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Can someone explain the benefits of Usenet to a long-time torrent-er? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by nopersonalspace@lemmy.world to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6240929

I'm a pretty heavy torrent user, running a media server complete with sonarr/radarr for automatic downloads. I download a lot, and have multiple TBs of upload on various private trackers. I've been torrenting forever, but I've always wondered about usenet. Over and over on this, and other, forums I see people saying that usenet is way better - but why?

I understand what it is overall, but what makes it better than traditional torrenting? In my mind, it's always just seemed like a different means to the same end. I pay for a VPN and torrent for "free", or I pay for usenet access and download directly from there. As someone who's "snobby" around the quality of the stuff I torrent, does usenet provide an advantage there?

Usenet fans, I'd love to hear what makes you love it! I'm always open to trying new things, and if It really is better I'd love to know why! (Plus, maybe what providers/tools etc you recommend).

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[-] pete_the_cat@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Both torrents and usenet have their pros and cons. The major difference being that usenet is centralized but torrents are decentralized. Usenet is faster in general than even well seeded torrents, usually by many magnitudes, but it costs about $8-12 USD/month if you get it directly from the provider, and not a reseller. Well seeded torrents can't (easily) be taken down and they're free to access, but if the content their seeding isn't popular it's usually very slow to download and the availability of the file is up to those seeding it.