racketboy.com

Zing wrote:PS: I just checked, and there are four seasons of "Adventure Time" and three of "Regular Show", both in 720p format, on usenet right now.

I sub to NewsHosting.com's access and I use NZBMatrix. The latest episodes of Regular Show and Adventure Time weren't on there. *scratch that - I should say 'until recently' they weren't on there. It looks like the new/latest episodes of Adventure Time are available now, but not Regular show. and it looks like dwjp90 started uploading Regular show to the Pirate Bay.

All is right with the world.

these two are literally the only shows that gave me trouble since Demonoid went down. Everything else I could find on NZB.

I listen to most of my music on youtube, grab most of my TV shows and movies off of netflix, and have other torrent sites to grab anime and toku that will never come stateside anyways. Closest I get to the grey area is downloading Game of Thrones before it comes out on DVD (Don't get HBO, but buy the DVDs) and Doctor Who episodes before they come on Netflix (Don't get BBC America).

That said, I was a member of Demonoid and I'm somewhat sad.

indecks wrote:No worries. Something will pop up eventually, its just a matter of time. And someone mentioned it after this, but why DO you/we pay for commercials? That's really all you get. 300+ channels of crap save for a few good channels like Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi when it was actually Sci-Fi, FX, AMC, and a *small* handful of others. And on top of those 300 crap channels, 23 hours of commercials per day. Screw that. I pay for Netflix and more recently Amazon Prime. I do not watch commercials, much_less pay for them.

DVRs throughout the house mean I rarely watch commercials, and 3/4 or so of the regular programming I watch is HBO stuff anyway (which I pay for). My wife and son get a ton of use out of a wide variety of channels, and I certainly view a lot of sports and news programs that I can't get through Netflix/Prime/etc. (which, incidentally, I also pay for). Just becasue you don't like much of what you'd get with pay TV doesn't make your pirating of select shows morally justifiable.

We've been over the whole piracy debate many times on the board so I don't really want to rehash it - but downloading commercially available shows, albums, movies, games, etc. is a case of clear-cut illegality that robs content producers of income. It is stealing. If you want to understand something about the overall decreased quality of music, film, and non-premium TV in the last 15 years or so than the growth of piracy has to figure significantly in that conversation.

I already said I know people will pirate and they will do what they do. I get it, but the justifications people make for doing it are the only thing that bothers me. Like they are trying to excuse piracy to themselves. They want piracy to be more of a noble thing than 'I want free stuff!'

The argument that one pirates because of DRM and DLC and etc etc is funny as well. Piracy was an issue before DRM. I don't like DRM either, but it was created in response to rampant piracy. Now it is typically just another excuse or justification from someone who would *probably* have pirated anyway.

dsheinem wrote: morally justifiable.

I never 'morally justified' anything. I pirate shows. You don't like it, and I have nothing against that. Please get off your moral high horse. Im just not going to pay for cable to have crappy service with commercials. I would love to pay for HBOGo access, but they're dicks and won't let you on HBOGo without an actual subscription through your already overpriced/underquality cable service.

Hey HBO, guess what - if you allowed me to purchase, say a season of a show for a single price, maybe $20 for an entire 10 episode Game of Thrones season, or what have you, I'd do it. But you won't let me. And I'm not going to pay a cable company just to be able to pay the cable company again for one channel, no matter how good your Sunday programming is. Let me buy it a-la-carte, and we're in business.

But dont worry, if they're not into it, there's always the internet.

indecks wrote:

dsheinem wrote: morally justifiable.

I never 'morally justified' anything. I pirate shows. You don't like it, and I have nothing against that. Please get off your moral high horse. Im just not going to pay for cable to have crappy service with commercials. I would love to pay for HBOGo access, but they're dicks and won't let you on HBOGo without an actual subscription through your already overpriced/underquality cable service.

Hey HBO, guess what - if you allowed me to purchase, say a season of a show for a single price, maybe $20 for an entire 10 episode Game of Thrones season, or what have you, I'd do it. But you won't let me. And I'm not going to pay a cable company just to be able to pay the cable company again for one channel, no matter how good your Sunday programming is. Let me buy it a-la-carte, and we're in business.

But dont worry, if they're not into it, there's always the internet.

so your logic is basically "The legal routes suck, I don't like commercials, and so I'm forced to pirate"? How about the legal route of paying money? I pay money and mainly watch HBO. Does that make me a sucker, or does it just mean I am willing to pay content creators what the market will currently bear? I'd love a-la-carte, but since it isn't an option I am compelled to do things legally.

I'd get off my high horse if you'd acknowledge that your pirating drives up my costs, decreases the quality of entertainment overall, and is nothing more than a giant, selfish, entitled "fuck you" to anyone who cares about their entertainment enough to pay for it. I find that reprehensible.

You pay for commercials because your cost for connection is to the provider, not to the stations. Most people dont realize this but the backend for a home install is very expensive for the provider to maintain. My knowledge of coax is a bit out of date, but to provide a decent sized neighborhood tv/data/voice service, it costs the cable provider a sizable amount of money. For example, a doghouse, the big green boxes you see outside of neighborhoods on the side of the road, have a coax amp in them, which is most likely made by Cisco and cost about $30,000 and sucks down power like its water. These are needed depending on the circuit size, distance from the node, and number of subscribers - it gets into complex course wave manipulation calculations that I am far to stupid to understand let alone explain.

So you are paying for a connection to the channels. The channels themselves have to make money to keep producing. An episode of the BSG reboot or Burn Notice is around two million.

dsheinem wrote:

indecks wrote:

dsheinem wrote: morally justifiable.

I never 'morally justified' anything. I pirate shows. You don't like it, and I have nothing against that. Please get off your moral high horse. Im just not going to pay for cable to have crappy service with commercials. I would love to pay for HBOGo access, but they're dicks and won't let you on HBOGo without an actual subscription through your already overpriced/underquality cable service.

Hey HBO, guess what - if you allowed me to purchase, say a season of a show for a single price, maybe $20 for an entire 10 episode Game of Thrones season, or what have you, I'd do it. But you won't let me. And I'm not going to pay a cable company just to be able to pay the cable company again for one channel, no matter how good your Sunday programming is. Let me buy it a-la-carte, and we're in business.

But dont worry, if they're not into it, there's always the internet.

so your logic is basically "The legal routes suck, I don't like commercials, and so I'm forced to pirate"? How about the legal route of paying money? I pay money and mainly watch HBO. Does that make me a sucker, or does it just mean I am willing to pay content creators what the market will currently bear? I'd love a-la-carte, but since it isn't an option I am compelled to do things legally.

I'd get off my high horse if you'd acknowledge that your pirating drives up my costs, decreases the quality of entertainment overall, and is nothing more than a giant, selfish, entitled "fuck you" to anyone who cares about their entertainment enough to pay for it. I find that reprehensible.

Tomato, tomahto. I dont need to argue with you because I don't need you to see any kind of point.

Yay entitlement. "I want something so I'm going to take it no matter what when it is available through proper (if possibly annoying) channels."

Before someone brings in the tired "but I haven't deprived anyone of a physical thing", think of it like reading someone's personal diary. That doesn't remove the thing either, but provides you with ideas and information that you weren't entitled to without permission.

As for the main topic, thats the good/bad thing about the internet. Resources dont live long . You cant depend on any one site. But the good thing is, Whenever a site goes down another one comes out. I keep wondering who goes through the trouble and costs(not to mention facing the law sometimes) to create free to use sites for the people.

*************

If I was you, I wouldn't pirate in America...I am too scared to get caught by the government!! In the end, it IS punishable my law!!

None the less, I do pirate in my home country for very simple reasons. believe it or not, pirating is more convenient . For example some games won't be up for sale, so you pirate. Or you want to play a SNES game. You don't have the console, and even if you do you will have to buy the game which could cost more than its original price when it was new!

This could be applied to movies/shows too. Some stuff never gets sold on DVDS. You will just have to get them off TV recordings.

As for music I think its too expensive. I know a $1 per song sounds ok price but for some one who hardly listens to music(probably less than 1 song per 3 days) I have 700 songs. Do you really expect me to pay $700 for that?

Also with pirating, no DRM or limited time period and no sticking to any one format. If I buy it on DVD I am probably not allowed to rip it to my iPod or Maybe I am traveling and you can imagine carrying with you your box sets. If you rent a movie legally , you have to watch it in 3 days I think. If you pirate, you can do it whenever you feel like.

I think the best combination might be paying for the real thing, but using the pirated copy. I know that sounds weird but thats combining between the right and wrong.

@Zing

I tried Giganews and one of the 2 famous nkz tracker or whatever they are called. I found that the content of Usenet very limited compared to Torrent. Also files are not reliable, there is just not enough reviews or reliability . With torrents you get people giving thumbs up and reviews on each torrent file. Also seeing the number of Seeders gives a good indication that the file is decent.

With Usenet its probably a hit or miss thing, after you take the time to download you figure out if you got a lemon or not. Also Usenet is to be paid for and Torrent is free.

The only thing I noticed Usenet is good for is for downloading unbelievably large files (Bluray rips 30GB) because you dont have to depend on Seeing and the server is very very fast. Also I think with Usenet you have to keep re-uploading the content as the maximum limit for a file is about 3 years. Looks like Torrent has much more longer life than that, i believe there are files since 2005 or older.