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Comment by sporedro | Hacker News Reader

I honestly wouldn’t bother with public trackers. They work great for debrid services with something like kodi or stremio but if you want to “own” or build your collection you have much better options 1. Private trackers - people seed, they have rules on uploads and actually moderate

2. Usenet is still alive and thriving for this.

3. Libraries still exist and you can rent and rip media there

4.Internet Archive is a great resource for old stuff

5. Just buy physical copies and rip em. Can check eBay etc.

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How do you join private trackers from scratch?

I used to do this kind of things decades ago, but there was also still a few things not ripped and uploaded you had _some_ chance of participating.

Nowadays I imagine ~everything under the sun is already ripped, so how can you contribute to seed ratio? (or is that not even a thing anymore?)

use their RSS feed + a seed box to automatically grab stuff as it’s posted some sites have ratio free for large files to get them seeded faster. at least that’s what I did a decade plus ago.

I was looking for this european movie from 10 years ago only last month, could not find it anywhere on line, streaming or torrent. I'm pretty confident there is still a lot of stuff missing.

hey there's a project idea: a "todo list" for rippers that scrapes imdb and checks what's not in pirate bay (and then looks for dvd's on ebay / libraries)

Public trackers like the piratebay face a lot of issues with retention. If it’s not mainstream or recent people often don’t seed or maintain it. If you join a private tracker there’s ones dedicated to keeping older sources like that a live!

For really obscure content, internet archive, your library, usenet or even eBay are the go to!

SoulSeek was also pretty good for finding obscure music. I like collecting everything that was released (not live performances, though) and SoulSeek filled some, but not all gaps I had.

It's not E2EE IIRC, though, so use with caution.

Out of curiosity, what movie?

> hey there's a project idea: a "todo list" for rippers that scrapes imdb and checks what's not in pirate ba

Private sites do things like this, archival efforts and have request systems.

Piracy is and always has been the only way for more obscure stuff.

Personally I do not feel guilty pirating a decades old TV show or movie. And I really doubt the industry cares much either.

How can anyone sit through a length of a film, especially a European one, and not have a cigarette?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VzSiilYSKs

What movie was it? There’s a good chance I can find it.

If you’re in Reddit, there’s also a subreddit dedicated specifically to this kind of thing (requests for stuff that is no longer available) called /r/DHExchange

How about a non-vhs rip of Einstein's brain?

I did some searching. I assume you mean “Relics: Einstein's Brain (1994)”? If so, it doesn’t look like it was ever released on anything but VHS, so I only found a TV recording and a VHS recording.

>> How do you join private trackers from scratch?

https://old.reddit.com/r/trackers/wiki/how_to_get_started

Generally a lot of them you can get an invite from someone on Reddit or discord. A lot also open up for a week or so allowing people to register every year or whenever a major tracker goes down so the refuges can join. you can check places like Reddit /r/opensignups.

A lot of mainstream stuff is ripped already, the “ratio” on some is more if you download a torrent, they want you to seed it for x amount of time or seed it back x amount to the community. I don’t know of any that expect you to be ripping and uploading that way, it’s recommended but a lot have groups for mainstream content.

There are a few “elitist” private trackers that require “interviews” and stuff, but don’t let that scare you off 99% of them are all just grab and invite or sign up and seed back to community for the week or so minimum (preferably longer) and your good to go!

Regarding seed ratio, generally by perma seeding. Many private sites either use seed time requirements instead of ratio or offer bonus points for seed time which can be exchanged for ratio. But also as new editions and formats are released, the library has a bit more turnaround than your music sites of yesteryear.

> ~everything under the sun is already ripped

But good luck to see a live seed. I have a torrent from ~2010 which is stuck at 2%, so some seed did come online some years ago I was able to leech those meager bits from them - but not ever since.

Same for my own torrent on TPB from 2008, i tried to dload it in 2015 and wasn't sucessful in it despite it was 1st one for some years for that particular title.

Don't give up hope, though. I've had torrents complete after a few years. I've long lost anything from 2010, though.

Try other protocols/services (listed in other comments in the thread) or maybe offer a bounty if it's something you can't buy.

I had one finish after 2 years recently. Someone in China came online and completed the last few MB.

I've got three open right now for ebooks which I don't think will ever finish. (one is 3.5TB)

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