Usenet is unmoderated. Once you post it, it sticks forever. We could probably get one of the independent providers to give free access to a new newsgroup. Anyone have any thoughts?
I’ve used Usenet for my content needs for years because it’s so fast and risk free. I think we could also use it for our community discussions.
Hi, I keep hearing this everywhere, what exactly is usenet and how do I use it? (sorry if this is derailing the point of your question)
Usenet WAS basically the internet back in the early to mid 90s,they are also called list servers, that’s basically what they are.
You post to a list by topic and it appends your post to the list. It’s like reddit in that there are topics and subjects but the list just goes on forever.
Each post will have your subject line and other header info and the software will let you reply and quote and so on.
The key is that it isn’t very centralized, servers will copy the lists and host their own. The cool thing was it would let you post binaries. So piracy and pr0n on the internet was here b4 websites were really a thing.
There are a lot of list servers out there but my understanding is that the good ones are a subscription now.
subscriptions
Yes. You need to pay a small amount but unless you plan on downloading many TBs of stuff the cost is really small. The speeds and lack of risk makes it worthwhile for me. I think I paid $5 for a 1 TB account and I can use the free level of access at my indexers without having to pay.
Like I said in my original post, I wonder if we can get a provider to host a newsgroup for us for free?
Where did you get this deal if you don’t mind me asking?
I personally use frugalusenet for $4/pm, which is unlimited, but if I could find $5/1TB I would switch to that.
Indexer I pay $1/pm for a big one and I have a free one that has less.
Could you point me towards the free one? I just want a taste of usenet before I commit
Also, usenet.farm (backend) has a 10GB trial.
Usenet is a very old part of the internet. I think it predates the world wide web. It’s basically a message board. Which boards (like subs) exist on there is democratically decided. At least that was how it was done in Germany. For example, when there where too many Star Wars posts in the Science Fiction group de.rec.sf they decided to create one for Star Wars under de.rec.sf.starwars.
The actual content resides on newsservers around the globe. When you pass a message to one of them it is distributed around the globe to all the other servers. It’s similar to how Lemmy works, with the difference that with Lemmy content is only passed around when someone is actually subscribed to a particular community.
But many news servers don’t pass around messages that contain files. Because that would take up too much space. To get access to the servers that do pass around files you have to pay for the service. That is actually used for piracy nowadays.
Back in the days you could actually get access to usenet from your ISP. At least to the text only portion. Don’t know how you’d do it nowadays. It’s mostly fallen to obscurity.
This helped me understand usenet properly, thank you. I don’t see the allure of using it especially since torrents are free and largely seeded (depending on the indexer and your preference). I see why people would prefer it for more obscure stuff though.
The main reason it might be used is it integrates very well with services such as Sonarr/Radarr which can auto-download TV shows/movies if you have a good indexer. That and generally the Usenet servers do not keep access logs so it tends to be a lot safer than torrenting. For software/games etc. I would stick with torrents, but for TV/Movies if you have your own server Usenet is a compelling service.
I have used both and I don’t disagree with you, but I want to say it’s worth noting that torrents also work fine with Sonarr and Radarr!
Good point - I did find torrents a lot more fiddly to set up though.
Agreed again haha, it was way more fiddly (but also more free!)
These days I’m just using Stremio for my media though, with add-ons it’s glorious
Free is always the best price! I’ve been using a Sonarr/SABnzbd/Emby setup on my home built NAS (unRAID) for about 7 years now. Until recently I had about 9.5TB of shows but then got ransomwared :(. Got about 4 of it back now and counting!
Couldn’t we all move to i2p by similar logic?
i2p seems very rudimentary for piracy imo even though it has been around a long time (I have only recently ventured into the realm of i2p, so forgive me, and let me know if I am wrong)
If you are referring to the availability of torrents and people seeding compared to the regular web I think you might be right.
That said from what I’ve read you don’t need a VPN when torrenting over i2p
I haven’t used the Usenet in about 8 years or so. What is currently a good provider? Is sabnzb or wtf it was called still the best software? And what search engine would you recommend for finding nzb in 2023?
In my opinion, the best provider is Eweka. You can still get the €3.99/mo offer at https://www.eweka.nl/en/landing/special-deal. They don’t follow DMCA so uploads tend to last a lot longer. Ideally you’ll have at least one block account from another provider on a different backbone. Check here for a map of providers and backbones https://usenetmap.b-cdn.net/latest.svg. The block account is for when your main provider is missing some parts. However, with Eweka this has been extremely rare for me so you can probably wait on getting a block account if you go with them.
Nowadays, you’ll also need a good indexer (or two or three). Long gone are the days of searching for an nzb on a public site. Nzbgeek is probably a good one to start with since it has open registration. DrunkenSlug is another great one, but requires an invite. I don’t think there is a lemmy alternative, so checkout r/usenetinvites if interested.
SABnzbd and NZBget are the two most used downloaders, but the latter is no longer being maintained.
Uploads do not last a lot longer on Eweka. That is a common misconception that the corporate staff at Eweka seem to be successfully pushing so they can trick you into buying their product TWICE. They own Eweka plus a bunch of other US based sites and want you to purchase an account at eweka and an account at one of their US sites. Now you can see why people are leaving Usenet, when the largest provider is shady like that.
Eweka has to follow NTD rules which are just basically the EUs version of DMCA. Both NTD and DMCA providers get all the same notices I’ve read. Maybe it takes a couple extra hours to process NTD but if you’re using automation then you will be grabbing it in the first 24 hours anyway.
Don’t waste your time paying the extra money for Eweka unless maybe you’re in the EU and just want a server close to you. They don’t have a US based server location.
That’s interesting, never heard that before. I’ve been using them for about 2.5 years and got in at €2.99/mo. Maybe my download success could be attributed to the indexers I’m using? I think I was using NewsDemon before that and definitely had some takedown issues.
I think Newsdemon was still on Omacon 2.5 years ago so maybe that was the issue.
If you’ve been following on the Usenet subreddit there has been a lot of info about Omacron being bad. They’ve run off competition and done some shady things with user data. I think they even voluntarily handed it over to the government once for a court case. They own Eweka.
Usenet is fine for downloading but getting providers these days involve paying for it, which gates of a lot of folks. Torrenting and federated social media does not.
Is torrenting really free though? VPNs and seedboxes are not and torrenting without any of those is a bad idea in many countries. Usenet is quite cheap. I use both but I prefer the usenet tbh.
