Now I wouldn’t say that I’m a pro, but I’ve been illegally downloading anything and everything for a really long time now. I remember my noob days, when I downloaded individual tracks off of Limewire and hoped that they were 320kbps. I’ve come a long way since then—long enough to give some obvious tips and interesting facts about being a pirate.
A surprising amount of people don’t know this, but don’t be the selfish jerk who doesn’t seed and only leeches. Seeding is essentially when you complete a download and let others (peers) download the same file from you. It’s usually encouraged that you seed so you can give back what you have taken and spread the file, especially if it’s larger. Leechers are people who are downloading the file. If there are no seeders, then there is no one to download from, thus making the file extremely hard to get. BitTorrent (the client I use) is special because you can download parts of your file from the sections that leeches have downloaded, as well as seeders.
Secondly, this may be the most obvious tip in the world, but never torrent porn. Opening a downloaded porn torrent could be like stepping near the radius of an IED…full of malware. Sure, the videos may be great quality, but they’re the most unverified torrents that there are. People aren’t straight when they’re horny, and they make rash decisions. Some of these rash decisions may include downloading all the porn…bad idea. There are sites or people who can save your computer from a world of hurt.
This last bit isn’t really a tip, but a cool little fact. There are exclusive Torrent sites where you can sign up by listing references of people you know in the site to be an admin/leecher. These sites get files like new albums far earlier than normal torrent sites somehow, but the caveat is that you need to pretty much be seeding all the time for the normies/visitors of the site. I’m actually a member of one of those sites, and I get almost every metal album super early (I also buy the album if I love it though) and then share it to the people of the world. These sites are actually extremely clean, due to the fact that all the files are examined before they are put out.
Ian Barbour