I prefer public trackers and torrents just because I don't like gatekeeping piracy. I want those bits to be distributed as far and wide as possible. So anything I get and/or seed will be public.
Even if there are bad peers that don't give back (which there are many), plenty enough times it's just people with shitty under served Internet connections. I'm fortunate enough to have a good enough connection where that doesn't bother me.
Those who distribute from private to public are doing a great service
I hate the whole meta of private trackers. When I've joined a few in the past the whole focus on needing to keep up your ratio has been a larger barrier to downloading than leechers ever were on public trackers.
You can't seed because several users have seedboxes with perfect connections and already have a billion-to-one ratio. I 'theoretically' have access to all this content, but I'm downloading '80's workout video volume 7' in the hopes that I can actually seed it for someone to get enough ratio to actually download something I wanted to watch.
I was on what.cd back when that was still a thing, I poorly chose my first few downloads and then never had enough ratio to download anything else ever again until I was finally kicked for inactivity.
Instead of actually fostering a working seed economy, most seem to just replicate a capitalist dystopia where a handful of users hog all the seed slots, earning more ratio credits than they could ever use while everyone else desperately tries to scrape together enough ratio to get something of value.
This is a reason why I'm not on any private tracker. When there are 200 seeds all with better connection than me, then my ratio isn't going anywhere. It creates this weird dynamic where you're sometimes wishing people would stop seeding stuff; and that is clearly counter-productive.
So by chance I was in university and invited into what by my roommate. I literally bought more internet bandwidth from my uni to handle an early freeleech event where I got to mega game the system (By accident! I didn't really know what I was doing. And good thing it was a private tracker because I was on a bare connection. I didn't know what A VPN was at that time, much less how to hide my identity online).
I thought my ratio was totally unfair so I never really abused it, but that's kinda the problem. Only by chance I had like a 500 ratio, whereas someone like you had no chance ever to catch up to the earlier established players. Even though I wasn't a victim of the ratio, the concept of your story is just another reason why I dislike private trackers.
That said, the best thing about what.cd was just how well organized and categorized it was. Library of Alexandria style shit, now lost to us. Plus the forums with some real music-heads were great, too, and you could really expand your music horizons by talking with those people. I liked that it was NOT a Reddit-style forum, so when something new dropped everyone had a say. Upvotes didn't influence that kind of conversation. At any rate, I stopped pirating music so much maybe beginning in 2013 or 2014, but every time I look now the uploads are either 320kbps (overkill bitrate, garbage ancient codec) or FLAC (nice for archiving, but not what I want). So I end up DLing FLACs and then converting them into 128kbps Opus. It works, but my music horizons aren't broadened without that what community. I guess all I mean is I don't miss the private nature of what, but I do miss the community.
although I've account on some private trackers but I never use them just for these reasons you've mentioned their economy doesn't treat all equally.
I exclaimed "YES!" and started clapping after reading your comment. Just hell yeah. Beyond the weird issues that come with the model of seeding to gain access, there is something fundamentally off about the idea of private trackers, and you nailed it. It is antithetical to the whole enterprise of sharing. This transactional shit serves as a price tag that only the privileged can afford
Many times that's true, too. One of the saddest things in torrents is seeing two torrents with identical contents that were created separately, or one just recreated so someone can add their website to it or something, thereby dividing the pool of possible peers.
I think one of the most interesting ideas in BitTorrent v2 is that hash trees are formed per-file, not per-torrent. So two torrents with identical contents could, if I understand this right, basically be considered one and the same. It would be cool to see more wide adoption and promotion of BT v2 https://blog.libtorrent.org/2020/09/bittorrent-v2/
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/mQbh7UNCZdc?si=rLIrjauvSP85CRW7
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Here's my experience with 99% of private trackers:
"You haven't upload enough. Download a free-leech to upload more". So I download it, and no one downloads it from me.
You're downloading old and/or unpopular stuff. For you to upload content someone has to be actively downloading that content (that's how the bit torrent protocol works at the most basic level). If you choose some 5 year-old FL of a Game of Thrones pack with 7,000 seeders, that's on you
The incentive structure just doesn't seem designed well. It creates a zero sum game. When downloading you can either:
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Not seed to 100%. This damages your ratio
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Seed to exactly 100%. In terms of ratio maintenance across all seeders this option makes the most sense
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Seed past 100%. You build up your own ratio but deny other downloaders from reaching 100% which hurts their ratio. They must spend longer seeding the torrent to reach 100%, which further decreases the likelihood of subsequent downloaders from reaching 100% when seeding
When you seed past 100%, you essentially have to rely on bad actors to create more upload work for good actors. If there are no bad actors then seeding past 100% is to the detriment of other good actors, who you want to protect because you also rely on them for system health. And private trackers aim to minimize the number of bad actors.
Some great private trakers implement a system where users are rewarded for the time they spend seeding rather than the amount of data seeded. This creates an incentive towards keeping torrents available to everyone for a long time, which makes the whole system healthier.
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Use Sonarr or Radarr, it will download content for you as soon as it is available on the tracker. Since people are mostly looking for new stuff it works really well to boost your ratio. I have at least a ratio of 10 (first episode is closer to 20) for every Ahsoka and Futurama episodes. For Asteroid City I'm currently at 18.
Sonarr and Radarr actually take a bit after the initial upload to discover it, autobrr can grab quicker because it relies on the irc announce channel of the tracker.
I got around this by just downloading some big freeleech porn packs or a couple new release shows/movies. My highest ratio item is an anime episode I downloaded minutes after release
Can any of you guys with access to private trackers search for "keroro VF" or "Keroro titar" or "Keroro french". Me and several people been looking for it, some for almost half a decade but to no avail. It's a lost media so if you can try finding it on there we'll be very grateful. Thanks in advance !
Also found none. At least not in french. If you still want it, look on nyaa.
I searched the whole internet and i didn't find it. Nyaa got dead torrents of the french fansubs of the 2014 reboot of the original 2004 show.
We're looking for the french dub of 2004 original show. only the first 3 seasons out of 7 were dubbed. They aired till around 2013 on different french kids channels then it dissappeared forever. DVDs were planned but never released.
Another site i tried and is supposed to have everything is animetosho but no luck either.
Thanks a lot , any help is very much appreciated ! can you tell me the name of the ones you tried so i can tell the team they're not available there. Again, thanks
What's the benefit of using a Private tracker? If you have a VPN shouldn't that cover you?
Private trackers have seeding policies in place that mandate or incentivize keeping torrents alive for extended periods of time. As a result, you see fewer dead torrents and much faster download speeds.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/YvUbbYX9BMs?si=Z8cWP7M0O85jYkLq
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I got suspended for inactivity for all my private music trackers after I got Spotify, I miss them and want to go back now :(
rip waffles.fm
I don't know what this is. I guess I'll read a link one of the comments provided here.
Edit: Nvm. The link didn't explain anything
A private tracker is a torrenting site, like TPB, but is invite-only or has some other barrier to get in. They're usually safer and faster, bur you have to seed. Also YMMV, obscure things might either not be on there, or have few/no seeds.
My main issue with seeding is that I don't always have my pc on and would rather not keep it always on
You can just set your torrent program to open at startup, as long as you use your computer somewhat often you'll be fine. Or you can look into a seedbox, it's cheap
Look I get that private trackers are probably safer and have a mored dedicated community but personally I still love anyone that keeps it public and keeps the knowledge of torrenting open and available as a tool for new people to discover.
I just use the public torrents, I have an IP Blocklist, and I seed the shit out of the stuff I download if it's got less traction on it.
I will probably find a private group or something once I realize my obscure watching habits leave me out of finding stuff unless I can literally find it physical or get lucky but for now I'm a free pirate.
