I found about Usenet and the sort of “hype” relative to it and I wonder some stuff.

Usenet’s been around in its current form since 1987! The problem for pirates is finding decent providers who serve binaries. I used to use Easynews as they had great retention and they seem to still be around.

Usenet is decentralised, but - as mentioned elsewhere - relies on a handful of providers to service the binary groups.

Your comment about speaking Austrian reminded me of one of my many visits to Germany. I was at the Oktoberfest in München and my group got chatting to a local, whereupon he proudly proclaimed: “Here… you are not in Germany; you are in Bavaria!” Made us chuckle :-)