Where's the content?

[justlooking]

I know about private Usenet sites and all, but where's all the stuff to get. I like how Beck38 has an aversion for cheesy popular entertainment, but where are the esoteric uploads for people? Usenet doesn't really have a catalog of movies to match a place like Karagarga, or music to compare to WhatCD. Specialty sports torrent sites have most of the games up before Usenet even has a sniff of the few that are posted there. There's much less content on Usenet relative to bittorrent. For every file that's taken down, there are 100 that aren't posted in the first place. That's a bigger factor than takedowns and encoding the name of the file. Usenet is simply losing ground. A British tv show like Heir Hunters is all there, 6 seasons, ready for download on bittorrent. Usenet only had 6 or 7 episodes as I recall. Typical.

[pootystomp]

Usenet is faster, and cleaner. If you like old shit then I guess BitTorrent is better.

[user3240]

Usenet is faster, and cleaner. If you like old shit then I guess BitTorrent is better.

Are you comparing Usenet to a seed box system with private torrents? I am loath to admit it but Usenet is finally showing its age. On private torrents you won't find spam, passcoded files , takedowns etc. I've noticed a lot of the more obscure movies , tv shows and sports hitting the torrent sites long before they hit usenet. In many cases they are simply not being uploaded to usenet in the first place. I don't think the Usenet is dead but it's on life support.

[Beck38]

I know about private Usenet sites and all, but where's all the stuff to get. I like how Beck38 has an aversion for cheesy popular entertainment, but where are the esoteric uploads for people?

What you need to realize is a couple of basic reasons why, facts that, if your in the UK or Europe v. the US, make all the difference in the world.

The US is 4000 miles wide east to west, and 2000+ miles north to south. Except for a very small chunk of 'new england' in the upper northeast part, population density is pretty LOW. Telecommunications (ie, internet speeds) are, in comparison, low to almost non-existent. Especially when it comes to upstream (outgoing) speeds. All of which makes the use of bit-torrent a real pain in the you know where. There are bight spots. But very few and VERY small. The county I live in is larger than several European countries, and only about 1 out of every 6-10 or so even have access to anything over a megabit/second, even through about 1 in 10 has access to fiber to the home or fairly decent cable speeds. But a lot of those can't afford it.

So, for the most part, bit-torrent simply doesn't work for most folks. A 50GB bluray image that would take a week to d/l from usenet would take a MONTH to do so through bit-torrent, if it came through at all. This with the 'average' US speed of 3M/768K, although the FCC says the 'typical' average user now has 4M/1M or thereabouts. But that's counting folks with fairly decent (if expensive as all get out) as well as though with dial-up or even LESS than dial-up.

Now of course if you have government subsidized multi-megabits flowing every which way, it's a different landscape.

[justlooking]

Certainly I prefer Usenet. It's faster and there's no need to use a seedbox, then download to the computer from France and be at the mercy of variable speeds along the way. I guess Usenet was under the radar for so long that uploaders became rare, while torrent sites mushroomed in size. For example, look at a movie group and see maybe 3000 movies over 1500 days of retention. A torrent site with the same subject might have 15,000 of those types of movies. It's disappointing that Usenet isn't dominant, because it's a great way to get things and had a head start of many years over torrents. That said, we can always use both.

[dac]

So, to take your own example; Usenet is missing series X (by your estimate), you have access to series X and I assume, want it. Grab it and post it to usenet. Was that hard?

The math is simple, if noone gives a shit about posting you won't find anything.

[Beck38]

So, to take your own example; Usenet is missing series X (by your estimate), you have access to series X and I assume, want it. Grab it and post it to usenet. Was that hard?

The math is simple, if noone gives a shit about posting you won't find anything.

And 'hard' is, as I pointed out, is variable depending on your 'local' conditions. If I lived a few miles down the road, I'd have access to FIOS speeds, but I'm fairly lucky in that local cable is fair. If I lived where my sister lives (10 miles away), I'd be lucky to have VERY slow DSL, same with my nieces and such (10 miles in another direction).

But depends, if you're talking about 'series' that the 'kiddies' like. Or that then post willie nillie, first in the most obvious newsgroups and secondly with filenames that the most dim idiot could figure out.

More 'adult' fare (not p0rn but something a bit above 'scooby doo') is posted and has no problem. Recent examples are 'Downton Abbey' and 'Fringe' among others.

But I do think that on average, usenet posters tend to go for a bit more on the 'quality' side of things. Of course, that's up to ones interpretation of 'quality'.

[user3240]

Average Broadband speed in America is: 7.4Mb. Sourse http://www.broadbandreports.com/show...74-Mbps-123988

I am well aware that not everybody gets the same speed but most US people on Usenet do have cable lines. One of the major cable companies has increased speed. 30Mb is not that rare. Almost every country has areas that have slow speeds. Spare me the bollocks about government subsidies in other countries and high prices in the states. The states don't consider the internet a public utility. That's why the prices are high and the speeds are lower.

The solution to people with slow speeds is definitely seedboxes. You can even stream from a seedbox. Your personal connection only comes into play when you decide to download to YOUR hard drive. A lot of people are not " collectors" who want to stack hard drives floor to ceiling.

The pr0n may be the only thing that will keep Usenet alive over the long term. Pr0n makes its money from tube sites. They don't even bother with Usenet takedowns. All these other solutions are just stop gaps. How long will it be before Brein forces automated takedowns on the NL?

It was the crazy retention that kept a lot of us from jumping ship. Popular shows are not lasting very long on Usenet so retention rates are immaterial right now. I'm not leaving yet but it's time to be prepared.

This shows the futility of the copyright trolls. If they stop one thing, filesharing just morphs into something else!

[Beck38]

Average Broadband speed in America is: 7.4Mb. Sourse http://www.broadbandreports.com/show...74-Mbps-123988

Sorry, but that source is total CRAP. Again, they are averaging the 10M folks in NYC, half of which have access to FIOS, the other half with cable. Probably the average access is at least 50M/10M with either provider.

My State is about half that population, and 90% is lucky to get DIAL-UP. We have a slice of the county I'm in (due to being ex-Verizon territory) with some 5000 homes passed with FIOS 50M/whatever, and the local Comcast which upgraded to Docsis3
simply because of that FIOS plant. They pass some 15K homes. The rest of the 250K homes in the county have dial-up with small parts that are near to central offices (<3000') with DSL. There is no, repeat, no remote DSLAM's whatsoever, so unless you live right down the street from the telco CO, you're on dial-up or satellite.

This is not a 'poor' county. In fact, it's pretty rich, with a large contingent of Microsoft and Boeing engineers who live a few miles down the road from Redmond, WA (Microsoft) and Everett/Mukilteo, WA (Boeing). Neither area has FIOS, the closest is Boeing but it's about 10 miles from the nearest portion of FIOS that Verizon built some 5 years ago, that is now operated by Frontier. If one is lucky, Comcast provides, as I mentioned, DOCSIS3 speeds but at (as others around the country will attest) at premium pricing. That's what I have and pay for, but if I lived some 10miles down the road in the old FIOS area, I'd have 3 times the download (and 10 times the upload) speed at around 1/4th the cost.

Otherwise, you're lucky to get 1.5M/768K DSL, just maybe 3M/768K. But some 4 out of 5 homes in the county don't have access to either FIOS, cable, or DSL. And don't talk about the other 90% of the state, most of it is far worse (no other FIOS, much lower cable, and Century Tel is the telco (insert laughter here).

So the 'average' is a hoot. It's also 'eastern centric' as we in the West say.

[CyberCitizen]

Usenet is faster, and cleaner. If you like old shit then I guess BitTorrent is better.

Are you comparing Usenet to a seed box system with private torrents? I am loath to admit it but Usenet is finally showing its age. On private torrents you won't find spam, passcoded files , takedowns etc.

I Am Sorry But How Does That Compare To Private Usenet Sites??? On Public Torrents You Find Passcoded Files, Spam, Etc, So Your Saying By Using Private Sites You Don't Get That, Well Guess What Using Private Usenets Sites I Don't Get That Either. I Have Always Found Usenet Faster, And Fall Back To Torrent Sites If Something Is Really Missing, That Has Happened Once Over The Last 6 Months & It Was An Old Australian Movie, Even Then On Torrents It Only Had 2 Seeders And Downloaded At Poor Speeds Had To Let It Download Over 2x Days.

At Least With Usenet You Have Less Chance Of Ending Up In A Lawsuit Unlike Torrents. It Does Occur, But Is Rare As Your Only Downloading The File, When Your Torrenting Your Also Apart Of The Distribution Which Allows Them To Come After You As A Distributor / Uploader.

I Still Think Both Systems Are Still Required & Would Be Happy To See More People Jump From Usenet & Get It Back Out Of The Spotlight.