Can usenet be used for free?

I wouldn’t bother with Usenet unless you have the need to keep a copy of your media. I say this as a torrent and Usenet user. Generally almost all of my needs are met with real debrid and Syncler. Occasionally if something is hard to find I’ll grab a torrent, but that’s it. Debrid is so much easier and near instant. I’ve still got Usenet block accounts that I’ve had for years because I have no need for them anymore.

I've seen people talk about real debrid forever, and to this day, I've never seen any explanation of just what it is. I've looked it up, and all I found was a generic site with a signup, and the best description I've ever seen anyone use for it is "worth the money."

Edit: No, nevermind, I figured out what it was for. What I couldn't figure out that put me off was the price.
- Mind telling us what it's for? We're here on lemmy to share info, right?
- It's definitely worth it. I had it for years and it worthed it just to stream stuff, but the functionality that let's me bypass limits of hosting sites is just a bonus. Now I don't have to sub for every damn file sharing site under the moon.

No, and that's a good thing.

How should they make money? Services and Storage cost money. Period. That has to be paid by someone. Either be it the users, or some sketchy not-giving-a-shit-about-privacy-advertising company because hosters on the usenet have to sell your data to pay for the servers.

Easy as that.

And since usenet is used for a lot of piracy, i 100% DON'T want it to be financed by shit like this. I pay for it and i know i am safe.
Don't forget. If a product is free - you are the product.

I agree, but paying for something does not automatically mean that they won't still sell your shit anyways.
- that's sadly true, but in the past - the pirates turned out to be the fair and square ones that i could trust....unlike the others
I just want that saying to die If a product is free - you are the product. It is so outdated we know of many things people pay for that still sell your data. So paying for something does not mean your data is not safe.
exactly this. I'm sure some of the larger hosts easily spend six figures per month just on the server infrastructure alone

Usenet is super fast, safe, reliable, automated searching and downloading actually works. I gladly support my host
- 100% - i get 40MB/s on Usenet, something i could only dream about on torrents...also i am in germany, torrenting is quite risky here.
  
  When i find something on usenet, it is there..period. I can get it. On torrents? Just because i found a magnet doesn't mean there is anyone seeding it.
- Are they really? Usenet is from the 70s and build for text posts, which take less than 1kb of storage per Post. Modern Sites allow you to upload gigabytes of data for a few dollars per month. The cost for storage and traffic gas come down a lot
Is there an app compatible with streaming sticks that interfaces with usenet servers that is user friendly to view a movies and TV catalog similar to using stremio and real debrid?
- Not as far as i know. Root of this is that usenet files are usually obfuscated. Means that they are encrypted and their filenames are pure gibberish.
  
  You then visist a "newsgroup" which is a forum or some list on the internet. There are posts for everything you want; Movies, shows, games, etc.
  Those posts will give you a .nzb file. This is basically just a textfile that has the decryption password and the exact path if you will, for that specific file.
  
  Example: You want to download John Wick 4. You find a post for that on some forum. You get the .nzb file. You throw this .nzb file into your usenet downloader (sabNZBd for example). This downloader takes the file, goes to your usenet provider (the actual server that hosts files) and finds the file for John Wick 4. This file might be called 132907as097fd192070a9sd709asdgsd90g709123907 and is fragmented into 400 .zip files, each with their own gibberish name.
  
  But your downloader knows all the files that belong to each other because of that .nzb file.
  
  Then they all get downloaded, unpacked together and you have your file.
  
  Now this would make it very very hard to actually "stream" directly from usenet. sabNZBd can actually unpack the files while you download them, but i don't know if they are in correct order and if it could produce a streamable videofile.
  
  I heard of a website that claimed it could stream directly from usenet, but i never looked into it and it didn't gain any popularity as it had some other severe issues as far as i know.
  
  If you want a streaming like experience via Usenet, you have to go the Plex/Jellyfin + Overseerr/Ombi/Jellyseerr + Radarr&Sonarr route. It's a suite of applications that will automate the process of finding, downloading and organizing your movies & shows. Overseerr/Ombi/Jellyseerr provide you the catalog where you can pick what you want to watch. They will push that interaction to Radarr&Sonarr. They are responsible for actually searching through the usenet forums you configured and find the correct movie / show you want from there. They will then push that to your downloader (sabNZBd for example again) and once it's downloaded they will organize it and tell Jellyfin or Plex that it's available. Jellyfin & Plex are the final streaming services that run locally on your hardware and can be accessed on your network. They are beautiful and extremely capable streaming applications that handle metadata automatically.
  
  It's quite a complicated and cumbersome process to set it all up properly. But once it's done you never have to touch it again (unless something breaks lol) and you will have a fully automated media server that will get you whatever you want in whatever quality / language profile you want.
  
  And since usenet is blazing fast, depending on your internet connection, you can watch a movie within 20~30 minutes after "requesting" it (requesting is the process of telling the aforementioned Overseerr/Ombi/Jellyseerr that you want John Wick 4 for example).
  
  So yeah, sorry for that long and probably unasked explamation but thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

There are projects that provide access to text-only groups. See for example http://www.eternal-september.org/

I took a walk around Usenet a few months ago after I discovered that my ISP (Teksavvy, Canada) offers access, and I must tell you... it's ugly. The groups I checked are either entirely abandoned or there's a post every two months, and they're overridden with spam.

No, but you can buy blocks (eg. 200GB) instead of time based subscription if you're planning to download small amounts occasionally. There are good deals multiple times a year and they (usually) don't expire.

Your ISP may still have a Usenet server going, but it’s unlikely. Best bet is getting a block account or waiting for a $3-5/month unlimited sale

What I'd like to know is: Is Usenet worth bothering with?

In my opinion, it probably is. Depends on how satisfied you are with your current sources. Are you "set for life" on some nice private trackers or was the closing of RARBG a problem for you?
- I've been on IPTorrents for a year but only used it when I couldn't find what I wanted elsewhere, but in the weeks following the shutdown of RARBG, I've been relying on it much more. I also got in to TorrentLeech when they opened signups for RARBG refugees and I like it.
  
  So, based on that, I guess Usenet isn't worth it? I'd much rather try to use my footing in these two private trackers to get access to other ones. Perhaps I should be asking if there's a good place to do invitation exchanges? I have three IPTorrent invites that I'd be willing to exchange for invites to other trackers.
Do you have a major ISP that gives you trouble downloading torrents? (and are you paying for a VPN already if that's the case?) Do you have low upload speed and therefore contribute little to torrent sharing?

If yes to any then answer is probably. If you already pay for a VPN then answer is very probably because you can pay a similar price and not need the VPN.
- My ISP doesn't do anything technical to make torrenting difficult, but I received two DMCA notices before getting a VPN. As for upload speeds, I have gigabit upload and download, so donating a portion of that to seeding (except for when I need it for something else) is not a problem. :)
If you find your way into good private usenet indexers, definitely yes. Often I download full Blu-rays posted 10 years ago maxing out my internet connection. Imagine Megaupload from their best days, but better. (at least for movies/tv)

It's been a while for me, but iirc most ISPs do offer their own servers. However, free Usenet servers are going to have very limited retention - in the order of days. The advantage of paid subscriptions is that they offer retention in the weeks or months.

This is the correct answer.
Some universities also offer free news servers for their students.
The free servers usually don't offer bin/audio/video groups, at least I don't know any.
- @pomi @sh3ll @vegivamp it would be very weird if a university would offer free copies of pirated content to its students

I've had a newsdeamon subscription that cost me $3 a month for the past few years. good deal in my book

AFAIK nope.

@sh3ll @piracy Usenet is not a network, it's a service where you just pay a website full of illegal stuff to let you download illegal stuff. It's like asking if there's a way to use reddit without being impacted by spez's decisions

yeah you don't exactly understand what usenet is i don't think... please hold whilst i duck to avoid all the abuse i feel is now coming my way..
- @d4nm3d The original purpose of usenet was to spread news. However, you're asking in a piracy lemmy. In the context of piracy, usenet is a system where you straightforwardly pay someone to download illegal content from them, as opposed to a peer-to-peer system like bittorrent. Obviously, some universities may use usenet to spread news, but they certainly won't use it to spread pirated content.