I've found more content to be available through usenet than public torrent trackers. The first two days of usenet instead of torrents I grabbed 2.8tb of content that I had been searching for via torrents and 15+ indexers. (content accumulated in Sonarr/Radarr that previously couldn't be found)

Theres currently one 2267 day old copy of Mars Needs Women available via NZBGeek that I just downloaded successfully.

private trackers are stupid to hassle with when this is so much easier and no need to worry about seeding or other annoying bullshit. combined with a couple other DDL forums i get any private tracker content i want anyways

No you don't.

For one, you're not hosting the content (seeding) like you are with torrents. Claimants aren't generally concerned about the people downloading, they go after the hosts.

And two, you are establishing an encrypted connection to a usenet server which you are then downloading through. Because that traffic is encrypted (like it would be with a vpn), it can't be inspected for illegal/copyrighted content (though that's incredibly rare, ISPs have no incentive to inspect your traffic like that, torrent or otherwise).

Usenet at its core is just an old message board system. People have uploaded files to those message boards by splitting them into small parts and posting the compressed plaintext of each file part into a message on a usenet server. You then read/download each of those posted messages, decompress them, then reassemble all the parts to get the original file. (this is all done automatically by your usenet client and an .nzb file telling it what parts to grab in what order).

Copyright claims can still be filed/submitted, but they go to the usenet provider and are their responsibility to handle and takedown content, not yours as a user/customer.

You need three things:

1. a usenet client for downloading files. I use SABnzbd

2. A usenet provider. This is where you are downloading from. I haven't done a huge amount of research here, just grabbed something cheap for now, and I'll explore more later if necessary: Frugal Usenet

3. and finally; A usenet Indexer. Equivalent to a torrent indexer like TPB, but for .nzb's and pretty much always paid access. I went with NZBGeek mainly because it was recommended alongside frugal and I didn't feel like digging more at the time.

At $6/mo for those two, I'd say give it a try and explore more/other options as needed.

Indexer for NZB's. Have been using it for years. It's awesome. I've paid for a lifetime subscription.

NZBGeek is an inexpensive usenet indexer. They provide .nzb files which are the equivalent of .torrent files.