Are they even legit? I always assume that's some kind of a scam. That they don't actually have the files, but generate them based on incoming searches to get people to pay them. Because no matter what you are looking for, somehow there is always this one guy who as everything... neatly sorted and locked.

But either way, they are scum and should be ignored.

I have ~14k songs (320kbps mp3) on Nicotine+. Always happy to see people download them! If you're into electronic music, ChuuqoVN is the name.

Yeah that is annoying as hell. Like I get it if it's just like "my files are private, I'll open them if you have shares" but that whole "I need X album FLAC and a $50 baskin robbins gift card and then I might share with you" shit is the lamest thing I've ever seen.

That's such a weird attitude to have. I LOVE when I see people have downloaded mp3s or comics off me. Makes me feel like I'm a better person having shared.

I honestly never noticed it :D is there like a setting to turn off seeing those lock symbol people? I must have that on :D

Amen to locked out slsk "sharers". Always hated that, though it honestly feels less common than it did back at its peak popularity as a platform.

I used Soulseek for a while, though I eventually stopped because there wasn't anything interesting there for me. Just music. Music is cool, but I'm mainly looking for ROMs, and not just the stuff anyone can find in any No-Intro set within five seconds of googling.

This is because many countries only have laws that prevent providing pirated content and not downloading it. This means downloading content is almost never illegal, but providing it(seeding) is.

I loved having 20 instances of the original torrent client running killing my connection for some sweet anime.

I usually keep stuff to seed until 3.0 ratio or longer if I'm keeping the files. If it's just taking really long and I need the drive space at 1.0 or even earlier. That should be ok right?

Nah, the spirit left a long time ago, Leechers now run the high seas for sure.

I set up a vm for torrents so I could seed as much as possible without affecting other things I had to do. I have been seeding for 100 days minimum per torrent. Nothing worse than a torrent with no seeds.

First rule of Piracy Club

What are new people who actually aren't cops supposed to do?

I miss these old 90s style buttons on websites. A much simpler time...

for years I’ve been told that “they” target the uploaders, not the downloaders for prosecution.

Yep. Once the RIAA proved that suing individual pirates for ridiculous amounts of money over one song did nothing to stop piracy, they finally changed gears: go after the people leaking the albums, the original upload groups, etc.

Governments, watchdog groups, and industry "concerns" followed suit, so eventually everyone learned that if you weren't a part of a group, you were probably (reasonably) safe. Then they started monitoring swarms on public trackers and sending those DMCA notices en masse, but that again proved how ineffective those scare tactics were. Most people switched to private trackers to avoid that annoyance, and pirates pivoted yet again.

So seeding was significantly riskier that just downloading with uploads disabled.

Seeding wasn't the only risk. Just being in the swarm -- whether uploading or downloading -- is enough to trigger a DMCA complaint. And the way BitTorrent works, you're pretty much always seeding even if the file isn't done downloading, so downloading and not seeding wasn't enough.

VPNs are a great shield against those fishing complaints, but you wanna make sure to use one that has had to prove in court that they never keep logs. A lot of them say they don't keep logs, but happily and quietly comply to subpoenas with whatever they have on customers.

Some providers offer the ability to upload. That said, it is potentially a risky action and most would suggest that unless you are very sure about what you are doing, and take proper precautions, it is not worth the risk for the average pirate. Providers get a LOT of DMCA takedowns, so unless you have something really obscure that you feel would be worth uploading, it probably isn’t something to attempt. YMMV.

What is Locutus. Couldn't find anything of substance searching for it.

Edit: it helps if your autocorrect doesn't interfere... https://github.com/freenet/locutus

Sure, but it doesn't mean it won't cause problems for our kind admin, Ernest. Eventually, someone will probably make it troublesome enough for him to reconsider.

Cool username. Didn't know custom fonts(?) were allowed

A seedbox transformed torrenting for me, but now I only use Usenet for movies/tv and Mobilism & Anna’s Archive for mags and books.

2.00 for anything I download and isn't broken or garbage

5.00 for anything small, popular, or that I'm passionate about

Probably going to bump that up higher for some things, it's been slow lately

I only recently got the ability to seed long-term and privately. I don't bother with private trackers and don't expect I ever will. That's partially because I don't care about new shows or movies, and partially because I don't like exclusionary communities. My setup is virtualized, not on dedicated hardware, so I don't have a lot of space to throw at this. I'm a small fish in a big pond and I focus on keeping alive things that I've enjoyed.