First, thanks for violating the first rule of Usenet.
Second - I have to take issue with one sentence, "you’re at risk of being sued for a lot of money and maybe even loosing your home internet connection. "
Sure, you're at risk, but far less risk than other methods of violating copyright. Nearly every Usenet provider offers encrypted traffic. Most by default, and many as the only option. Which means that your ISP has no freaking idea what you're downloading.
Many providers also allow payment in bitcoins, or go out of their way to accept other anonymous methods of payment.
And finally, unless you're uploading to Usenet (wich most people aren't) you're participating in a much less volatile and essentially never prosecuted form of copyright violation.
Usenet can be a pain to setup, but once you're up and running with the tools the author listed, you'll be using far-and-away the easiest most user-friendly method of obtaining movies and TV available.
> The ISP might not have any idea, but your usenet provider does. I'm curious if it's common practice for them to log user activity.
Most providers do not log downloads. To cite the policies of two of the biggest providers, Giganews and Astraweb:
> Giganews does not track the specific articles you download; however, we will track the volume of your downloads for account maintenance and download limit enforcement purposes (if applicable).
> We do not store any specific information about your downloads. We only store the amount downloaded, date and access IP address for accounting purposes.
Most providers will tell you they do not keep any logs. However, most of the bigger providers will add an encrypted header to any post you make. The NSP can later decrypt the header to see which of their users made the post.
To the best of my knowledge, to date these headers have only been used to nab child pornographers. I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble just for downloading copyrighted works on Usenet. The worst uploading incident I've heard of was years ago when all the members of sd-6 got their Easynews accounts deleted. Granted they were posting non-stop and all using the same NSP. I don't remember any charges being pressed or subpenas being issued.
From what I've seen from the major Usenet providers' privacy policies, downloads are almost always never logged -- connections, maybe, but not downloads. Posts and uploads, however, are logged in order to crack down on spam complaints.
Second - I have to take issue with one sentence, "you’re at risk of being sued for a lot of money and maybe even loosing your home internet connection. "
Sure, you're at risk, but far less risk than other methods of violating copyright. Nearly every Usenet provider offers encrypted traffic. Most by default, and many as the only option. Which means that your ISP has no freaking idea what you're downloading.
Many providers also allow payment in bitcoins, or go out of their way to accept other anonymous methods of payment.
And finally, unless you're uploading to Usenet (wich most people aren't) you're participating in a much less volatile and essentially never prosecuted form of copyright violation.
Usenet can be a pain to setup, but once you're up and running with the tools the author listed, you'll be using far-and-away the easiest most user-friendly method of obtaining movies and TV available.