Usenet wiki (unfortunately we don’t have one on Lemmy): https://reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/faq
Two 1 TB blocks on different backbones for $15: https://portal.usenetprime.com/cart.php?a=add&bid=37.
3 TB for $15 (4000+ retention): https://billing.blocknews.net/signup/blockfriday
6 TB for €15 (2800+ retention ): https://www.bulknews.eu/checkout?product_variation=43&locale=en%2F and use the code bf241. Bulknews is on Abavia backbone.
4 TB for $25 (4633+ retention): https://newsgroupdirect.com/member/billing/?plan=ce57&planid=233&yes_tracking=1
500 GB for 10.50 till January 3 (3000+ retention): https://usenet.farm/
The retention might not be accurate, probably larger.
No.
You don’t get salty emails from your ISP for downloading torrents, you get them because (due to the nature of how torrenting works) you’re also uploading the torrent to other users at the same time.
Usenet users download from the data providers. Because it’s not crowdsourcing the hosting like torrenting, it’s generally not free (hence this post about deals). The trade-off for having to pay is that you don’t have to share that risk with the data providers. It’s more akin to watching a pirate streaming site than torrenting: you’ll never get an email about consuming it, but you might visit one day and realize the site’s been taken down or had the domain changed because the owners got the email instead.
roger that, with thanks