Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

The original post: /r/piracy by /u/JarlFlammen on 2025-01-19 19:16:11.

I used to pirate everything, long ago. I used Napster as a boy, wrecked my family PC with Limewire when Napster came down, and later Torrent (never had a VPN) and ultimately Usenet. I was a member of a Usenet tracking website where I paid like $5/mo for and another $5ish/mo for Usenet itself. I forget the specifics, but I had a script called Couch Potato that I got from GitHub, that I typed in the shows and it would automatically download the shows and the art for them and feed them into a modded version of XBMC (a media player).

Now I have grown up money, so I will even be able to make a dedicated media PC.

Is this still The Way? Does Usenet piracy still work? Is it even still possible to gain membership to a private tracker? (They were sketchy about admission even a decade ago, to keep the law out. Are they totally closed ecosystems now?)

If this is not The Way, what is The Way?