Offspring,
Now that that is out of the way, I have a confession to make. Much in the same way that Kanye West confesses to being self-confident, I am confessing to being a pirate. Specifically, I pirate and hoard 'intellectual copyright' material. Through the use of Peer2Peer networks, I am able to acquire digital copies of CDs, DVDs, documents and other encodable material that friends of mine in the U.S. and in dingy corners of the Siberian expanse have paid [some] money for.
Internet Piracy is wrong. Internet Piracy is the same as stealing a car that you see and like. Internet Piracy is the same as stealing a handbag. Internet Piracy is the same as stealing a DVD off the shelf. Except it's not.
There are arguments to both sides of this argument. The RIAA (read: "Fun Police") tells us that it is blatant theft of 'intellectual property'. 'Pirates' tell us that it is the right of the consuming masses to determine whether or not to patronise artists by attending concerts and purchasing physical merchandise, and that access to digital copies of their material in fact heightens the exposure of these artists, rather than denting their bank-accounts as Lars Ulrich would have you believe. Naturally I stand with the latter, but acknowledge that the former is a stance believed by some people out there, I guess, because otherwise we wouldn't be having this argument.
So kids, if you're reading this, and we've just had an argument about why you're wrong and I'm right, and I tell you some arbitrary-as reasons, consider this fodder for calling me a 'hypocrite'. In the meantime, I'm listening to music I didn't pay for, and you don't yet exist. Suck it.
Now we come to the fun part. Recently, Limewire was shut down, leading to the suicide of many music-lovers' bank accounts. In these darkest of times, many turned to alternate avenues such as other networks (Kazaa (does that even exist any more?), WinMX, eMule, etc.), others frequented Russian mafia websites offering free downloads upon receipt of an initial deposit of one of the user's fresh kidneys. Most painfully, however, many turned to paying for and downloading music from paid sources such as iTunes. Former rebels for the cause of free media, creative commons and getting something for nothing suddenly gave up the ideal because they couldn't download the newest (NSFW) Bieber (I warned you) track any other way. Thankfully, a few (read: many) bright minds (read: not-duds) knew about torrents, and tried to disseminate the information as best they could. To all of those saints, I take off my hat, and now throw it into the ring. For my friends, who over the past few days have asked me how to download music using torrents, I present this guide.
Before we begin, I advise that you be aware of your monthly download limit and know how to check it. Torrents allow you to download whole movies and albums at a time, and these can chew into your allowance, and there is nothing worse than being capped for 12 days.
Step 1: Acquire a program that works with torrent files
I personally use Vuze by Azureus. I've used it for over five years, and it has never let me down. Other options include uTorrent, BitTorrent, and many many more. Those are the most commonly used, and I wouldn't suggest deviating from that list if you are reading this post as a newbie. Download and install your preferred software, and proceed to Step 2, having collected the $200 from passing 'GO' (read: not having to buy 7-10 CD's over the next financial year). There are a whole bunch of advanced things you can do to tweak the software, but you really don't need to worry about them, unless you want an excuse to bother me.
Step 2: Download .torrent files
The program you downloaded in Step 1 (let's say it was Vuze, because Vuze is brilliant) deals with '.torrent' files. Consider these files to be little doorways to parties. At each of these parties, people have something, and you want it. You go into these parties, hang out, chat with these people, and eventually you have what they have, such as the latest Kanye album. In my opinion, for 99% of mainstream music and movies that've ever been published or recorded, the best place to go to is the appropriately named Pirate Bay. Now from here, it's quite easy:
- Search for what you're looking for. Let's run a trial search for 'Ke$ha', because we all want to download her album 'Cannibal' (actually being done as I type).
- Having run the search, there will be all kinds of results, ranging from single songs to full albums, also interviews or music videos will sometimes appear. If you want to refine your search by adding more terms, do this now.
- Searching for 'Ke$ha Cannibal' will get you better results than 'Ke$ha'. So now you have (at time of writing) 7 choices from which to pick. Which one do you pick? The one with the most 'seeds'. That is, the 'party' with the most people to share that thing you really want.
- So click on the 'SE' , or 'S' or 'Seeds' to sort the list by that value, and click on the link to the top-rated one. - The one with the most seeds will often be the most reliable one, too.
- Feel free to browse around the information for the more technical details, and to browse through the comments.
- But when you're satisfied the track-list is correct and the files are to your liking in terms of size, click the green 'Download This Torrent' link.
- Your browser will ask you 'save' or 'open with' (variation dependant on browser).
- Open with 'Vuze' (or preferred Torrent software).
- Soon, that software will open up with a pop-up window asking you where you'd like to save the file, and it will show you what it's going to download.
- Click 'OK' to confirm where you're putting it.
- Having clicked 'OK', you are on your way to downloading your first album (and what an album, I'm actually listening to it now, having downloaded it 3 minutes ago)! Congratulations!
Step 3: Enjoy your free music!
You now have a digital copy of whatever album, movie or TV show you wanted. Open it up with iTunes, VLC media player, or whatever else you use to run your digital media. Enjoy!
So hopefully that was helpful. If it wasn't, let me know! Did it work for you? Leave me a comment to let me know what your first download was. Did Ke$ha really pop your torrent-cherry? Or did you let Bieber touch you in your cyberspace first? Having trouble? Leave a comment, and even if I don't love you enough to respond to it, someone else might help you out!
So enjoy responsibly, kids, because the dangers of irresponsible music piracy are... well... I can't think of them right now, but I'm sure they're catastrophic, or the RIAA wouldn't spend as much money as they have trying to track down those that disagree with their policies.
And to my kids, don't be a pirate. But if you are, do what you want, because a pirate is free!
Nautically,
Dad.
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