Where do torrents come from these days?
April 3, 2024 5:29 PM Subscribe
How does one get digital copies of DVDs that are buried in the back of storage these days?
I used to have the hookup but no longer have any idea where to get movies from these days. I also recently acquired a NAS that has a torrent app on it and would like to be able to put movies on it and stream them about the house.
I used to have the hookup but no longer have any idea where to get movies from these days. I also recently acquired a NAS that has a torrent app on it and would like to be able to put movies on it and stream them about the house.
The pirate bay and rarbg are both still around amazingly enough.
RARBG shut down last year, sadly. I didn’t realize just how good I had it with them until the shutdown; Torrent Galaxy has been my best general purpose torrenter since the shutdown, with Nyaa supplementing for my anime needs.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 7:08 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
RARBG shut down last year, sadly. I didn’t realize just how good I had it with them until the shutdown; Torrent Galaxy has been my best general purpose torrenter since the shutdown, with Nyaa supplementing for my anime needs.
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 7:08 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
Torrentfreak regularly publishes a list of the top 10 torrent sites.
posted by dunhamrc at 8:29 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by dunhamrc at 8:29 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
If you have the qBittorent app/program you can use the inbuilt search tab to search all sites at once, how to.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:48 PM on April 3 [7 favorites]
posted by ellieBOA at 8:48 PM on April 3 [7 favorites]
Soulseek is where it’s at
posted by porn in the woods at 9:26 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by porn in the woods at 9:26 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
Pirate bay works fine, if you find it keeps opening windows use your tab key; it's responding to mouse clicks.
posted by Sebmojo at 10:05 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by Sebmojo at 10:05 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Yeah, RARBG is a victim of Russian/Ukraine conflict. The pirate community considers The Pirate Bay to be low quality and high risk at this point. It is not recommended as a public tracker anymore.
Piracy today, at least outside of niche and special interest, is usually done on demand via Stremio, Kodi, or similar. These applications then get hooked into torrents or debird to search and stream content on demand. Pirates usually prefer debird services to torrents now. That isn't to say that Torrenting doesn't still exist, but your average pirate isn't interviewing for private trackers anymore.
The more advanced scene is more around discords (or similar non-indexed and invite only platforms like Telegram) where file lockers are shared and debird is used to manage downloads and scene releases go out on Usenet (this is where those indexers and newsgroups come into play that Acari mentioned). I personally feel that Usenet is declining in favour of debird/file locker setups, but ymmv. Usenet users will always be doing automation through Sonarr/Radarr or similar. I do think niche private trackers are still the best option for really obscure and old content since usenet or file lockers are likely not going to have long term retention like a private tracker, but getting access to them and maintaining ratio is not for the casual pirate
People that still rely primarily on public trackers or have a good set of private trackers will use Jackett or Prowlarr for torrent search and likely combine that with Sonarr/Radarr. As ellieBOA mentioned, qBittorent does have a search option, but it's much more powerful if you hook Jackett and FlareSolverr into it. That said, IMO, maintaining ratio on private trackers isn't worth the trouble, especially if it's all niche stuff that doesn't do a lot of upload. Better off just paying a few bucks a month for debird or usenet and then not worry about it.
Music piracy is mostly via hacked apps so you can use Spotify without ads for free or whatever. You're unlikely to get access to any of the good private music torrent trackers. There is still a diehard community on Soulseek doing P2P, but I have not had good experiences with that community. If you're looking for anything outside the mainstream it either isn't there or you have to negotiate with someone that doesn't share publicly. Faster and easier just to rip flac from Qoboz. You can technically search for movies and other file types on Soulseek, but I don't know why anyone would bother when it is so much worse for that than other options.
There you go. My brief primer on where piracy is at right now. Prof Google can teach you how to do any and all of these things now that you know what to search for.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 10:41 PM on April 3 [37 favorites]
Piracy today, at least outside of niche and special interest, is usually done on demand via Stremio, Kodi, or similar. These applications then get hooked into torrents or debird to search and stream content on demand. Pirates usually prefer debird services to torrents now. That isn't to say that Torrenting doesn't still exist, but your average pirate isn't interviewing for private trackers anymore.
The more advanced scene is more around discords (or similar non-indexed and invite only platforms like Telegram) where file lockers are shared and debird is used to manage downloads and scene releases go out on Usenet (this is where those indexers and newsgroups come into play that Acari mentioned). I personally feel that Usenet is declining in favour of debird/file locker setups, but ymmv. Usenet users will always be doing automation through Sonarr/Radarr or similar. I do think niche private trackers are still the best option for really obscure and old content since usenet or file lockers are likely not going to have long term retention like a private tracker, but getting access to them and maintaining ratio is not for the casual pirate
People that still rely primarily on public trackers or have a good set of private trackers will use Jackett or Prowlarr for torrent search and likely combine that with Sonarr/Radarr. As ellieBOA mentioned, qBittorent does have a search option, but it's much more powerful if you hook Jackett and FlareSolverr into it. That said, IMO, maintaining ratio on private trackers isn't worth the trouble, especially if it's all niche stuff that doesn't do a lot of upload. Better off just paying a few bucks a month for debird or usenet and then not worry about it.
Music piracy is mostly via hacked apps so you can use Spotify without ads for free or whatever. You're unlikely to get access to any of the good private music torrent trackers. There is still a diehard community on Soulseek doing P2P, but I have not had good experiences with that community. If you're looking for anything outside the mainstream it either isn't there or you have to negotiate with someone that doesn't share publicly. Faster and easier just to rip flac from Qoboz. You can technically search for movies and other file types on Soulseek, but I don't know why anyone would bother when it is so much worse for that than other options.
There you go. My brief primer on where piracy is at right now. Prof Google can teach you how to do any and all of these things now that you know what to search for.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 10:41 PM on April 3 [37 favorites]
If you're just looking for something simple, nthing qbittorrent for both downloads and built-in search. Note that unlike some websites it doesn't let you search by category or exclude categories, so for some searches you're going to get a ton of porn results. If there's a way to avoid this without filtering out legit results I'd love to know.
It's probably a good idea to run a VPN too.
posted by trig at 12:49 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
It's probably a good idea to run a VPN too.
posted by trig at 12:49 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
Well I (will have) learned a lot. I'm glad more knowledgeable folks came in to correct my outdated info. I'm intrigued by the qbittorrent search info, since I've been using that program for years without trying the search!
posted by Acari at 6:36 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
posted by Acari at 6:36 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]
Best answer: [if anyone else is struggling to find the “debird” that was mentioned several times up-thread: you want “debrid” instead]
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 3:06 PM on April 4 [6 favorites]
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 3:06 PM on April 4 [6 favorites]
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I also have to plug kanopy (probably available with your library card) as a good source of entertainment.
The people I know who are more into their digital media talk about newsgroups and use terms like indexers, but I can't say anything beyond that they seem almost evangelical about it all.
posted by Acari at 6:39 PM on April 3