NZBGrabit shutting down on April 9th

[anon]

Not a member (and apparently they've never been mentioned in this forum before), but I just caught wind of this.

Dear Members of our Community,

It is with a very heavy heart that i am forced to write this message to all members regarding our community.

As you are aware, we have always tried to be one step ahead of possible restrictions imposed or implied by server host's, DMCA and FACT trying to close us down.

For a few years now we have relied upon being firstly offshore (the old .SX site) and more recently by being russian based.

Unfortunately, the sanctions imposed globally because of the Ukraine conflict now means we fall foul of global sanctions against russian businesses.

Our server host has informed us that at the end of our current period that they will be withdrawing all services and be terminating our hosting on the 9th April 2024 due to EU sanctions. This decision was not easy for us, as we have always strived to serve our community to the best of our abilities. However, due to the reasons above, we can no longer continue our business operations.

We are fully aware this news will be as devastating to you as it is to us. we have all built and enjoyed our community as a safe space proving us with reliable information and knowledge to explore the Usenet.

Due to the size and format of our site, we do not have a host for the Community.

We have a plan to continue forward but as the community only without the NZBs due to hosting issues and wanting to keep the community together.

We wanted to take this opportunity to express our sincerest gratitude for your continued support throughout the 12 years we have been around for. Your loyalty and trust have been invaluable to us, and we are truly grateful for the relationships we have built within our community.

Transparency has always been one of our core values, and we wanted to ensure that you were informed about this decision as soon as possible. We believe in being open and honest with our valued members, and it is important to us that you understand the circumstances leading to this unfortunate outcome.

Once again, we would like to express our deepest gratitude for your support, and we hope that our paths may cross again in the future. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Thank you for being a part of our community.

Donations received were always used to pay for all the site resources and only that and are non-refundable which was explained when donating. We will be continuing to give you all the latest content until this day comes, and we will also open the supporter up so you can also access the XXX content. Thank you again for the support that kept us around and the best for this long.

The request rules will also be relaxed, and you will now be able to ask for Box Sets and 5 more requests per month so go and use them to get the stuff you wanted before we can no longer provide it.

This thread will be left open for you all to discuss and say your goodbyes or swap contact information so you can all keep in touch.

The Facebook page and the Twitter pages will be kept live as long as possible.

We look forward to ideas and input from any and all members.

We thank every one of you as without your help, input and support we could not have survived this long.

Sincerely,
The NZBGrabit Team.

[sbestran]

There should be an honor code about "if you are closing, dump the nzbs into a compressed nzb".
I hope they do something like that

[anon]

Same - otherwise, so much content gets lost, and while the files are still technically available, they're useless without a way to match filenames to releases and the corresponding archive passwords.

Unfortunately, indexers don't just keep all NZBs inside a directory in the server that can be easily packed and shared (that's horrible for performance), so any backup/export capabilities would need to either be there from day one or get implemented during these final days... not to mention it's entirely up to staff if they want to do such a thing to begin with.

[sbestran]

I have no idea on how they work, but if it was indexed, maybe they could just sort of scrape themselves?
Or ask for users to do this.
But maybe I'm being naive due to lack of knowledge.

[Bewegter]

True, that is such a shame. For retrieving a lost NZB one must know the header and password of this NZB. Otherwise, it will be lost forever and just a waste of space on the disks of the Usenet providers. One way of backing up NZB dumps would be to upload the dump to usenet. this way many nzbs = 1 nzb ^^

[anon]

One way of backing up NZB dumps would be to upload the dump to usenet. this way many nzbs = 1 nzb

Another is to make a torrent of it labeled "windows_11_source_code.zip" or "matrix5.mp4" and seed it with DHT enabled And let's not forget archive.org.

With Usenet providers fighting each other over who can offer the longest retention period, some are even using it as cloud storage for backups, although I personally disapprove of this unless they're something shareable with others.

[sbestran]

About the nzb dumps, bd25 dump made us see how easy is to do a ctrl+f in a txt and download what you want, Even for privacy matters, it's one less query to a server, it's beautiful.

With Usenet providers fighting each other over who can offer the longest retention period, some are even using it as cloud storage for backups, although I personally disapprove of this unless they're something shareable with others.

Now you got my itch.

The problem with such claims (personal backup and so on) is that it can make Usenet a popularity contest for file availability and that is quite the contrary of what Usenet has to offer the best: a very long standing hosting for files. This claim doesn't take in consideration small groups sharing more obscure files that maybe only have interest for some people "now" but my interest people later. Not only that, but also files from indexers that go down now but may be reborn later (Usenet-Crawler, bd25...).

I understand that is easy for me as a user to say "hey little usenet company! Keep your hard drives full with who knows what just because!" but something better than the swiss cheese retention should be tried, or you end up removing from Usenet it's most important technical aspect: retention doesn't die because somebody stopped "seeding" (hosting, in this case).

A personal example: I was looking for a German movie by the director of "Lola Rennt" and could only find it in very low quality. Then came Usenet-Crawler backup and... tah-dah, there was the 5000+ days post of the entire bluray in an iso so that I could remux myself. Thanks for Usenet retention! I even watched the movie again for the experience (I had watched in very low quality years ago) and it was very nice.
I was amazed by how a backup from a "dead" site pointing to a 14years old file solved me finding what I was looking for.

If that story becomes about a Uruguayan movie from 2000s, how Usenet could have helped!

Content (movies, music, etc) that are not popular to most people usually die fast on the torrent world. They usually have not so much trouble with copyright as some superpopular trending new thing would have, and Usenet sometimes become a last resource to have any type of access to it (legal or not).

While I get the technical part, I really worry when I see this "if it's not downloaded, it shouldn't be here" argument from providers, because who knows what could be of good importance for reference and so on in the future?

Also, something that scratches my head: most provider that don't do the 2011-2014 period complain about how large the daily feed of Usenet has become when talking about retention, but the feed wasn't so large in 2012, it would take some days of nowadays feed to offer one full year of extra retention. The argument feels dislocated.

Sorry for such a long answer maybe even going a bit of topic, but I am really afraid that this argument can serve to remove stuff from small communities, and end up being used by large providers to do it. In the past month or so, eweka filters removed a large part of 2021 feed what was specific for less used indexers and caused a big headache. The problem was solved when noticed, but rang an alarm for me about the lack of guarantees of such infrastructure: I don't know if people from these smaller indexer hadn't complained, if that wouldn't be followed by other providers/resellers.

For me, Usenet has the potential to be a under-the-radar archive.org for media that is lost some other way.

I hope it can keep this potential and fulfill it.

[anon]

I think all of the examples you just gave fall under "something shareable with others". I was referring to private files that aren't intended to be seen by anyone else (obviously encryption would be mandatory), and may not ever be actually downloaded by their owner, because they were just one piece of a multi-backup strategy. But maybe it's difficult to draw the line.

[sbestran]

I understand the "pure" argument of people using Usenet as personal backups, and I agree that it's harmful to providers.
The problem I was raising is that providers are keen to use this argument to get rid of the need to host unpopular files.

As you say, it's hard to draw the line, indeed.