As an older torrent gen, I tried Debrid for the first time.

Yes. All the yes. I was shaky on it at first, because I really didn't want to dive out of my depth when it comes to piracy (which really only includes torrents). I thought it was going to be confusing, but it really is just "sign up, pay, and get your API key". And the price is right (using realDebrid).

However, I'm a little concerned. This makes it all so easy to stream and such, but what happens when everyone starts using it and torrents are no longer downloaded and properly seeded? Should I go out of my way to download something after I watch it and then seed for a few weeks? I still keep my VPN around, so that's totally an option. I'm using Stremio in conjunction with realDebrid.

I think I just want to know a bit more about how it works and how the P2P functions. I want to be able to give back, but I only seed a few torrents at a time. I just don't have the money for a large seeding server right now (which I may fix with a Pi5 at some point). Seeding is currently my only option/skill in helping piracy stay alive and the digital world stay free.

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I will continue to prefer a seedbox (rented or shared/dedicated vps).
At least I can use private trackers.
- I've never looked into private trackers, tbh, but I may keep an eye out and see what is possible. I'll stay in with the community and maybe something will pop up, but I'm pretty happy with public. I've known my way around torrent safety since '07. The only cease and desist I've ever gotten was because of my ex at the time.
  From what I understand, private trackers are something that sort of comes to you rather than asking for them. Back when Demonoid was by invite only (I haven't been there in a long time so I'm not sure how it is now), I made friends with the right people and got in early. I managed to stay in because I was a good seeder and well trusted.
  Oh wow, I missed a lot. I guess Deimos went missing? Then it looks like Demonoid got a sort of community fork, but it doesn't seem to exist anymore. Huh. I'm reading that the fork didn't focus on private trackers as much as just getting the old crowd back, it seems. Wild how things have changed.
  
  To get in you could in theory join communities like r/openSignups and other similar communities.
  The tracker TL will probably open signups soon during Easter.
  
  Ohhh! Thank you! Once I can get my Pi NAS going and have ample storage, I'd be extremely interested in archiving eventually. I should honestly start now, seeing as I have a large amount of music. I don't have many full albums, usually just picking up songs that interest me, but all the metadata is properly tagged using MusicBrainz Picard.
  
  TL has more of a focus on visual media.
  Personally I use nyaa for japan/asia focused music, web searches or soulseek for anything else (primarily flac and failback to mp3).
  If I feel inclined, I'll buy the album/tracks.
  
  Yeah, I have heard a lot about Soulseek and I'll have to check it out. That's another service that I wasn't aware of until recently. I do need an alternative to ripping off YouTube music soon, but for now it gets the job done. I also have my army of patched and FOSS apps for streaming (never use one; they always have downtimes, so having multiples let you jump around when waiting for fixes).
  
  If you have Spotify, there are tools to rip directly from it (like actually from spotify. Unlike those find on spotify but actually download from youtube tools)
  
  I found a decent GUI ripper for YouTube Music. I was using CLI before, but in this case a GUI was a lot faster. I've ripped a lot from Spotify, and I think my newest patched app lets me download directly. I agree, though; 90% of Spotify streaming apps and rippers are just taking from YouTube but using the Spotify indexer.
- I use private trackers exclusively for content I want to "own" or want in the highest possible quality. Stremio/RD is great though for my wife to be able to search new media and potentially stream in okay quality without fucking with sonarr. Or popular TV you're maybe not sold on but would try an episode. Or for old SD content, like tossing on a 90s show for a few episodes. To be honest, I live in a world of ad block and Stremio is sometimes the only way I even know something is out...
  Anyway, they complement each other well.
  
  This is kinda what we do. But in our case we use both because personal storage is not cheap in this country and thus our self-hosted storage is limited. All out favourites that we watch repeatedly stays on the home server but we use Stremio and Torbox (because no way we're going to use RD after theyb doxed customers) for one offs, shows were trying out, etc.
  
  For me, I am too much of a control freak in regards to ratio vs quality.
  If a family member requests it, I'll take a manual look.
  Only a few profiles were actually tuned (mainly only the anime profile) to be run unattended and automatically.

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