> Downloading happened over usenet, but curation and discussion on a centralised website. The site got seized and the community moved to a new forum that runs on usenet itself.

True, it worked really well for a while but lately it's been pretty terrible due to local copyright representatives suing major uploaders and others stopping because they just got old.

Also the notice & takedown has really killed usenet a bit. Private trackers are hard to get into just like with torrents.