I've literally looked for things that I could reasonably expect to be on the Internet and couldn't find them on the Internet. The newest hot thing is still available, of course, but an obscure 5 years old show may not always be.

>I've literally looked for things that I could reasonably expect to be on the Internet and couldn't find them on the Internet.

Everything is in private communities now. Almost all the content you can think exists on usenet, but all the good indexers are invite-only (and often pay to play. My usenet subscription + the yearly fees to various private trackers was just a little less expensive than Netflix (up until the most recent price hike).

With all due respect, probably you just have to look harder. I managed to track down a clean scene release of an 18 year old PC game[0] just a few hours ago with the help of Yandex and the offline translator plugin for Firefox.

[0]: https://predb.de/rls/Wings_Of_War_DVD-HOODLUM

usenet is taking off in a big way (does 1979 tech really count as taking off?).

Alternatively, invite-only/private torrent trackers are as good/better than the old days.

Way harder for regular folks to break into the scene, but it's far more "professional"(?) now

Be like me and keep seeding the stuff that’s going to be obscure in 5 years.

Of course, you’ll need to wait for me to open up my client every couple weeks, but you’ll get it eventually.

The problem with seeding, for me, is that it effectively implies a need to keep two copies of content. One however you downloaded it and then one actually named properly and stored in a reasonable hierarchy... (Not to mention all the *.nfo and *.lnk they include!)

Hardlink or reflink could be your friend.

Hardlink ftw. The only problem is when contents are compressed into rar or whatever. For video it doesnt even make sense from space-saving angle. Anyone can explain why so much torrents are like this?