Hello you dirty libs! Do you hate paying for shit to entertain yourself with during the end times? Well I have a solution for you: piracy. Well, I wouldn't consider making copies of ones and zeros the same thing as holding captain philips at gunpoint, but I digress. There are a few main routes to take when it comes to getting those leaked AOC feet pics and the latest episode of Game of Thrones though. This post will go over Bittorrent/torrenting.
If I were to give any advice starting out, don't just search for "<movie/show name> free" and watch a stream. Streaming generally gives you shit quality, when you could be downloading Blueray rips instead. This is just my opinion though, I know some people love the convenience of streaming. Anyway let's get started!
Easy: Bittorrent
Bittorrent is a peer to peer (P2P) protocol, meaning you will be downloading (and uploading) pieces of your download from many different people (peers) around the globe. This also means that media companies can also join and see what you are downloading, more on that later. Downloading torrents is called "leeching," while uploading back is called "seeding." The group of peers connected together is collectively called the "swarm." To be a good citizen, make sure to seed back to the swarm, even after you finish downloading.
Downloading torrents is not as easy as just clicking the download button and waiting for your browser to finish. You need a torrent client. A torrent client is the program you use to leech and seed your download by connecting to other peers. I use Transmission, but any other free/open source client will work fine. Other fine choices include qBittorrent and deluge. Just try to avoid commercial ones (even if they are free) because they are filled with advertisements.
Before we can start pirating, a quick note about P2P stuff: because anyone can join the swarm and see each others' IP addresses, copyright holders will tend to watch over popular torrents and notify internet service providers (ISPs) about "illegal activity on the network." These will come to your house in the form of legal scare letters, at least in my shithole country, the US. They are mostly harmless but in some countries, you will actually be sued or even jailed for sharing copyrighted materials. This is where the single valid use for a VPN comes in: pirating. Commercial VPNs do not protect your privacy or security when browsing the web (in fact it can be worse, see here for more details), but they can mask your IP address from the copyright holders, so you don't get those pesky scare letters. I personally use mullvad, but please, please do your research before buying anything.
Okay, your torrent client is working and you checked that it goes through your VPN (mullvad has a tool just for that), how do I find the sweet sweet copyrighted content in the first place!?!? Starting off, your answer is going to be a public tracker (as opposed to the elitist private trackers). Here are a few common sites that can actually get you quite far. Oh and by the way, please use uBlock Origin!!!
- The Pirate Bay (General torrents, watch out for fakes)
- RARBG (Movies and TV shows)
- Nyaa (Anime, some say it is better than private trackers)
- 1337x (General stuff, thanks to /u/take_five_seconds)
- RuTracker (Russian language, supposedly good for music, thanks /u/NonWonderDog and /u/steely_its_a_dildo)
Once you found something you like, you will want to find the magnet link, it usually looks like a magnet icon. (They make it too easy for you libs.) Hopefully it will open up in your torrent client (you may have to copy and paste the link otherwise) and you can start the download. Once it is done, congratulations!! Fuck the MPAA!!!
If the download is really slow or not starting at all, that may be because of a lack of peers. Try to find another more popular torrent that has a higher seed count. Most sites will give you an option to sort by seeds, so give that a try.
This post is already getting too long, so for the next post I will go over automation and usenet. For part 3, I will discuss downloading scientific papers, books and music (and maybe also XDCC).
See you soon guys, gals and non binary pals!
I avoid streaming sites because they usually have not so great quality. There is something nice about having everything downloaded and under your control, that you don't get by streaming. Many people choose piracy not because it is (mostly) free, but because you get to control the media you own.
Only time I'd advocate streaming over torrenting is animation, Anime and Cartoons can be hard to find torrents for and websites like Kisscartoon can be found hosting obscure stuff that has 0 seeds anymore.
Anything else I 100% torrent
This. If you're gonna stream something you may as well download the file.
You can choose the quality easier. You can watch it on another device, watch it offline, edit it, anything.