February 01, 2008 by sharky
« Part 3 of a 7-part series on Advanced Searching for Copyrighted Content »
Part 3. Validating a ‘Release’ with NFO / dupecheck Websites
This tip is more inclined for deeming whether or not something has been officially released by a known piracy Release Group, or if it’s possibly just a fake, decoy or scam. But it doesn’t end there - anything listed as official will also be fairly easy to track down, as well. These sites that list official pirated releases are also known as NFO websites, or dupecheck sites.
As mentioned in different articles around FileShareFreak, there are a few good NFO/dupecheck websites that report only ‘official’ pirated releases. This can be taken a step further by implementing search capabilities with the provided data from them. We should note that these criteria are useless when applied through a Google search - it will take a slightly more sophisticated approach to generate fruitful results - in order to get to the ‘warez’.
Here’s a sampling of some of the dupecheck websites that list proper ’scene’ releases with ‘real-time’ results:
It should be assumed that 99% of the listings at these sites would be classified as ‘working’ releases, without further guesswork. The data is not derived from BitTorrent sites or other file sharing networks that are susceptible to corruption and public inputs; rather, it is an organized list from the top of the piracy pyramid including FXP servers, Topsites and elite IRC channels directly or indirectly associated with the release groups themselves.
Search Implementations
While most of these sites do not offer links to illegal content (with one exception being www.NFOrce.nl - they have a feature that links the listings to .torrent files through a search on zoozle.org), most merely list the *.NFO files associated with the releases, and other details. Downloadable links - and where to find the actual files - are not usually included in the deal, for legal reasons. That is left up to the perusers.
- ONE NOTABLE exception to this is www.scenereleases.info. Not only do they list the most recent “scene releases”, they also offer links to the *.torrent and/or DDL link (rapidshare.com, etc.) for the listings.
NOTE: We’ve dedicated this tip to BitTorrent and IRC, but it’s implementations are the same for all P2P file sharing protocols, including Usenet, DDL ‘Warez’ sites, and even P2P programs such as eMule etc.
There are three criteria within the results shown at these NFO sites that are pertinent to searching: The name (or title) of the release, the release group itself, and any tags that are listed within the release (optional - sometimes there’s none). To keep things consistent in our examples, we’ll use NFOrce.nl as our model.
Searching with BitTorrent
TITLES — This is fairly straight-forward — just cut/paste the title of the release above (i.e. “Alvin And The Chipmunks”) into your favorite BitTorrent website and conduct a search. Note that: Often things will be listed here on NFOrce before they’re listed on most Bit sites, due to the hierarchy of the piracy pyramid (BitTorrent being a little farther down the line). So if you don’t see it on any Bit sites - keep checking back, it should appear within a matter of hours in most cases. See our tip below for incorporating the release group name into your searches.
RELEASE GROUP NAME — You can browse all releases by any particular release group at NFOrce, and then conduct a .torrent search of just the RG name. This is handy for filtering out much of the bad torrents, and for browsing “like” search results.
TIPS — To filter out the fakes/dupes and bad torrents, you’ll need to be able to interpret the NFOrce listings. As in the above example, if you search for just “Alvin And The Chipmunks” on mininova.org, you’ll be sure to get all sorts of junk in the results mixed with some ‘proper’ releases. So it’s imperative to use the release group name when identifying the results of a search. In the “Alvin” case above at NFOrce, the proper release group for it is PUKKA. Below is the listing at NFOrce, and the corresponding proper torrent as found on mininova, with the release group name (PUKKA) included:
TAGS — To take it a step further, you should also incorporate the proper ‘tags‘ that are displayed at NFOrce and look for them in the proper release at mininova, as well. For the “Alvin” release by PUKKA, it is also an “R5″ (Region Code 5), and thus the proper listing for “Alvin” by PUKKA at mininova should also contain the “R5″ tag (which you can see it does in the above example - a perfect match). Matching the tags with the release group and title of each release will almost guarantee a fault-free .torrent. Also note that NFO websites (NFOrce.nl) do not normally list the BitTorrent tracker - this is usually found in brackets at the end of the torrent, after the release group name - i.e. - [usabit.com]. Trackers are only reported by BitTorrent websites and should typically be disregarded in the ‘matching’ of the two sites, and it is not pertinent to the properness of the release.
Discrepancies between NFO websites and TORRENT sites:
In the event where you aren’t sure if a release is proper or not; the NFO site is always correct. Torrent websites are, because of public and/or user submissions, susceptible to bad torrents, fakes, dupes etc - but releases found on vcdquality.com and nforce.nl should always be considered valid.
This tip is not exclusive to just movies - it pertains to any proper ’scene’ release. Stick to this method and you’ll cut down almost ALL of the junk from your downloads! Familiarize yourself with the available filtering options on NFOrce, and use them to your advantage when searching for torrents.
Searching ‘User’ folders with Mininova.org
Mininova has a really cool feature that not too many people know about. Users can access (browse) the .torrents that were uploaded by release groups (and users) through their accounts with mininova. This cuts out most of the junk torrents, and is especially helpful for filtering out those lame ‘dupers’ that post fake torrents under the names of popular groups.
For example, common knowledge tells us that not all torrents that have the word “aXXo” in them are actually from aXXo. The MPAA and its anti-P2P cronies have long ago figured out that if you upload a fake torrent, it works better if a popular release group name is attached to it - and by this they’ll be sure to snag many more people into downloading their “fake”. But if you browse the actual aXXo directory - you’ll be sure to be viewing only what was uploaded by aXXo, and no others.
How it works: The ‘aXXo’ Example.
Visit www.mininova.org and type /user/axxo in the URL window. Or, just click the link below:
http://www.mininova.org/user/axxo
Mininova will only display the torrents that were uploaded by aXXo: (Check out those beautiful seed/leecher ratios!)
This tip is not just exclusive to aXXo. While most proper ‘release groups’ don’t upload to BitTorrent websites (some do!), other users (who upload lots of .torrents) have accounts that consist of /user/ folders with, in most cases, viable working torrents. A good starting point is the mininova forums.
Searching with IRC
This IRC method is almost the same as BitTorrent, except you’ll be entering the inputs into an IRC web search site, instead. We’ll use IRCDig.com for the example below, but it’s recommended to utilize different ones (since the output data from all varies greatly - vastly improving one’s chances for generating good “hits”). While this provided example is exclusive to IRCDig, it can be applied to most other IRC Web search sites, and downloading to your IRC client (mIRC) will basically be the same procedure.
The IRCDig Example:
We’ll stick with the “Alvin/PUKKA” example for this. Again, you’ll be able to either search for a title, or a release group name (or even a combination of both).
Visit www.IRCDig.com, and register if you’ve not already done so. This only takes a minute. Now, if you just plain-old search for “Alvin And The Chipmunks” you’re going to get hits from all sorts of sources, including older files such as the CAM releases and other unwanted entries. The key is to filter your search in order to narrow it down to the desired “PUKKA” release. In other words, regardless of what you are searching for, you want the “hit” to match to what is found on NFOrce. This can be done a number of ways, so experiment with it, but a search for “Alvin Pukka” works nicely for this example.
Notice that the IRCDig search matches exactly with the proper release listed on NFOrce.nl:
IRC Download Instructions:
From the results, you’ll be able to ‘copy’ the parameters from the IRCDig website and automatically import them into your mIRC program. Remember that XDCC Bots go offline and change files that they host, so if you run into the message in mIRC that the “Packet Doesn’t Exist” or similar, go back to IRCDig and launch a different network or channel.
To do this, click on the “PACK #” (it is “40” as seen below) - you’ll see a popup like this:
Now, click the “number” (i.e. ‘40′) and then click the CONNECT: link - it should be blue: It will now launch your IRC client (mIRC) assuming you already have it installed.
If you’ve never done this before (and you use Firefox) you’ll be prompted to launch your mIRC program:
Once mIRC is open, connect to the network/channel by clicking the ‘Connect To Server’ button, and in the command line prompt, either hit CTRL+V or right-click in it and select PASTE. This will paste the necessary command line into the mIRC channel. Click “Enter” on the keyboard.
Related Articles:
You’ve now requested the file from the XDCC Bot. (As with most popular items, you’ll likely be placed in a queue sequence and have to wait your turn to download it). Stay in the channel! Read our article on how to configure the mIRC client to receive downloads.
And if you don’t feel like waiting for your turn to come around in the IRC queue (or you don’t want to put up with the bullshit from IRC channel operators - who can blame you?), there’s always the option of our next tip - using Direct Download Links.
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