Private trackers really aren’t masters of op sec. They thrive through security through obscurity which the worst kind of “security”. And generally even fail at that (PTP, BTN, RED, OPS are so widely known)

That said I use them and I also don’t use a VPN so I just take that risk. It’s up to you

IP2 definitely sounds intriguing as truly (or close to) anonymous peer to peer

You can use without port forwarding. Others without open ports won’t be able to upload to or download from you and give versa. There’s a sticky on the Reddit explaining this

If you can’t forward ports Soulseek will still work okay. Don’t let that stop you from joining

Music piracy isn’t dead but it’s a shell of what it was. You can see even here most people would rather just stream

Soulseek needs more users though as the proportion of locked file users keeps increasing

As the normies went to streaming it became more gatekept and toxic. I’m mainly familiar with the attitude of trades only or straight up selling tracks (eg groupbuys with kids paying thousands of dollars for some shitty Kanye mumble demo). The game didn’t used to be like that. The days of the blogs with mega/rapid share links are long gone

I mean you got all the stream rippers eg SlavArt which is super nice. Soulseek is still alright but getting taken over by traders. RED/OPS around but you can’t just waltz in and I’d argue they don’t compare to what.cd or even OinK. RuTracker still got stuff going on

But when you’re after actual rare stuff that you can’t just buy or stream it can be real tough nowadays. Scene archives can be nice but very hard to get access and it’s mostly mp3s.

Seems like another blow and a step closer to the death of public trackers for many. For us hardcore pirates we don’t give a shit but the big corps are gonna be very happy. Many people should probably just move on to Usenet

What’s the best current eMule client? Can cosign dc++ and Soulseek/nicotine those are my main sources these days rarely torrent

Why’d you tag them? You were able to see who downvoted you?

If you wanna make money off of it you become more of a bootlegger than a pirate with a separate set of ethos. It’s going to put a much bigger target on your back both legally and from non legal entities and in the case some shit does go down you’ll have much less support/empathy. This is with the mindset you’re out to make a profit not donations to run servers etc if you get big, even if it’s to just do it full time. And you’re not going to get much support if that’s the case here

Reddit is full of contrarians. A lot of the smaller subreddits in particular likes to be contrarian to anything they saw as mainstream Reddit

Also, the people who are really pissed at Reddit probably have left so the remaining population has a larger proportion of people who don’t care or even support what Reddit does.

Finally, let’s be honest /r/piracy was dominated by casual pirates at best as shown by the posts and comments “what’s a seeder” “what’s Usenet” “OMG Rarbg down what do I do”. So they’re not hardcore pirates with a dedication to piracy/warez ethos just casuals looking for links and shit

This is some 2000s scene group domination era shit isn’t it? I know topsites still exist for example but aren’t a lot of groups just P2P and will release directly to private trackers? As opposed to the old days when the scene groups dislike P2P

Curation, breadth of access (less important if you don’t have obscure tastes which it sounds like you don’t OP, and that’s fine), quality control, security to a small degree, and community. Also if you get upload credit you can use the requests option and have some of the most rabid nerds on this world looking for what you want.

Top reason which people will be in denial about though is epeen

In short most people don’t need it and probably will never get in the most selective ones. If you’re not satisfied with public trackers or too worried you’re likely better off with Usenet or real-debrid.

This just further supports my conspiracy theory /r/piracy is a honeypot. Seems like they opened this subreddit mighty fast (I know supposedly the same message and threat were sent a automatically to all subreddits of a certain size)