As people that personally know me can attest I am a huge fan of the internet in all its incarnations. Sure some people use it to steal things, and others use it to find dirty pictures, but many of us just use the internet like we would use our car; to get around, and get things with less hassle.
Unfortunately, there are those in the world that think that any time we download something we are stealing valuable intellectual property and robbing other customers of precious bandwidth. As someone who pays an extra 10 bucks a month just to access 50% of the potential that my cable internet provides that is ridiculous. If I am not downloading 24/7 then I am just wasting my money. I wouldn't go to a theme park and refuse to go on any rides, I wouldn't buy a video game and play the first half, and I wouldn't buy a movie and only watch the opening credits. In this world we pay for so much but get so little in return. Corporations constantly out to get the most from us while giving the least in return. I won't turn this into a soapbox rant about the state of capitalism in the world, for I am not a political scientist, but I am tired of getting treated like a criminal because I want to use what I pay for. When I work on something like a manuscript and submit it for review I have to sell that piece of my hard work. I have to work hard, I have to put my time, effort, commitment, and education to the test and hope for the best. Meanwhile I am treated like a degenerate for expecting the same in return.
This little rant of mine does have a point so I will wrap it up by saying if you are not using your internet to its maximum potential for every second of the day then you are getting ripped off. Let the telecoms companies feel it where it hurts, use every bit of bandwidth they will give you, use it at the peak times, refuse to pay for their capped plans. Eventually they will learn the answer doesn't lie in punishing their customers but in making them happy. Expand your services and more customers will come, then expand some more. That is what I do when I work, and I grow as a person while doing what needs to be done. Maybe all these CEO's should listen to my Mom when she says "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar," which is technically true unless you use a nice balsamic vinaigrette, flies love that stuff.
"Well," you say to me "what about getting sued by the RIAA or MPAA?" Sure they sue thousands of people (something like 30,000 in total now) but with 2007 seeing 9.35 million simultaneous users of p2p networking 30,000 people is a drop in the bucket. You are more likely to die than get sued by the RIAA. Next look at the people that get sued, most of them are college freshmen, high-school students, grandparents, or children. The one thing they lack that we will have is an understanding of the dangers and difficulties of file sharing in today's world. After a lengthy introduction we get to the topic at hand, how to keep your ISP from taking your rights of privacy away from you.
I am going to assume for the sake of this article that you are a common file sharing person, like me, using programs like Limewire and BitTorrent to obtain creative commons works, open-source software, and the free exchange of ideas. So how do we keep the ISP and the RIAA away from us?
Step 1 - Don't use Limewire or any other unsecured p2p client if you can help it. I prefer to use torrents over all other options.
Step 2 - Use private torrent trackers. Places like Mininova, The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt, etc. are great places to go but there are dummy files that get uploaded and it is much easier for a company to find your IP by pretending to be another file sharing person on that network. Private trackers like Demonoid should always be your first stop.
Step 3 - use Peerguardian to help keep those pesky snooping IP addresses away.
Step 4 - Get a good firewall / antivirus program. I would recommend ZoneAlarm. This is actually just good advice all around.
Step 5 - Download the torrent file anonymously. I use the Tor network to retrieve my torrent files. This doesn't mean you use the anonomizer to download the entire file, just get the original .torrent file. This leaves no ip-logs on the tracker server.
Step 6 - Set your torrent client to use encryption. This will keep your ISP from analyzing your data stream to see what you are downloading. It's not perfect by any means but it won't slow down your torrents at all and its just one more hurdle people have to cross.
If you do all 6 of these steps you won't be completely safe, but the odds of you getting caught were already slim to begin with; and no-one is going to bother trying to hack through all those layers of BS to maybe, possibly, sue you.
------------------------------------------
A year or so ago I wrote up a tutorial for torrents, I figure I will just append it here to make this a more complete guide.
Torrents, Who Has ‘Em, Who Wants ‘Em: A guide
Introduction
I have been getting more than just one or two requests from friends, family, strangers on the street, and various other people of less repute to share my wisdom in the world of file sharing. First, I would like to say that file sharing and piracy are two separate issues. My diatribe on the file sharing vs. piracy debate can be heard at the bar whenever I have been drinking. Since this is a public post we will assume that you will be utilizing Torrents and other Peer to Peer (p2p) file sharing programs for downloading updates, Ubuntu releases, and sharing your vacation photos with friends and family.
The BitTorrent protocol was created by a genius by the name Bram Cohen back in 2001 to provide a speedy and bandwidth friendly way of sharing files. The actual method that BitTorrent uses to communicate these files isn’t really important but if you’re interested in a technical demonstration they have a well constructed tutorial over on Wikipedia. BitTorrent takes very small files with the extension .torrent from the internet and loads them into a client. That client then uses that small amount of information to connect you to people that actually have the full array of files you seek. Your computer will then talk to all those people that have the files, and people like yourselves that desire the files. You will get small chunks of information from them, and in return, you will give small chunks of information to others. Eventually, through time and persistence, your computer will gather all those tiny chunks of information and turn it into the wondrous group of files you requested.
Terminology
Peer – A fellow person downloading a torrent (or yourself).
Leecher – A person that downloads a file without uploading.
Seed – A person who has the torrent in its complete form.
Tracker – A website that keeps track of who has the files, and who wants the files, essentially you can think of a tracker as a roadmap which lets people know where they are and where they need to go. Trackers are usually where you get the initial .torrent file.
Swarm – all the peers and seeds taken as a whole.
Client – a program that interprets the .torrent information and communicates with peers and seeds to download the files and assemble them in the correct fashion.
Ratio – This refers to the amount of data you have downloaded in proportion to data uploaded.
Downloading
Now that we have covered the grunt work and you are sufficiently informed of the words I will be using let us get down to brass tax, put our nose to the grindstone, and hammer out the specifics. The first thing you will need is a client. Clients can range from tiny command line operators to gigantic resource hogs. What you use as a client is going to be entirely dictated by what you want. If all you want to do is download some torrents you can’t go wrong with uTorrent. I personally use uTorrent because its small, doesn’t hog resources, and lets you extensively customize your experience. I am going to show you how to download torrents using this program but the ideas and methods will be similar if not exactly the same across the clients. Other clients I have used are Azureus, BitComet, and BitTornado, They all have their strengths but I would stick with uTorrent or Azureus as they are the two most used clients right now.
Now that you have a client you need some trackers. Trackers can range from public free for all downloads to private trackers that require a login and for you to have a certain ratio to participate in downloads. I personally find private trackers to be better than public trackers. Private trackers usually have a sense of community, ratio restrictions require people to upload (which reduces leechers), and you don’t have as many duplicate files, spam files, and viruses. The downside to a private tracker is that you will need to be invited to join, or get lucky and score an account during signups (signups usually last about a week and only happen every 4-6 months). Private trackers can also have limitations in the variety of files available but in my experience only 1 in 20 downloads that I seek are not on a private tracker. The last type of site is a pay tracker. I have never used one of these sites but I have donated to trackers that I use extensively.
So, you say why won’t he stop talking and give me a list of awesome sites. Well I want you to understand why some of these sites are better than others. If you are a close friend of mine you can ask for an invite to the private trackers but it will give me a bad reputation if one of my invitees is terrible at file sharing, so I might not give it to you (and some of them require me to share my precious ratio with you). The last difference between a public and a private tracker is that you are less likely to be bothered by the RIAA or MPAA when using a private tracker.
AnimeSuki – Public tracker for unlicensed fanlations of Anime. This site is great because it has a ton of shows and is usually the first stop for any release group, so you get stuff fast. BoxTorrents – Private tracker for unlicensed fanlations of Anime and related content. Basically this is like AnimeSuki except you can usually get the Anime in one torrent rather than by episode and it has things like fan art, sounds, etc.
Btjunkie – Public tracker. This site indexes dozens of other trackers. In reality searching here is like searching 20-30 other sites and is usually my first stop if I can’t find it on a private tracker.
Demonoid – Private tracker. This is my first stop for torrents, and usually my last stop.
isoHunt – Decent public tracker, pretty general stuff.
Mininova - Decent public tracker, pretty general stuff.
The Pirate Bay - Decent public tracker, pretty general stuff. This site is great mainly because they openly piss off the RIAA whenever possible then gleefully do a “not touching you, can’t get mad” hand waving in front of the RIAA.
TvTorrents – Private tracker. This place is really hard to get into but it is worth it. I usually can get a TV show from here minutes after it airs, in great quality, with no fuss.
Now you have a client and a list of places to visit to get that initial torrent file. What do we do now? Well you can utilize the search feature of the site or just browse around until you find something interesting and click the ol download button. Windows will ask you “what to do with this file” and you click open. The file will download in seconds and if this is the first time you have downloaded a torrent ask you what program to use to open the file. You should tell your computer that .torrent files will always be utilized by uTorrent. Once you have opened the torrent uTorrent will ask you where to download the file at. Just pick a location that makes sense to you, I personally use a folder called “Downloads.”
The torrent will pop into the window and you will be able to see how much is done, how fast it’s going, how long it will take, the ratio on that file, etc. Browse around the client and see where things are, what you can customize, and what you don’t know about. Default settings are probably your best bet and an explanation of what the settings do can be found on your client’s webpage.
Once you download the file you can enjoy as you see fit. Be sure to share that file to at least a ratio of 1:1 and give back what you took. I personally share my downloads until I have a ratio of 2.2:1.
No comments:
Post a Comment