Apologies if this is a basic question, but I am curious to know what I am missing out on by not having access to private torrents? I have been able to find everything I wanted using public ones.
For me:
- Lifetime of torrents, honestly I rarely have dead torrents on private trackers. Also, most of them send an alert to previous seeders telling them one torrent needs some seeds. So for that it’s WAY better than public.
- Niche contents, I’m into rare movies and some movies are only available on private trackers (unfortunately), so yeah, for me no choice. Though I really miss VXT releases on RARBG :(.
Except that… Not much. I think I still would keep my seedbox if I was on public trackers. Private or public, we all have to do our jobs and participate in seeding what we got :)
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If you are able to get all the content you need from public trackers and you don’t worry about copyright agancies tracking you than there’s no reason for you at all to bother with private trackers.
I agree and went with the same route. One thing that private trackers may offer is the forum or the discussion board and plenty of user generated content
- they are properly moderated so no fake torrents or malware (and anyone trying to upload those is immediately banned)
- many have rules about formats, nfo files - another guarantee that your file is what it says it is
- duplicates are not usually allowed - eg if an album already exists in FLAC format, you can’t upload another one
- ratio requirements mean people almost always seed, and many use seed boxes which means speed is much faster. Movies download to my seed box in a couple of seconds typically.
Better speeds, better access to niche content, arguably better privacy.
Private torrents are faster and safer. The downside is you typically have to maintain an upload ratio, which can be very hard to achieve without a seedbox.
The downside is you typically have to maintain an upload ratio, which can be very hard to achieve without a seedbox.
That’s not a downside - the whole point is to promote seeding. Rent a seedbox for £5 a month and fill it with freeleech torrents and let it seed before you dive into downloading and you should easily be able to build a healthy ratio.
That’s not just downside, that’s two downsides - first is paying for seedbox, second is ever bothering with building ratio with freeleech torrents (meaning downloading stuff you don’t need) 😉
So choose if those downsides outweigh the upsides.
I understand the point, I have like 30TB uploaded on public trackers. It’s a down side for the average user that does not have a seedbox or wants one.
Yeah - if your needs are met by public, then thats great. My seedbox is also my plex server, so for £10 a month I get an all in one solution - no risk of copyright hits, almost instant downloads that appear right on my plex server almost as soon as I add them. Funnily enough, the seedbox I use doesn’t allow seeding on public trackers, only on private ones.
I was using different private trackers but in the end dropped them and went back to public ones. One thing that private trackers may offer is the forum or the discussion board and plenty of user generated content. But in general there are many negative points:
- the drama: lots of users feel entitled and there is a very negative attitude towards newcomers
- less security: there was a time when an italian private tracker was caught and ended up giving the name and data of few active users. I don’t buy that you have to use a legit email and no vpn.
- you have to pay for a seedbox and always track your ratio: I seed forever most stuff (4k+ torrents) but I don’t want this to become a time sink
Counterpoint to these is that you don’t have to participate in the drama, many allow you to use a VPN, and seedboxes aren’t mandatory and you can just as easily permaseed to build ratio (via bonus points). What you say is true of some trackers but not with any that I’ve joined.
Skip the drama, just download and seed the torrents
You also get access to a broad repository of the history of a particular torrent. Like ever preferred a really obscure version of your favorite torrent? Probably impossible to find unless it was a really popular Vidya game and there’s a legacy torrent still seeding.
I’ve still got a Myanonamouse (Private Book Tracker) account purely because there are certain editions of books that quite literally don’t exist in print except as a used copy on Amazon. But because some degenerate decided to commit all their scans to a Seedbox, ebook versions of obscure early science fiction now exist.
Very niche, but also incredibly useful if you come across something that you just can’t find elsewhere.
What was the italian tracker?
I am having troubles recalling the name right now. It was many years ago. I remember it was famous for having english subbed movies with italian subtitles, most of the time weeks before the title landed in the cinemas
Content you may not be able to find elsewhere (for example, MySpleen has tons of old discontinued/out of print content), as well as you aren’t going to find copyright holders in private tracker swarms monitoring for IP’s to have infringement notices sent to.
Downside: If you don’t like seeding, you get to fuck yourself and get used to liking seeding or you lose your account.
I have been able to find everything I wanted using public ones.
In your use case there is no benefit, just keep doing what you’re doing now.
People do find it helpful to look into private trackers if there are things they can’t find on public torrent indexers or if they are looking for higher quality releases.
The main thing for me is that Private Trackers, because they incentivise continued seeding, will maintain greater activity for older torrents. People are even given bonus incentives for seeding content that has few seeders. As a result, older content and torrents that would be long dead in public trackers are still alive and well in the private ones, and when they become relevant again can be brought back to the public trackers.
Public trackers’ public nature means they’re more likely to result in your activity being seen / tracked by entities you don’t want it tracked by, for one. Ever gotten one of those letters from your ISP warning you not to download pirated shit? My understanding is that that’s usually the result of using an insecure tracker.
Only benefits for me are that they have faster download speeds and that I don’t need a VPN.
Some private trackers are shady. Even if you seed, they might undercount your contribution and ask for money. If that happens, it’s a scam, just walk away.
Usenet isn’t too complicated once you install an NZB downloader.
Well, imagine private trackers being like subreddits or magazines in the Fediverse. There are private torrent communities that only share TTRPG books, files for FVX/Motion Graphics, Art/Photography books, Magazines from a certain era, STL files for 3D printing, etc. And all of these trackers have very strict filters for both posters and visitors so the quality of the content is top-notch.
In these trackers, there is stuff that you won’t find elsewhere, period. Talking from experience… Good luck finding scans of Spanish tech/video game magazines from the 90s/00s, or copyrighted stuff like precise 3D models of Nintendo Switch’s Joycon shells, out in the common web.
