mega link forums than on trackers; most trackers will have h264 copies at 720/1080, but they're often larger than the h265 high resolution re-encodes.

[–] SchizoDenji@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Unless the h264 files extra audio tracks, you're downloading lower quality (bitrate) stuff.

[–] canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 7 points 11 months ago

The lower bitrate is fine because I'm usually streaming off the local network, so keeping the file sizes down is pretty beneficial.

[–] athos77@kbin.social 7 points 11 months ago

The newbie blues for each private tracker are a definite thing, but once you get past that it's great. It also depends on which trackers you're on: the general trackers tend to have similar content as publics, but it's the specialty and niche trackers where privates really shine.

[–] Crow@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I actually can’t find the stuff I want that’s missing on public trackers on private ones, so they’re pointless to me.

Edit: Looking for HD middle seasons of Reno911.

[–] lksaar@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 11 months ago

TVV has S01-S06 in 1080p avc, and TL has a S01-S08 1080p in hevc

[–] Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago

I prefer rutracker 👀

[–] Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Doesn't matter, my happiness is solely based on fulfilling my needs. This ends up requiring a mix of private and public trackers.

In this day and age its easy to automate fulfilling whatever obligations a private tracker requires once invited, so they are a relatively small hassle most of the time.

[–] java@beehaw.org 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I can't bother joining a private tracker. Of course, they might be useful for niche content. For instance, 15 years ago there was a special tracker, where people shared races of virtually all racing series. But mainstream stuff is available on public trackers.

There one tracker where I download lossless music. But anyone can join it, I guess you could define it as semi-private or semi-public.

[–] Dwalin@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm interested in the lossless music tracker. Which one is it?

[–] Tweed@lemmy.studio 4 points 11 months ago

I'm also interested. It'd be nice to have backups of the CDs I've bought in the past, at least

[–] java@beehaw.org 4 points 11 months ago

rutracker.org, e.g. https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3494796

The interface is in Russian, but it's not that hard to translate a couple of words to navigate. Apparently, you don't even have to be registered to download anymore.

[–] dudemanbro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

My home-base is a private forum (DDL). I think of it as a place where people gather the best media from around the internet. We may not get it first but it eventually makes its way there. There are also many exclusive uploads (mostly encodes) but people do some fantastic work with upscales of movies and/or TV series. The user base is also part of the many private trackers the world has to offer. I am part of like 2 private trackers and they are phenomenal as well. I also use public trackers extensively as well as there is actually a lot of stuff out there. I will always try and seed for public trackers but I definitely don't go as long as I would for private ones (just cause I don't want to get dinged) (Yeah I could use a VPN but too lazy, even though I am in a place that don't give many fucks about media piracy). I prefer DDL because I don't have to maintain ratio, but I do understand that with private trackers there can be some more longevity (but isn't really guaranteed). There are also other private trackers of the index variety that aren't built around ratio which can be nice.

There can be a lot of rules with private trackers, and yes some of them are really annoying, not gonna lie. The rules are there for a reason, for the most part. For some it's about building a community, while for others it's about making sure stuff survives for as long as possible. There are so many tools for a fellow seafarer to have and private trackers are just one of them and they serve a purpose. I am of the belief that all information should be available to everyone forever, but the world don't work like that and the long dick of the law can really fuck you life up. I think a valuable lesson from private trackers is that it makes one not just be a leech and makes one give back. There is nothing wrong with leeching, but I always like to think that piracy is about sharing the wealth. (not trying to moralize piracy, to each their own)

But as you said, public trackers have A LOT of stuff. So much media can be found on them. Private trackers help if you want the best of the best with regards to certain media or for hard to find stuff. Each have their place and it all about using the tools available to you

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[–] Dumbkid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago

Only in two minor private trackers and meh, I liked usenet better don't have to worry about ratios cause I use the *arrs. The private trackers I had to rack up like 5tb of buffer before I felt comfortable having the *arrs automatically grab from em

[–] K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I just recently decided to donate to a certain private tracker and fuck man its so nice. It has so much and its all good. Plus you know the quality will be legit on the highly seeded items. Since i donated it gave me a boost on my ratio, which even with my mediocre connection is fairly easy to keep good

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago

Indifferent.
I use both torrent und usenet, public and private trackers and indexers.

whatever lets me a upload a YouTube video downloaded via newpipe

[–] PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

Public but that’s because I always find what I am looking for and don’t see a need for a a private tracker.

[–] prole@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

My private tracker days are behind me after they shut down OiNK, and then later what.cd. Though I can't say I don't miss it sometimes. At its peak, What was an amazing place.

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