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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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Technology
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I thought I read that private trackers are hard to sign up to. Or that you have to prove yourself somehow and people get stressed about maintaining their ratio. Is that true? If so, that doesn't sound fun.
You do have to get an invite, seed, and maybe toss them a small crypto donation occasionally. The ratio thing depends on the tracker but usually it's just a requirement to seed back anything for at least a week. Popular torrents become FreeLeech and they don't count against your ratio.
Because the participants are all vetted, you don't get RIAA and MPAA shills in swarm trying to vacuum up IPs to start sending nasty legal letters out.
A decade ago when I used public torrents I remember getting those stupid ISP strikes. I know shit-tier regional ISPs would even try to embarrass you with the content you pirated. They'd send you a letter like "the Copyright holder for 'Anal Hookers of Beijing' told us they're big mad at you, and if you do it again you'll get your service revoked". Some of these ISPs were integrated with cable companies so they'd freeze your internet and cable, and display the text of the copyright strike on your fucking TV for your girlfriend or grandma to see.
Fuck that noise.
Since using a private tracker I have never received a single cease and desist or ISP warning letter. Then again, I only use Bit Torrent to download Linux ISOs.
Interesting. I've got a fast internet connection and a server running 24/7 with Transmission and 9 TB of hard drive space. I run it behind Gluetun/NordVPN to avoid those copyright strikes. My setup has been extremely successful so far. I only delete torrents once they hit a ratio of 1.5 at the moment, though I could extend that if necessary. I don't use cryptocurrency, though, and don't intend to start. I assume my setup would be somewhat valuable to a private tracker. Do you have any recommendations?
Edit: oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I, too, only use bittorrent to share Linux ISOs and other non-copyright material. Definitely. Piracy is bad.
Only the few elite ones, mostly the ones with music.
The most elite trackers perhaps.
Trackers on /r/opensignups ? Nah they open their doors to the public every now and again.
Would not recommend it to anyone who can’t dedicate a seed box or machine uploading torrents most hours of the day every day. It’s possible to do it without those but difficult. With them it’s merely a matter of using free leech and building a buffer up as well as taking advantage of points systems to get free upload just for keeping torrents seeding even without uploading.
If you only ever grab free leech then all you have to worry about is meeting seed time and activity requirements like logging in every 90 days.
An old computer with an external drive. A raspberry pi, a nas that can run a BitTorrent client. Any would work if one doesn’t want to pay for a seed box. (Most trackers ban shared seed boxes though so you will have to get dedicated)
An old laptop with qbitorren in a docker container works quite nicely.