Purpose
This tutorial will attempt to help you get to grips with using Usenet, including signing up to a usenet provider, searching usenet, and downloading binary files with step by step instructions.
Introduction
The biggest problem with the music and movie industry is that they produce crap, nobody wants to spend their hard earned money buying crap, so they will download it first, if they like it they buy it, if they dont they wont, of course, not all users will buy what they like, but if they couldnt download it chances are they still wouldnt buy it.
Its up to industry to change their business model, in order to keep up with the modern age, but instead they blame the pirates, they spread their lies “Downloading music and films is STEALING” … uhm.. no it isnt, its copyright infringement, if i steal your car, you havent got a car, if i make a copy of your film, you still have the film.
The more people hear the propaganda, the more they believe it, and EVEN start agreeing with it, its ludicrous. Then you have Government officials that make stupid decisions, to panda to industry, like telling ISP’s they have to monitor all their users, not only unworkable, but potentially very dangerous.
None of this takes into account Fair Use, if i buy a film i want to be able to watch it how i like, my DVDs get scratched, so i download a copy thats not going to get damaged, because it takes several hours to rip the DVD, but only 20 minutes to download it.
So in these increasingly hostile times Usenet seems the only way to go, it offers speed, reliability, and the option of SSL, sure, it costs money, but its not that expensive, and in my mind its worth every penny, i would personally recommend Giganews they have the worlds longest usenet binary retention, multiple gigabit-plus backbones running at a fraction of capacity, and the option of 256-bit SSL encryption among other things.
Getting started
Usenet is a little more difficult to use than torrents, so here is some information to help you.
First thing you need to do is register with a usenet provider, i personally use Giganews but there are plenty to choose from.
Second you will need a way to search usenet for this you can use, newzbin is probably the easiest and arguably the best, but its got closed registration at the moment, and you have to pay for it.
Thirdly you will need a binary client, i use http://www.newsleecher.com/ there are plenty out there, but i havent found another one as fully featured and useable as this, however, you need to pay for this one as well.
Set up the server settings with the details you get from your provider
