Piracy 101

I'm quite sick of people asking me to download stuff for them because they either don't know where to look, can't find it, are too scared that downloading anything will get them listed by the RIAS or are simply too lazy to do it themselves. So I've decided to write this, everything you need to know about downloading anything. I've also decided to write this because I've been wanting to for a while now and I happen to be pretty free and awake at 1am on a saturday night.

Before I begin, I'm going to lay some ground rules.

1. I'm always right.
2. Do not question my instructions because of pt. 1.
3. Do not question the logic behind my instructions because of pt.
4. If anything screws up, it's you.
5. Don't use IE, use Firefox.
6. I'm always right.
7. Downloading copyrighted material is illegal and I'm not responsible for whatever shit happens to you if you fuck up.

Understand that I'm not a law student nor anything even remotely related to the topic. The basic idea is that piracy is illegal but everyone wants to do it because it kicks ass getting stuff all those paying suckers spent on for free. All is well as long as you don't get caught but shit happens and if you happen to be lucky, oh well. So don't. Don't get caught.

Let's start with legal downloads. Chances are the download is legal if:

1. If it's on a official website.
2. If it's a short audio clip less than 30 sec.
3. It's a song sung by some unknown, more often than not, loser.

You can download whatever, whereever, whenever. But if you're reading this, you probably don't want these legal downloads.

Now for the juicy bits, in the event that you don't know any of the words or terms I used, google it, don't ask.

The best place to fine safe downloads is from http sites. And there's no better tool to search for the stuff other than google. You can find virtually anything in google, if it's online, you can google it. Google works like all other search engines, at least what you see is the same, you input what you want to find and it churns out the results. Google works the same for everyone and the reason why some people can get everything from google and why some can't get anything is the keywords they use for the search and how they type it.

Group words that are supposed to be together with ""s and use a space as a seperator. For example, if you want to find a song titled "shitty song" sung by "the shitty people", type this in google:

"shitty song" "the shitty people" download

If that doesn't give you any good results, try

"shitty song" "the shitty people" song
"shitty song" "the shitty people" mp3

When that still doesn't show anything good, chances are what you are trying to find sucks to the core, that's when you remove the ""s and shoot blindly. Note that more often than not, the top few pages will be the official sites for the song, the artist or contains the lyrics. Your best bet are forums and those kick ass sites from china. Because china doesn't give a shit about piracy and they make the best game hacks.

You might not understand the words or characters shown, that's when you take note of your status bar, look for words that indicate a download; things like file extensions and javascript(download); etc. Or buttons, the china sites love buttons.

It can take up to more than half an hour just to find your desired file but when that happens, you're rewarded with a sense of satisfaction, almost always, really fast downloads and the sense of relief that the chances of you getting caught are about as slim as nothing.

With that said, I'll go on to what I call the solution to everything, Bittorrent. It's the best thing that happened since Atlantis got submerged. You can download virtually everything off bittorrent if you know where to look. Places like baka-updates, tokyotosho, torrentspy, torrentreactor, piratebay, etc. Just google for it. I'm going to kick the next person who asks me how bittorrent works.

Now I believe I've mentioned forums somewhere above. Forums with a fixed topic that are hosted on professional servers with tonnes of space. You can often find file sharing forums where you can request for files of a specific genre, this requires a certain level of commitment and you don't always get what you're looking for. But if you happen to have a pretty face or you got photos of some nice cute looking chicks, chances are those testosterone pumped forum junkies, techno nerds, will help you out and give you whatever you want. The only risk here is that you probably have to register with the forums in order to use the services. So there, don't be stupid and put anything real.

Only when you're left with no other options, do you turn to p2p software to find whatever you want. And when you do, sad to say, don't share any files. Most of the p2p software works such that your userid or whatever will only be displayed when you have any files to share. That is when someone searches for a file and you have it, your username appears in relation to the file. And that allows other users to see all the files you are sharing. Don't let that happen for obvious reasons. It's sad that the solution to staying safe on a p2p network is not contributing to the network but there are always people out there who either take the risk, doesn't give a shit or are too stupid to know.

FAQ.

Q. Where can I find ______.
A. Google.

Q. Is it legal?
A. probably not.

Q. Can you show me where?
A. No.

Q. Can you download _____ for me?
A. No.

Q. If I pay you?
A. I'll think about it.

Q. Am I wrong?
A. Yes.

Q. How can you be sure you're always right?
A. See points 1 and 2.

Q. You rock!
A. I know.

Disclaimer: This text is for entertainment purposes only. I am in no way responsible for how the information is put to practice. To believe me or not is your choice to make but keep in mind point 1.