- Joined
- Aug 21, 2019
I was strictly in the text-only newsgroups and the encrypted bits were very short. They looked like keys of some kind.
I did learn about the binaries, though, you're right. You usually pay a monthly fee for those servers and are given tens of gigs of storage, so I made the assumption it was piracy on a grand scale. Why people choose to do that rather than torrent for free, I do not know. I stopped digging at that point.
Most paid Usenet plans are encrypted and torrenting is not. If you want to encrypt torrenting you generally need to pay for a VPN anyway. It's also client/server system as opposed to peer-to-peer. Using a peer-to-peer service like torrents you generally upload portions of the file as you download and so you can be found liable for distributing copyrighted material. You upload nothing downloading Usenet binaries so at worst you can be held liable for a single copy of the media. In terms of ease of use, Usenet is also more perplexing than torrents to your average person so it generally flies under the radar of government and the media a little more.
I pay around $60 a year for a bundle that includes 50 gigs of Usenet access a month and VPN access. I get all my entertainment from that and don't subscribe services like Netflix or Disney + or whatever. Well worth it imo for the increased security over torrents and the bundled VPN plan, but to each his own.
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