November 30, 2007 by sharky
FileShareFreak has done it’s homework, and come up with a list of expensive software that can be found available, for free, on various file sharing networks and protocols. What’s the best part about free stuff?? - there’s no tax on it! These are just some examples of the software availability out there; many would be classified as ‘niche market’ applications and considered quite rare.
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November 29, 2007 by sharky
There are a variety of ways to max out that high-speed Internet connection besides downloading illegal movies, huge games and an obscene amount of music - much to the chagrin of your ISP. At least they haven’t figured out how to throttle streaming media yet, as far as we know. Do ISPs think BitTorrent is the next-gen problem? - YouTube alone consumes over 10% of all Internet bandwidth.
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November 28, 2007 by sharky
If you are running WinXP, don’t rely on the firewall supplied by Windows XP, it’s not adequate to handle the duties of a dedicated firewall. Get something else like Zone Alarm, it’s free.
When you install software that requires access to the Internet, most firewalls will give you a chance to allow this change in the system, and a window will pop up prompting for your attention to the matter.
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November 27, 2007 by sharky
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November 25, 2007 by sharky
The term “Peer-to-peer file sharing” is, in essence, an umbrella term used to describe any protocol or method whereby users can share files with other users. This would include almost every activity on the Internet: ICQ (instant messaging); sending files through MSN or Yahoo!; web hosting services; BitTorrent; Usenet; IRC. Even email could be considered peer-to-peer file sharing.
But for all general purposes, “P2P file sharing” is best used to describe the swapping of music, video and other files over the Internet by means of a broad-based application on a common network with a large base of users. Some examples of this would be Limewire, Shareaza and eMule.
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November 25, 2007 by sharky
Users require just two things: An Internet connection and P2P client software to connect you to the P2P network(s). This is a little easier than BitTorrent in terms of difficulty - as there are no necessary websites to visit or external files to download. Here’s a list of some of the available programs and which network(s) they run on:
| Limewire v4.14 | Gnutella network. |
| BearShare Lite 5.2.5.1 | Gnutella & G2 network. |
| Shareaza v2.3.1 | Connect to the Gnutella, Gnutella 2 and eDonkey2000 (eD2K) networks. |
| eMule v0.48a | Connects to the eDonkey2000 (eD2K) and KAD networks. |
| TruxShare v3.8.0 | Connects to the Gnutella (G1) and Gnutella2 (G2) networks. |
| KCeasy v0.18 | Connects to the Ares, Gnutella and OpenFT/giFT networks. |
| Ares Galaxy v.2.0.9.30 | Connects to the Ares network. |
| Blubster 2.69 (Free) | Connects to the MP2P/Manolito network. |
| Zultrax P2P v4.17 (Free) | Connects to the ZEPP/Gnutella networks. |
| Soulseek v157 | Connects to its own network. |
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November 25, 2007 by sharky
This is a review of our top ten free P2P file sharing clients, with the PROs and CONs of each and the rankings. All programs were tested in October 2007 (and are thus deemed to be working). The list below represents the main “client” programs to connect to most of the major networks available.
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November 24, 2007 by sharky
We’ve included this list of release groups specifically for the purpose of searching. Users can enter a “name” in a BitTorrent website to see what this group has released. This is particularly helpful for narrowing down specific searches, and for filtering out the junk torrents from the good ones. These groups are highly-esteemed and respected, and they back it up with solid working releases. Note that some of these RGs are presently inactive. Nevertheless they still generate good search results with active torrents. These lists contains mostly RGs with proper ’scene releases’ only. Stick with releases from these guys, and you can’t go wrong!
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November 22, 2007 by sharky
— “Where does all this free stuff come from, anyway?”
Well, that depends on what you are looking for. Generally when it comes to pirated movies, TV shows, software, games and even music, piracy “Release Groups” are the usual starting point for distribution.
Release Groups are at the top of the Illegal Distribution Pyramid, and it is through them that pirated copies are first created.
A typical release group will comprise of members that are very adept at certain tasks. Some members are suppliers; some will ‘crack’ software; some are packers and distributors. After all, groups perform better than even the best individuals at solving complex problems.
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November 22, 2007 by sharky
Release Groups distribute music as well, usually in the form of complete albums, special compilations, sound tracks, etc. whereby the source was, is, or will be, found retail. There’s no sense in a release group downloading a bunch of songs from Limewire and packaging it up as a ‘release’. This just does not occur. So you can expect a “complete” CD from RGs. Sometimes proper releases will have ‘album art’ included, which includes digital pictures of the cover, CD or even inner jackets. Others may include a small playlist file (*.M3U) just for that album. But there will undoubtedly be ‘tags’ in the name of the folder in which the music is contained, and sometimes they will be in the filename of the file (song) also.
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November 22, 2007 by sharky
Software Release Groups take their work just as seriously as movie releasers, if not more so. They have a protocol of ‘tags’ on their releases as well. Tags on software/games are becoming more erratic at the P2P level because much of what is found is not a genuine ’scene release’, or the release name has been changed so that it’s no longer identifiable as ‘proper’. An ever-updating list of proper software and game ’scene’ releases can always be found at www.nforce.nl (search their site or click the appropriate ’sections’ tabs on the left).
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November 21, 2007 by sharky
One thing that anti-piracy groups and software companies strongly advocate is the fact that software obtained illegally is hazardous and chancy. They want you to believe that illicit software is chock-full of little nasties waiting for the opportunity to unleash disastrous consequences to the unsuspecting user. And for this we do not disagree - there is plenty of bad. This is the Internet; we’re all part of one vast network sharing our computers with each other, a little bad is even expected.
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November 20, 2007 by sharky
It takes a bit of experience and know-how when it comes to downloading movies and getting exactly what you want without any surprises. There are certain key characteristics that you are looking for, and ones that you definitely want to avoid. Here are a few tips to get you going down the right path. And lately we need all the help we can get to avoid the bunk out there.
With BitTorrent, when I look at a page of ‘recently added’ torrents on a public tracker, I am simply mortified by the sheer number of people who are trying to download the bad torrents. To a seasoned BitTorrent veteran, they stick out like a sore thumb.
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November 18, 2007 by sharky
There’s a few sites that offer search capabilities (some in ‘real time’) for finding content on Usenet. This can be a helpful service to find older posts, especially if you subscribe to a premium online news server like Giganews that will be able to retrieve them. These websites can also be used as a tool for discovering popular newsgroups that belong to your interests.
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November 18, 2007 by sharky
Often found on P2P sites are “image” files of a specific release. For example, full DVD movies, games and applications that are found in *.ISO or *.BIN format are ‘images’ of the original disk. This is to ensure the integrity of the original retail product and keep the release as similar to it as possible. Game releases are very common in this format; newer ones are quite large so it’s just practical to release it as an image (with some small tweaks) - instead of ‘ripping’ it all apart to make it only minimally smaller. Movies are released this way in order to keep the original DVD menus, extras, languages, and subtitles intact. So sometimes these are essential and necessary formats (and preferred).
Essentially there are only three things that a user can do with an “image” file:
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November 17, 2007 by sharky
Usenet is one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use. Check the full description of Usenet on Wikipedia.com. It is a virtual peer-to-peer network for exchanging text messages or binary files with people all over the world. Text message files contain just that: text. Binary files can contain images, multimedia, programs or basically anything, all of which is broken down into its simplest format (binary). Each subject collection of posted messages is known as a newsgroup, which number at over one hundred thousand. Users can “post” these messages to the newsgroups for others to read and download. Was this ever handy back in the day! To be able to share files with someone and you didn’t have to copy them to a 5.25″ floppy disk first.
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November 16, 2007 by sharky
P2P file sharers should take these necessary precautions before working with any file sharing programs. Antivirus software, antispyware and a good firewall are the big three prerequisites for safe downloading. And here are some other lesser-known tips to aid in covering Internet activities, properly deleting files and file/folder encryption.
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November 16, 2007 by sharky
If you’ve ever come across a certain movie or song that opened but wouldn’t play, it was most likely caused a missing codec. A great feature about how codecs work is that they are basically shared by all computer programs. Sometimes codecs are referred to as ‘decoders’ and ‘encoders’, for all general purposes it’s the same thing.
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November 14, 2007 by sharky
Typically, proper pirated releases are always compressed; and therefore require an external program to open and extract the files. Here are some tips for extracting, fixing, opening multiple ZIP/RAR files and renaming groups of files at the same time.
Many files sent over the Internet are compressed as *.ZIP or *.RAR files. This is done for two reasons: One; A ZIP/RAR file essentially has a “shell” around it to protect it from data corruption during transmission. Two; It makes the package smaller, or breaks a larger package (like a movie) into multi-parts to be reconstructed by the downloader. The second reason is particularly important to those popular websites that offer free file hosting, where the allowable file size is usually limited to somewhere between 100MB and 500MB - far too small to support a regular extracted DVD ‘ripped’ movie.
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November 13, 2007 by sharky
Striving to get the most out of your bandwidth? Struggling with slow BitTorrent download speeds? The first step is to see if your BitTorrent client is properly configured through the settings - a simple tweak here and there can drastically improve the download speed. Here are some other suggestions to fine-tune your downloading to maximize those torrents:
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November 10, 2007 by sharky
Private BitTorrent websites are already elusive, but what’s even more fleeting are the times when they’re actually accepting new registrations. Zeropaid.com has a great running list of torrent sites (public and private), so just by clicking on the ones marked PRIVATE will launch you to their site where you’ll be able to see if they’re open for new signups:
http://www.zeropaid.com/links/bittorrent/
And another list of public & private torrent sites can be found here:
And here’s a great search tip for finding private BitTorrent trackers that are accepting new signups. In the Google search window, type in this:
Google will now search torrent sites that are currently displaying a signup page (and thus accepting new members). At last check, it came back with 674 results. (No longer must you fumble around with ‘Tracker Checker 2′.)
Another excellent tool to find private trackers is through software, like “Tracker Checker 2″ available here. Tracker 2 goes through a list of known private torrent sites and notifies you when they become open to new registrations.
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November 09, 2007 by sharky
A private tracker is a tracker that requires users to register with it before they can use it. This is done at the tracker website. Private trackers usually register how much the user uploads and downloads and may enforce a minimum upload-to-download ratio. As a result, their torrents usually offer better availability and speed compared to public trackers where leeching is more common. Some private trackers are accepting new members from time to time; others are full and won’t accept new people unless they’re invited by a member. Fortunately, there are always new private trackers opening up all the time, and they gladly accept new members.
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November 06, 2007 by sharky
This is just a personal list of tips for movie aficionados.
Get yourself a decent DVD player, one that supports DivX (most do nowadays) - Try to avoid that $29 one from Wal-Mart. Note that these players will play XviD flawlessly as well. It looks like Blu-Ray is going to win the race for next DVD format, but they’re a little to pricey at the moment. And blank Blue-Ray disks aren’t light on the wallet either, nevermind the PC DVD Blu-Ray burner. Ride it out until the end of 2008…also Blu-Ray downloads are slim pickings for the moment.
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November 05, 2007 by sharky
A BitTorrent website is simply a torrent search engine (where .torrent files are hosted) in which you can browse through and download the ones you want to add to your BitTorrent client program.
Torrent websites are broken down into two categories - public and private. Public torrent websites allow anyone (in most cases) to browse and download torrents. Private sites require registration and signing in before any access is granted.
There’s a huge number of torrent hosting websites, each with different qualities. Check out the alexa.com ‘Top 100 BitTorrent Websites‘ to see which ones are the most popular by ranking. But first we’ll explain how to open .torrent files:
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November 05, 2007 by sharky
As I said before, we don’t go into great depths at explaining IRC/mIRC, but one script that’s worthy of mentioning is called ‘AutoGet‘. AutoGet is an add-on script for mIRC designed to make the entire process of downloading music from IRC much easier. It basically works much like any P2P program would.The general process is this: Users can search for music and connect to multiple MP3 channels all from the same program, instead of having to type the same search string across all channels, over and over.
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November 05, 2007 by sharky
Direct Connect is probably one of the least-known about P2P protocols for sharing files over the Internet. Haven’t heard about it? You’re not alone, many people haven’t. DC is a completely free, open-source file sharing community consisting of users from all over the world. Collective groups of users are connected in “Hubs”, which number in the thousands. Users can join multiple hubs, perform searches, chat with other people in the hub, and download just about anything. The interface is somewhat a cross between Limewire and mIRC, where users can browse through other peoples’ shared folders to view what a particular user is sharing.
Widespread use of DC is becoming more and more popular. This is evident by looking at the recent software projects being developed for the DC protocol. Do a search for “DC” or “DC++” at www.download.com or sourceforge.net and one can see a list of all the new entries.
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November 04, 2007 by sharky
There are many BitTorrent clients available, however; we favor µtorrent, BitComet and Azureus because they constantly evolve to increase speeds and combat mechanisms commonly used by ISPs to thwart the P2P/BitTorrent community. There’s also a good page on Wikipedia here that covers all the BitTorrent clients, as well.
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November 03, 2007 by sharky
ISPs have been increasingly reducing the available bandwidth for P2P users, and more are joining the list all the time. In fact, most major Internet Service Providers now employ some form of technology to limit the file sharing traffic throughout their precious networks. Recently Comcast has been ‘caught’ doing this; others such as Sympatico (Canada) have blatantly admitted it. Could this be because one-third of all Internet traffic is created by P2P programs? Check out the list of bad ISPs here. Below are some solutions to ‘hide’ your P2P file sharing traffic so that it won’t come under the watchful eyes of Big Brother Cable, Co.
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November 02, 2007 by sharky
Everybody’s heard of Napster, the original pioneer of P2P programs was the de-facto standard for sharing illegal music over the Internet - but much has changed over a few short years. Nowadays, BitTorrent is the new reigning protocol for swapping almost everything - and despite its recent surge in popularity, there’s still a colossal amount of Internet users that haven’t even heard of it.
How to use BitTorrent: To grossly oversimplify it - a user visits a website that hosts .torrent files, selects desired files to download, and downloads the torrent file into his/her BitTorrent software program, which then begins to download the selected files. The .torrent only contains ‘links’ to the desired files - these links contain information to connect with other users sharing the same files.
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November 02, 2007 by sharky
There are a few good websites that take some of the hard work out of having to join the proper networks and channels in search of the files (packs) to download. With one-click you’ll be launched to the proper channel on the right network with the ‘command line’ you need to get the request just one ‘paste’ away. With these sites, users can search for a movie, game, album or software title, and they will display a list of files matching your criteria with the active XDCC bots that are hosting that file, all in real-time. When you see the desired file, click the link and it will launch your mIRC program. It’s that simple!
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November 01, 2007 by sharky
One thing we can tell you is this: This is where it all begins. Every movie, every program and every game - it all originated from IRC first - and then trickled down to the torrent sites, to P2P, and to the newsgroups. A pioneer of file sharing, IRC is still at the heart of ‘the scene’. And still the best place to get the newest pirated releases.
IRC, which stands for Internet Relay Chat, is a protocol to connect people for real-time discussions and file sharing from all over the world. It is perhaps the most sophisticated method of file transfer available, and it is also one of the oldest. Mastery of IRC takes a great deal of skill and knowledge. But to grossly oversimplify it, users connect to a network through client software (mIRC) and then join ‘channels’ in that network. Some networks consist of thousands of channels, covering every known topic and subject. Some channels are dedicated to cars, some to pokemon, and some are dedicated to the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials. Can you guess which one has the most users?
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