Selfish, but much safer legally speaking
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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Yep, in my country it’s illegal to provide copyrighted material, but it’s legal to download for personal use. Sorry.
That's what VPNs are there for! Ze German setup: gluetun and qbittorrent via docker, qbittorrent only going over gluetuns network.
This way we can return what we take tenfold and still come out on top!
You can also bind qbittorrent to the specific wan interface created by the vpn so it won't seed or download if the vpn is off
It doesn't see the interface if qbit is running in a docker container. That's what gluetun is for.
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I have qbittorrent set to quit when the DL is done. I tried to seed but spectrum is on that shit, they shut off Internet access. I can't afford a VPN right now, my wife and I both work and we are struggling. Thank you, seeders.
I'm a leecher, and I truly am sorry. I dl TV shows that are off the air and aren't available on dvd
I don’t care if you seed or not, but if you’re torrenting then you’re seeding a little bit while downloading. Quitting quickly doesn’t mask you completely. It might pay to look into your options more.
There might be a way to shut off uploads entirely, though iirc torrents are designed to stop if you do that.
It seems to work, I haven't received an email in months. If I leave it to seed for a day I get an email.
One day internet providers will block ports and IPs to kill torrents, it's just a matter of time. Can't have people downloading I Love Lucy episodes
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I have qbittorrent set to quit when the DL is done.
Which won’t stop someone from detecting that you torrented it. Without a VPN, your IP is openly visible to anyone else is joins the torrent. And since there’s no way to fully throttle seeding, (at least not without actively wrecking your leeching speeds), closing the client after the torrent completes won’t make a difference. They’ll already have your IP logged, and will be able to send angry letters to your ISP.
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I'm not trying to give unsolicited advice but you can get a VPN subscription for 1$/month and put it on your router to get your whole house covered. Seems like a small price to pay for extra privacy and less ISP related headaches. ProtonVPN offers an unlimited bandwidth free tier too.
I do this, and it's lovely. Whole house VPN FTW - guest network for any "sus" devices.
Can't personally argue in favor of ProtonVPN, I'd say avoid that. Mullvad for me, for now, permanently open to even better solutions.
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If you don't have a VPN, you need to be significantly more cautious, even if you're just leaching
If you're going to leach, why even bother with a torrent client? Let Real-Debrid do the leeching for you and then grab the file directly from their servers. It's much faster, especially since all it takes one person to upload the torrent to their database and then everyone can directly download the file at gigabit speeds. It also doesn't require a VPN to protect you from your ISP, saving you some money over a torrent client.
Honestly there is no better, more convenient option for you in your situation. Ditch the torrent client for Debrid.
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"It's okay baby, we don't need a VPN. I'll just stop the torrent right when it's done downloading!"
It's always interesting when I load up a download, I get seeded at like 20MB/s, but then... There's nobody to seed to. It's weird to see a torrent that so many people are seeding, but there's like no downloads for it nowadays. Usually once it's no longer popular, seeders disappear, too. Even weirder: it was season 2 of a show (that aired 15 years ago), but season 1 had.... One guy. Only online for about 6 hours a day in the middle of the night.
Usenet
This was one of my biggest motivations for moving to usenet. I don't like exposing myself by seeding. I have a giant folder full of copyright notices forwarded by my ISP because of it, and I don't want to pay for a vpn as it's far more expensive than usenet and just moves the problem/target to the vpn provider.
But an ssl connection to a usenet server goes unnoticed... Plus WAY faster download speeds, far more consistently in available files, and less spam/garbage content (at least in my experience, anecdotal).
Torrents took anywhere from an hour to multiple days before either completing or giving up and trying a different torrent. And then there's the seeding process ontop.
NZBs (usenet) take at the very most, 5min to finish or fail, at which point a new one can be tried automatically by sonarr/radarr if it had failed. Requests for media are now pretty much always ready to watch within 25min of requesting, and most of that is waiting for the library scan to trigger (I'm using SAMBA so filesystem updates can't trigger scans automatically, they're on a timer instead)
How do I get started with Usenet? I'm on a private tracker right now which has excellent speeds (maxes out my 500 Mbit connection usually, so I can't tell what speeds I might achieve if fully utilized), but it would of course be nice not having to seed.
Things you need:
A Usenet provider such as EasyNews or Astraweb. Usenet services host the content. Be aware that some services like GigaNews just rehost from the same pool of servers as a lot of others, also can be a tad scummy. There’s a lot to look into here for features like connection limits, retention, and download speed. You can also purchase “block accounts” which let you buy blocks of data to use on demand with no expiration. Astraweb is great for this as a secondary source since they have their own servers and can host different content than other hosts. Look for promo codes online when signing up for one as you can usually get solid rates via referrals for like $7-$15 a month. Block accounts can run like $25 for 100GB of download. You can see which servers overlap here at this link courtesy of @Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
A Usenet downloading client like SabNZBD for downloading NZB files (pronounced: newzbins)
An Indexer, such as Drunken Slug, NZBGeek, NZB Finder, or OMGWTFNZBs. Indexers help you find the content you’re looking for in the giant pool of hosted content on Usenet services. Usually good to have more than 1 indexer, even if using a free account on another. Usually run about $15 a year.
Usenet can be tied into Arrs programs like Sonarr and Radarr for automated downloading which makes things a lot easier especially when you set up your library correctly. See Trash Guides for help with this.
Personally I recommend running this all through Docker, but it’s not necessary.
Also even with Usenet, I’d still recommend a VPN. Can never be too safe.
Edit: added link from @Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca’s comment below
You've done a pretty good job here, so I'll just add this:
A map of providers and some info on their benefits.
https://www.ngprovider.com/current-usenet-map.php
There's also a ton of info about usenet, how it works, and what to look for, on that site. (you may have to manually go to the homepage to see the rest)
Wow, I’ve never seen this before. Thanks for sharing!
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I don't have time atm, I'm literally leaving for work rn; but I'll write up some details later tonight if nobody else has.
Following
You need a download client (eg. SABnzbd) and an account with an indexer (which will cost money). To automate the process of downloading you can put things like Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr on top, but those are optional.
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I don't understand why usenet is a thing. It really liked it in the early days and it was basically like lemmy. Groups for different topics and also federated. Now it's used to distribute warez but since it wasn't made for it so stuff has to be base64 encoded and split into pieces....
I think most people don’t realize that Usenet is older than the World Wide Web. It’s still a thing because it wasn’t corporatized like the Web was.
AT&T used to include Usenet access as part of your Internet connection since both Usenet and the Web are on the Internet but they quit doing that some years ago (back in the halcyon days of DSL).
AT&T used to include Usenet access as part of your Internet connection
And this was commonly seen as a Bad Thing (see the Eternal September) because normies change the culture of specialist spaces when they show up in large numbers.
It's more under the radar since it's harder to do
so stuff has to be base64 encoded and split into pieces…
You say that like it's an issue. With modern Usenet binary downloaders (SABnzbd) and indexers, you don't have to browse groups. In fact you most likely can't. The indexer provides you with the map where the files are located (the nzb files) and SABnzbd finds them, starts downloading them, checks if all files are downloadable and keeps going or stops if there aren't even enough files available to attempt a repair.
All of that is abstracted from the user. You tell Radarr/Sonarr what movie/series you want and it will handle everything, from querying the indexers to passing the nzb along to SABnzbd and to automatically restart the process if somehow the download fails.
It's a shame no one uses Usenet for its original purpose though. It was reddit before the internet itself.
From a user perspective it's not a problem. I'm just sad what an abomination my beloved pre-reddit has become. Also it's super weird like using bicycles for international shipping instead of container ships without telling the user and hiding the whole process in the background.
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Sickos.
be kind rewind
seed after you feed
I haven't really torrented in awhile. I was lucky enough to get in a private megalinks forum site before they closed registrations!
God I love Kelly's comics.
Switch to UseNet. No seedin' required!
Always seed after you feed.
I have been able to convince more genz to seed than I know adults who torrent at all
The last time I was seeding, on my desktop, my system was set up not to go into sleep mode and also didn't have problems where my monitor wouldn't just stop displaying the screen.
Now, under Linux Mint, under Wayland for my preferred client, I have to constantly be there to ensure the display doesn't decide to stop displaying since Wayland is still experimental in Cinnamon under LM Zena.
Otherwise I would go back to doing it.
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Salt of the earth.
I don’t use a vpn so I can’t seed. Sorry guys
Uploading [160 TB of] Pirated Books via BitTorrent [for profit] Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues
Meta also argued that the BitTorrent sharing was a necessity to get the valuable (but pirated) data. In the case of Anna’s Archive, Meta said, the datasets were only available in bulk through torrent downloads, making BitTorrent the only practical option.
“Meta used BitTorrent because it was a more efficient and reliable means of obtaining the datasets, and in the case of Anna’s Archive, those datasets were only available in bulk through torrent downloads,” Meta’s attorney writes.
If billionaires can massively pirate EVERYTHING in bulk for profit, why individuals can't pirate a single item for personal consumption?
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Go forth and spread your seed and be fruitful and multiply.
I only seed things that are legal for me to seed. Everything else is seedn't.
If you're downloading illegal things, but not seeding those, fuck you.
If you don't torrent illegal things, then carry on.
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