Do you prefer private or public trackers?

As I get more and more invites to private trackers, I’m finding that I find myself spending more and more time on public tracker websites.

I’ll only use private trackers if I can’t find what I’m looking for on a public tracker. Private tracker rules can get pretty onerous and I prefer to just avoid the whole scene if possible.

If I’m honest, this opinion surprises me. I didn’t expect to prefer public trackers. I always thought that private trackers were so cool and exclusive. I don’t think that way anymore.

Mandy,

Private trackers have, always been a bunch of snobby dingleberries

littlemisskittn,

Private. Speeds are much better and your stuff lasts longer. I tried several times to have public options for my Coliseum Video uploads and all have failed in some way. At least with private trackers, I know that they’ll stay seeded for a long long time.

WarmApplePieShrek,

Private trackers aren’t dominated by people who waste my bandwidth downloading all day at maximum speed and never contributing back.

prole,

My private tracker days are behind me after they shut down OiNK, and then later what.cd. Though I can’t say I don’t miss it sometimes. At its peak, What was an amazing place.

pewgar_seemsimandroid,

whatever lets me a upload a YouTube video downloaded via newpipe

dudemanbro, (edited )
@dudemanbro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

My home-base is a private forum (DDL). I think of it as a place where people gather the best media from around the internet. We may not get it first but it eventually makes its way there. There are also many exclusive uploads (mostly encodes) but people do some fantastic work with upscales of movies and/or TV series. The user base is also part of the many private trackers the world has to offer. I am part of like 2 private trackers and they are phenomenal as well. I also use public trackers extensively as well as there is actually a lot of stuff out there. I will always try and seed for public trackers but I definitely don’t go as long as I would for private ones (just cause I don’t want to get dinged) (Yeah I could use a VPN but too lazy, even though I am in a place that don’t give many fucks about media piracy). I prefer DDL because I don’t have to maintain ratio, but I do understand that with private trackers there can be some more longevity (but isn’t really guaranteed). There are also other private trackers of the index variety that aren’t built around ratio which can be nice.

There can be a lot of rules with private trackers, and yes some of them are really annoying, not gonna lie. The rules are there for a reason, for the most part. For some it’s about building a community, while for others it’s about making sure stuff survives for as long as possible. There are so many tools for a fellow seafarer to have and private trackers are just one of them and they serve a purpose. I am of the belief that all information should be available to everyone forever, but the world don’t work like that and the long dick of the law can really fuck you life up. I think a valuable lesson from private trackers is that it makes one not just be a leech and makes one give back. There is nothing wrong with leeching, but I always like to think that piracy is about sharing the wealth. (not trying to moralize piracy, to each their own)

But as you said, public trackers have A LOT of stuff. So much media can be found on them. Private trackers help if you want the best of the best with regards to certain media or for hard to find stuff. Each have their place and it all about using the tools available to you

WarmApplePieShrek,

I hate DDL. The fucking delay times, javascript nonsense and ads.

dudemanbro,
@dudemanbro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

A lot of the private DDL forums dont deal with any of that. It’s more on the level of “If you know, you know”

Gooey0210,

I prefer rutracker 👀

Dumbkid,

Only in two minor private trackers and meh, I liked usenet better don’t have to worry about ratios cause I use the *arrs. The private trackers I had to rack up like 5tb of buffer before I felt comfortable having the *arrs automatically grab from em

athos77,

The newbie blues for each private tracker are a definite thing, but once you get past that it's great. It also depends on which trackers you're on: the general trackers tend to have similar content as publics, but it's the specialty and niche trackers where privates really shine.

java,

I can’t bother joining a private tracker. Of course, they might be useful for niche content. For instance, 15 years ago there was a special tracker, where people shared races of virtually all racing series. But mainstream stuff is available on public trackers.

There one tracker where I download lossless music. But anyone can join it, I guess you could define it as semi-private or semi-public.

Dwalin,

I’m interested in the lossless music tracker. Which one is it?

java,

rutracker.org, e.g. rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3494796

The interface is in Russian, but it’s not that hard to translate a couple of words to navigate. Apparently, you don’t even have to be registered to download anymore.

https://i.imgur.com/u99vxb3.png

Type1,
@Type1@midwest.social avatar

I’ve applied for half-a-dozen private trackers, but they’ve all turned me down. Definitely seems counter to the entire idea of piracy IMO.

splendoruranium,

I strongly disapprove of private trackers. I’m forced to take part in some only because the content isn’t available anywhere else. And the private trackers generally forbid re-sharing their content on public trackers, which unnecessarily gatekeeps the content and perpetuates the problem.
If it doen’t help to make everything accessible to everybody then it’s not a valuable part of the sharing ecosystem.

athos77,

Do they forbid sharing the content, or do they forbid sharing the torrents? If it's just the torrents, you can just create a public torrent with a different piece size and cross seed.

splendoruranium,

It’s the content, presumably in order to maintain exclusivity of the little private club. That’s part of the problem, I suppose. Private trackers aren’t just an anonymous one-stop supermarket like some public trackers, they’re often small personal hangouts, actual communities. In of itself that sounds great, but it always carries the danger of content being held hostage for what - at least in my eyes - amounts to pointless, snobby elitism.

neo,
@neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

The torrents.

WarmApplePieShrek,

The torrents, because they mess up tracker stats. Just change the source parameter so the infohash changes, and remove private=1 if you’re going to post on a public tracker.

ANIMATEK,

Most trackers are fine with you sharing their content. Heck, most trackers don’t even produce most of their content.

But let’s suppose they do. If you wanna share it, they cannot ever trace it back to your account, unless you are dumb and use the same username or something, but even then you can argue that it wasn’t you.

neo,
@neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

No, they forbid you sharing their TORRENTS, not their CONTENT.

TimewornTraveler,

I dunno the difference

canis_majoris,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

I am on a few private trackers but they don’t offer anything that the public trackers don’t already have covered for my use case, outside of porn.

I am more of a DDL pirate anyways. I have a seedbox for torrents but I tend to stick to mega links, even if there is a slight delay in getting the media. Typically what I find is that all the re-encoded high resolution h265 content comes later and is more abundant on the mega link forums than on trackers; most trackers will have h264 copies at 720/1080, but they’re often larger than the h265 high resolution re-encodes.

SchizoDenji,

Unless the h264 files extra audio tracks, you’re downloading lower quality (bitrate) stuff.

canis_majoris,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

The lower bitrate is fine because I’m usually streaming off the local network, so keeping the file sizes down is pretty beneficial.

skele_tron,

I used to want to get in on some private trackers, esp cult movie related ( karagarga ) but was always put off by elitism of those rules and systems.

Instead i opted to upload to pirate bay and like a trve pirate - no questions asked, download what you will - seeded some very obscure movies that i collected. Had to pull the plug after more than 10 yrs because i was emigrating, was a good time.

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