Gaming Filesharing nowadays.

[Rydian]

Let me run over methods I've used in the past, and how they hold up for me now.

• P2P (Frostwire, Etc.)
  All the networks I've tried seem dead. Very few people sharing things, an abundance of spam (often more virus or ad results than actual results), downloads rarely connect and the speeds suck ass.
  
• DC(DC++, etc.)
  I haven't tried this in years, but unless you're hunting out specific collections (like DC ISOs) it's hard to find anything since there's no centralized search and you can't get into many hubs without a minimum share size. Way too much setup and time spent searching for the return.
  
• Torrents (duh).
  Unfortunately for me, most torrents have abandoned trackers to work via peer exchange and DHT. Why is this unfortunate? 'Cause those technologies overload my gateway, whenever I torrent with them on DNS/connect requests may or may not go through, so it kills my web browsing for the duration. This issue has existed for a while now, but it wasn't a problem until more and more places started abandoning trackers, and/or just not caring when trackers went down since DHT and such kept working.
  
• Websites.
  Every so often I can find one, but people who run "scraping" sites (sites that list the contents of other sites and copy their keywords) make me want to punch the people that run them because they keep showing up in the google results because they have the right keywords, but the site does not actually have the content the keywords come from. What sites exist that are active tend to use rapidshare and such for hosting, so setting up jdownloader to automatically do the captchas and such for 30-odd downloads is required to not go insane. There's still a few sites out there that actually host the downloads themselves, but they tend to carry things 2GB and less (ROMs and ISOs for older systems, and so-called "abandonware").
  
• Tor.
  Tried it a bit to see what sort of stuff was available, the speed issues are just too much.
  
• Usenet.
  Never really put more than 10 minutes into figuring it out with free or trial things, this seems along the line of DC++ in that there's no central search ability until you find the right group/hub and there's a lot of setup.

Is it just me?

 

[Pleng]

Websites are just awfull. Links to link sites which list link sites to other link sites, sometimes you manage to get all the way back to your first link site.

Technically torrents are a type of p2p, but it's like the worst of both worlds; you have to go through website hell just to find what you want. I long for the days when eMule ruled the world...

Never heard of DC++?

Usenet I gather is the best, as a good server will archive the posts forever; so you won't have the issue with dead downloads like in bit torrent.

Tor is a privacy tool, how are you using it to find downloads??

 

[Rydian]

There's things on the internet you can't access unless you're on Tor (onion domains). These sites tend to hold the more shady content you won't find on the normal internet.

 

[porkiewpyne]

I used to use certain sites which can search filehosting sites (sorta) without spam or hassle. This is especially useful when I am looking for a very specific file in particular (and not any other version/edition/whatever). Then THAT raid happened so most of the results are dead now. =.= *sigh*

 

[pwsincd]

Napster good ole days... dial up.
emule
DC++
fieltopia < top community
mIRC
Torrents - private trackers of course.
FTP
web sites occasionally ...

mainly torrents these days , cause im too lazy.

 

[Magsor]

I only use websites. There some paying websites -snip- that will lets you download from most filesharing websites as you were a premium using jdownloader.
Lets face reality. Its not as easy as it used to be because the internet is polluted with megaupload links. but its better than it was a few months back.

DC++ is more a community filesharing. So its real good for filesharing with people you actually know.

 

[nico445]

Usenet is pretty usefull . not that expensive either i would have to pay like 18 euro
a year for a server with 900 days retention... then in combination with a good site (usenet search engine)
you can get pretty much everything.

 

[Satangel]

I feel the exact same way It's really hard to confess but ever since the Megaupload crackdown, I've had a much harder time downloading stuff, especially the more obscure things like Belgian comics and all :/
In 2011 I could just go to the biggest Warez forum on the planet, over 3 million members, search it, always find my stuff and add them to JDownloader, and in minutes I would have my stuff.
Now that forum is much less useful, all the MU links are removed and the other filesharing sites severely reduced their speed for free-users, it takes hours now.....

I've gone back to torrents now, it's not as safe as I would like, and sometimes a lot harder too since TPB isn't accessible in Belgium anymore. It gets the job done, but again, the more obscure, older stuff is a lot harder to find now.

 

[431unknown]

Used to do the peer 2 peer route then went to torrents. I tried out usenet but why pay for access to that when the whole point is to try and get shit for free? I have 2 main stays for games and 1 for movies & music. If I can't find it on them TPB usually has it.

 

[FAST6191]

Used to do the peer 2 peer route then went to torrents. I tried out usenet but why pay for access to that when the whole point is to try and get shit for free? I have 2 main stays for games and 1 for movies & music. If I can't find it on them TPB usually has it.

Did you

A) Ever pay for or seek out faster internet than what you had before?

B) Pay for a seedbox?

C) Pay for a VPN?

D) Waste your bandwidth, time and electricity maintaining a good seed ratio despite there being no technical reason to do so?

E) Pay for access to or do something similar to D) so as to have access to a private torrent tracker?

F) Buy/build a media player that can play things other than DVDs? Granted now I can buy something like a Sumvision Cyclone for next to nothing and certainly in line with a cheap DVD player but that is reasonably recent development.

G) Buy a larger hard drive to store a load of stuff? (I might be reaching here but large hard drive is more than DVD stand or cardboard box). I will also throw in turn an old computer into a torrent machine.

None of those is a bad thing necessarily but it does rather impact the free argument. Equally even if you have not the fact that dedicated options exist for A through F more or less aimed solely at such uses would indicate enough people have done so.

Granted I would argue it is not about getting things for free but choosing the better option.

 

[Urza]

In the US, proprietary P2P networks have gone the way of cassette tapes. Having a single point of failure makes it extremely easy for our government to shut down (see: Napster/Morpheus/Kazaa). Even Gnutella, a completely decentralized network, fell in to a situation where the enormous majority of it's userbase was controlled by a single (US-based) entity: Lime Wire. One swift strike from a federal judge and the head of Nullsoft's darling had been cleaved by proxy.

Countries other than the US have not necessarily followed the same pattern. In Japan, for instance, the closed networks of Share and Perfect Dark are still incredibly popular. If you're looking for Japanese content it's unlikely to disappoint.

Usenet is continuing to become a larger player in the file sharing space. A huge selection of content, no reliance on external peers, and the ability to actually encrypt your connection. For certain kinds of content (popular) it is by far the best solution. How you had issues I'm not sure, as the are a number of simple clients for downloading and discovery. Try Google for some guides if you really need it.

For more obscure and specialized subjects, it's all about community. You just need to talk to the right people, find the right forums or IRC channels, and you'll quickly evaporate any doubt that the files you seek are absent from the internet. Whether it be an active release board filled with DepositFile links, a small BitTorrent tracker, or credentials for a collector's private FTP, it doesn't matter. The protocols may change over time, but these communites will continue evolve right along with them.

Much as with anything in today's modern, ever-iterating world, if you don't keep up with technology you will soon find your methods obsolete. Lest you end up in the same boat as Bieberheads with no idea how to get their Top 40 fix in a post-LimeWire world.

 

[431unknown]

Used to do the peer 2 peer route then went to torrents. I tried out usenet but why pay for access to that when the whole point is to try and get shit for free? I have 2 main stays for games and 1 for movies & music. If I can't find it on them TPB usually has it.

Did you

A) Ever pay for or seek out faster internet than what you had before? Nope, I actually went to a slightly slower connection.

B) Pay for a seedbox? Nope.

C) Pay for a VPN? Nope

D) Waste your bandwidth, time and electricity maintaining a good seed ratio despite there being no technical reason to do so? I can say I have wasted bandwidth , time, and eletricity.

E) Pay for access to or do something similar to D) so as to have access to a private torrent tracker? Never paid for any access other than my initial ISP.

F) Buy/build a media player that can play things other than DVDs? Granted now I can buy something like a Sumvision Cyclone for next to nothing and certainly in line with a cheap DVD player but that is reasonably recent development. Not sure what your getting at here if you mean a PMP then no if we are talking about a PS3 or a 360 then yes.

G) Buy a larger hard drive to store a load of stuff? (I might be reaching here but large hard drive is more than DVD stand or cardboard box). I will also throw in turn an old computer into a torrent machine. I've bought extra hard drives, but not just for storing downloads. I never turned an old pc into a torrent box but have thought about it a few times.

None of those is a bad thing necessarily but it does rather impact the free argument. Equally even if you have not the fact that dedicated options exist for A through F more or less aimed solely at such uses would indicate enough people have done so. Free was a bad choice of word on my part.

Granted I would argue it is not about getting things for free but choosing the better option.

 

[jalaneme]

what annoys me the most is when people use links on websites with capachas intentionally just to make a quick buck out of you, they are well aware of the capacha free links but greed gets the better of them, torrents are ok but you can't always find what you want and you have to be patient, when i am searching for stuff for hours on end i tend to always just go back to finding a torrent instead of wasting my time with 100 links and capachas which would take a week to download compared to a torrent which is much faster and can be left overnight.

i like usernet but it's costly in the long run, thankfully my isp gives me free usernet access and 7 days retention, it's not much but at least it's free meaning i can get all the latest stuff without waiting for capachas and get max download speeds too.

 

[Lastly]

what annoys me the most is when people use links on websites with capachas intentionally just to make a quick buck out of you, they are well aware of the capacha free links but greed gets the better of them, torrents are ok but you can't always find what you want and you have to be patient, when i am searching for stuff for hours on end i tend to always just go back to finding a torrent instead of wasting my time with 100 links and capachas which would take a week to download compared to a torrent which is much faster and can be left overnight.

i like usernet but it's costly in the long run, thankfully my isp gives me free usernet access and 7 days retention, it's not much but at least it's free meaning i can get all the latest stuff without waiting for capachas and get max download speeds too.

Everyone needs a few buck especially for the long effort. Plus premium doesn't cost much these days. Oh (and repeating what I said before in another thread), the Mayans were right; 2012 is the end of the world filesharing.

 

[Originality]

Oh (and repeating what I said before in another thread), the Mayans were right; 2012 is the end of the world filesharing.

I can still share my files easily via DropBox. There are a few other fileshare sites too that I can still use.

 

[Lastly]

Oh (and repeating what I said before in another thread), the Mayans were right; 2012 is the end of the world filesharing.

I can still share my files easily via DropBox. There are a few other fileshare sites too that I can still use.

I was actually joking!

 

[Sicklyboy]

I've had a Usenet sub for a few months now. I grabbed a deal through Astraweb for $15 USD every 3 months for unlimited downloads capped at 10Mb/s (so right about 1.3MB/s, which isn't terrible). What will save you with that is getting a VIP account ($10 for lifetime) through NZBMatrix and NZBsRUs. They're essentially the search engines of Usenet. After that, you just want to set up sabNZBD (downloader), couchpotato(movie finder), sickbeard(tv finder), and headphones(music finder), and those all work together and send the nzb files to sabNZBD to download, and they can all postprocess the files to their proper locations.

It's great.

 

[BlueStar]

Now there are some good xdcc indexers to fill the gap left by Packetnews, IRC is very handy.

 

[triassic911]

I've had a Usenet sub for a few months now. I grabbed a deal through Astraweb for $15 USD every 3 months for unlimited downloads capped at 10Mb/s (so right about 1.3MB/s, which isn't terrible). What will save you with that is getting a VIP account ($10 for lifetime) through NZBMatrix and NZBsRUs. They're essentially the search engines of Usenet. After that, you just want to set up sabNZBD (downloader), couchpotato(movie finder), sickbeard(tv finder), and headphones(music finder), and those all work together and send the nzb files to sabNZBD to download, and they can all postprocess the files to their proper locations.

It's great.

I pay $25 for unlimited download to Giganews. Excellent Usenet service imo. I also use NZBMatrix for grabbing .nzb files. The $10 isn't so bad, for a lifetime of free shit. I haven't been using Usenet for a while though, since I've mostly gone straight (rarely pirate anything). Btw I use Grabit as my client.

Now there are some good xdcc indexers to fill the gap left by Packetnews, IRC is very handy.

A LOOONG time ago I use to use IRC to download stuff, but the website I used to use shutdown quite some time ago. Are there alternatives with lots of content still alive and kicking?