Originally Posted by pompousjohn

To have a good experience on usenet, you need to pay a provider ~20 a month, plus a paid account at a quality indexer, and have some knowledge of the scene.

To the average Joe, Netflix is cheaper and much easier, and lately a lot of the stuff you get on usenet is ripped from Netflix anyway.

Additionally, as usenet servers fill up older stuff is pushed out, so there is a retention issue as well, it's not like torrents where the stuff will be on there as long as somebody is seeding, or like a file locker where the server is maintained and backed up.

Most usenet uploads last from a few days to a few months, and though there are premium services claiming to retain files for up to 3 years, I have never seen anything over a year old download correctly.