this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
987 points (99.5% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
63006 readers
324 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
🏴☠️ Other communities
FUCK ADOBE!
Torrenting/P2P:
- !seedboxes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !trackers@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !qbittorrent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !libretorrent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !soulseek@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Gaming:
- !steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !newyuzupiracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !switchpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !3dspiracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !retropirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I never use a vpn with torrents. Private trackers in my experience have been enough to be fine. The only times in 20 years of torrenting tons of shit I’ve gotten isp letters were once I downloaded a Pokémon rom from a pubic tracker, which was stupid, and once I had a roommate that downloaded some shitty movie from a public tracker
Alternatively usenet
I've always found private trackers to be almost unusably bureaucratic
Yup, same. Your options are usually either “pay for fake ratio bonuses” or “seed dead torrents for six months in order to get enough time credit to convert into ratio.” If you’re trying to chase the freeleech tags, then you’ll never hit decent ratios because now you’re seeding a torrent that has 1000 other seeds and only 5 leeches.
And if you have to pay for fake ratio to get started, just fucking pay for Usenet and skip the hassle instead.
There's an easy solution to that.
Seed something yourself.
Go buy a garage sale DVD of something that is semi-popular and doesn't already exist on the private tracker, rip it, and post the torrent yourself.
'S what I did back when Underground Gamer still existed; I had a version of Mechwarrior 2 that didn't already have a torrent, so I spent some time making a nice summary and uploaded it myself. Worked a treat; I had enough ratio to get me through my rough early weeks and never looked back. Until the site shut down, of course.
Some yes, but some no. A few I've been on are downright absurd in how most of the things are free.
I agree about not having to pay etc too.
I suspect I've just gotten lucky but several of the trackers I've found are easy to just let the ARRs do their thing.
Cross-seed is a big part of being able to sustain on mediocre upload. Download a torrent on one site but get credit on 7 different sites.
Alternatively many sites offer infinite download if you have a certain total size of torrents available. (Sometimes together with a account age requirement too). So get a permanently online torrent client (mini pc, seedbox, vps, etc) and you're set on those sites.
IPtorrents is the best. You should try to keep a 1:1, but you just have to seed for 2 weeks, and you get points for 15 torrents to use as upload credit, even if you don’t upload a single byte. I’ve never had to think about my ratio.