

- KaZaA, Limewire & Bearshare - P2P for the masses
There’s still a few P2P systems from that era that are still around. Soulseek is still doing very well for music, and some users on there have a bunch of things you can’t easily find anywhere else. DC++ and eMule/eDonkey2000 are still around but with much smaller networks.
One of the OG P2P file sharing methods (dating back to 1990) is still around too - IRC DCC.




To get started, I’d say to get a cheap block account from the Reddit Usenet deals wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals/. A block account gives you a fixed amount of download (1TB, 2TB, whatever) that lasts indefinitely. If you use it just for music or books (for example), one block could last you a very long time. If you find yourself needing more data, you can get a monthly subscription with unlimited data.
You also need an indexer, which is how you search for content. DrunkenSlug, NZBGeek, and NZBPlanet are popular. These cost money, but sometimes they have a lifetime plan where you just pay once. Sometimes they have open registration, but other times you need to get an invite from an existing user. There’s free indexers like NZBKing, but they’re often full of junk, and lack encrypted content.
SABnzbd is the most popular downloader software. It’s free and open-source.
I think that’s it for the basics. There’s more to it - different backbones have different data so one provider might have data that a different provider is missing , you can fully automate downloads with Lidarr/Radarr/Sonarr/Readarr, you can aggregate results from multiple indexers using NZBHydra/Prowlarr - but you can figure that out as you go :)