Usenet? Is the alt.binaries hierarchy really still around? how active is it?

If you pick decent indexers and buy enough traffic it's absurdly good. Especially if you're into less than mainstream material or tend to try many things out before you settle on a binge, because if it's in the search result it's almost sure to be on your disk within minutes and you don't need to keep a cache for days or weeks because of hit'n'run rules.

Politically I prefer torrenting, due to the social character and openness and so on, but Usenet has none of the fuss beyond a bit of setup and configuration.

if you have good indexer you have access to almost anything.