apocryph.org Notes to my future self

uhci0 at pci0 dev 7 function 2 "Intel 82371AB USB" rev 0x01: apic 2 int 19 (irq 14)
usb0 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0
uhub0: Intel UHCI root hub, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
piixpm0 at pci0 dev 7 function 3 "Intel 82371AB Power" rev 0x02: SMBus disabled
em0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0 "Intel PRO/1000MT (82540EM)" rev 0x02: apic 2 int 17 (irq 11), address 00:07:e9:0f:4f:09
ral0 at pci0 dev 16 function 0 "Ralink RT2561S" rev 0x00: apic 2 int 19 (irq 14), address 00:0e:2e:b2:f1:23
ral0: MAC/BBP RT2561C, RF RT2527
ral1 at pci0 dev 17 function 0 "Ralink RT2561S" rev 0x00: apic 2 int 20 (irq 10), address 00:0e:2e:b2:f1:28
ral1: MAC/BBP RT2561C, RF RT2527

# vmstat -zi
interrupt                       total     rate
irq0/clock                      41574      200
irq0/ipi                        46323      223
irq66/ahc0                      25815      124
irq65/pciide0                       0        0
irq67/uhci0                         0        0
irq80/em0                         504        2
irq67/ral0                          0        0
irq81/ral1                          0        0
irq112/pckbc0                       0        0
irq176/pccom0                       0        0
irq64/fdc0                          0        0
Total                          114216      551

ifconfig ral0 up
ifconfig ral1 up
ifconfig ral2 up

My Friend's Ad-Free Guide To Piracy

Introduction

In the past I’ve noted how my pirate friend gets software/movies/music using various file sharing techniques. Since then my friend has been asked by co-workers, siblings, and random passers-by how he/she comes to possess high-quality screeners, TV rips, and music before anyone else. To wit, I’ve put together this guide of my friend’s techniques for those interested in such things and willing to risk civil and (unlikely) criminal penalties in return for a Borat DVD rip and season 2 of Scrubs.

Though guides to using BitTorrent abound, this is the only one that I know of that isn’t flooded with sleazy ads from AdBrite or Google. I’ve no financial stake in this guide, nor am I cheap enough to try to eke out $20 of ad revenue after a couple million people view my site.

Disclaimer

If one accepts the definition of ‘piracy’ as the willful violation of copyrights by copying, distributing, or obtaining copyrighted material without the authorization of the copyright holder, then piracy is illegal, and subject to civil and criminal penalties on most countries. However, much like recreational drug use, ‘piracy’ is practiced by a large minority of the first world, and as such one is hard-pressed to place it in the same immorality basket as robbery, assault, or speeding.

Further easing the conscience of a would-be pirate is the at once disturbing and pathetic tactics of the world’s major copyright holders, represented in the US by the RIAA and MPAA. From PSAs equating downloading the latest Metallica cruft to jacking a car or stealing a purse, to shotgun civil suits of dubious legality, to relentless defense of a dying business model through the crippling and banning of new technology and coopting of government officials, the owners of the worlds major entertainment brands clearly regard their customers as criminals but for their own draconian controls, and have no regard for the doctrine of fair use. To the extent the law exists to protect such organizations, the law does not command my respect.

That said, prisons are full of nonviolent drug offenders who likely embraced the same rational; if you’re busted it won’t help you. If you’re not willing to risk a little prison and financial ruin in return for the best the American entertainment industry has to offer..well..I’ve got nothing more to say to you.

Educational Purposes Only

I myself neither engage in nor condone piracy of any kind. Whenever my friend comes over with a Jackass 2 DVD rip or the screener for Idiocracy, I chastise him/her for his/her disobedience, and make him/her promise to buy the DVD if we like it.

Similarly, this information should not be construed as encouragement or approval of piracy of any kind. The instructions below are for educational purposes only, and if followed will likely lead to loss of freedom, ruinous financial sanctions, premature hair loss, and eventual death. Seriously, stop reading this crap. Now.

History

Ever since the US Supreme Court decided Sony vs Universal, we’ve had the affirmative right to technology which enables duplication of video content. From the early days of broadband, pirates have taken advantage of this right to create digital copies of video content for redistribution. Though the techniques have changed over time, the objective has not.

At this point, the dominant piracy tool is BitTorrent technology, which makes it possible to exchange large data files in an ad-hoc peer-to-peer topology, without any copyright violations on any central server which can be shut down. This guide will focus solely on BitTorrent, though other piracy channels do exist.

Hurry Up! I want filez!

This guide is reasonably straightforward, and doesn’t presume too much technical saavy. That said, the technology behind BitTorrent is complicated, and there is some background (covered below) that you’ll need to grok if you’re to be successful. If you’re one of the roughly 99% of Internet users born without the part of the brain the distinguishes asses from holes in the ground, this guide will be of little use to you, using as it does multisyllabic words and correct spelling. For you, I suggest you try a somewhat simpler approach: Google ‘goatse’ and click furiously on all the resulting hits.

BitTorrent Background

BitTorrent is two things: a protocol that is used to share files among computers on the internet, and a software program that uses the BitTorrent protocol for that purpose. Though BitTorrent the software was the first implementation of BitTorrent the protocol, there are now additional implementations of BitTorrent the protocol which are far superior. For the remainder of this document, when I say ‘BitTorrent’ I mean BitTorrent the protocol, not the software.

BitTorrent is a fairly straightforward system. To share a file or files on the Internet, the sharer uses his BitTorrent software to create a .torrent file (called simply a ‘torrent file‘), which is a small (less than 100KB, typically) file that other BitTorrent software uses to identify the files being shared. .torrent files don’t contain the files being shared, but instead contain very small fingerprints of the files, which is why it’s not a violation of copyright to publish a .torrent file, even if that .torrent file identifies copyrighted works.

The sharer then publishes the .torrent file to another component of the BitTorrent system, a tracker. The most popular tracker today is Pirate Bay, though there are thousands of trackers, public and private, and it’s easy to run your own if you want to.

Other users then download the .torrent file, and load it into their BitTorrent programs. The .torrent file points them to the tracker, which helps each downloader find other users who have already downloaded parts of the file. In this way, everyone who downloads a file from a torrent is at the same time uploading the parts they’ve already downloaded, to other users. This is what makes BitTorrent such a powerful protocol: the more people download a torrent, the more bandwidth is available to share it.

After a user has downloaded all the files in a torrent, that user is called a seeder, which means they have all the parts of all the files, so any user downloading the torrent can get any parts they’re missing from a seeder. Users that are downloading files in the torrent but are not done are called leachers. If a torrent doesn’t have very many seeders, it will be difficult and slow to download, which is why you should try to find torrents that are well-seeded (meaning have lots of seeders). How many seeders you need depends on alot of factors, but if there aren’t at least 10, you can expect performance to suffer.

This guide is not intended to cover using BitTorrent to upload your own files; for that you should go elsewhere. This overview of the workings of BitTorrent exists only to familiarize you with the important terms, like tracker, torrent, seeder, and leacher.

Setting up your environment

Security

Piracy is a dangerous activity. Malware abounds in the pirate community, moreso than on the Internet as a whole. You must assume that everything you download and every pirate site you visit is hostile. My friend has a VMware virtual machine set up just for piracy, which isolate piracy activities from his/her main system. This is an advanced topic; if you understood the last sentence, go for it, but if you didn’t, I haven’t the time nor patience to walk you through setting up a VM.

Whether or not you’re able to muster a dedicated piracy VM, at the very least you MUST NOT run your pirate programs as an Administrator. If you installed Windows yourself, you’re almost certainly running as admin. If you can install software, you’re an admin. Before you forget, create a new user on your computer, call it ‘pirate’, uncheck the ‘Administrator’ checkbox, and use that user for all your piracy activities. If you fail to follow this advice, you will fall victim to malware, and I will laugh at you.

For the same reason you shouldn’t run as admin, you shouldn’t run IE. In the course of looking for torrents, you’ll be visiting some very skanky sites, which will not hesitate to take advantage of browser bugs to 0wn your system with malware. That’s why you should run Firefox, and keep it up to date. Note that you’ll have to use your admin account to actually install Firefox; that doesn’t mean you should use your admin account to run it.

Alot of people disable or fuck with cookies in the name of security. I don’t, and my friend doesn’t either, but that’s a matter of preference. Privacy and security and different subjects.

Privacy

Even if you have a firewall already, you must download and install PeerGuardian2. PeerGuardian blocks access to your computer from lists of known-bad networks. It includes lists for P2P enforcers, adware, etc; you only need to enable the P2P list. PG2 will update its lists every day or so; make sure that happens. It usually stays a step ahead of the IP enforcer services. If you don’t run PG, the companies the MPAA/RIAA pay to enforce their IP will eventually catch you hosting pirate torrents, and will send a C&D to your ISP. Your ISP will either warn you or shutdown your account; if you’re caught again you’ll likely be sued, and that would be bad.

Software

There are alot of BitTorrent clients floating around, and most of them suck. My friend swears by Azureus, so that’s what I recommend. Go to the Azureus site and follow the links to download the latest stable version.

Azureus is a Java program, which means it runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD, etc. However, you’ll need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to use it. The Azureus download page links to the Sun Java download page, from which you can download the JRE for your environment. NOTE: YOU DO NOT want to download the Java Development Kit (JDK). You only need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). It doesn’t matter if you get the offline or online installer. Attention to detail is key to successful piracy; consider downloading and installing Java your first test.

Once you have installed JRE and Azureus, run Azureus to make sure it’s working. If it won’t start up, you probably downloaded the wrong version of Azureus or JRE or both. It was a very simple task; if you screwed it up, you’re not meant to be a pirate.

Did you remember to run Azureus with your non-admin account? No? You’re asking for trouble; I won’t tell you again.

Just this once, start Azureus as an admin user. If you’re running a firewall (like the Windows XP SP2 firewall), this should cause your firewall to ask you if you want to let Azureus use the network. Obviously, the correct answer is ‘yes’. This is the only time you get to run as admin.

Network Setup

Without getting into too much detail, BitTorrent requires that other people can connect to your computer in order to get pieces of files from you. I know, you don’t want people to be able to do that, you only want to download, but BitTorrent has no tolerance for selfish asshole leeches; if you do that, you won’t get allocated much download bandwidth either, and you’ll be a very shitty pirate. Suck it up. If you’re worried about security, run in a VM. If you can’t figure that out, don’t be a pirate.

In order to let other users connect to your computer, you need to configure your computer’s router to make that happen. This guide makes some assumptions about your network situation:

• You have a dedicated router between you and the Internet. If your cable modem plugs directly into your computer, this assumption doesn’t hold, which doesn’t really matter because it means your computer is connected directly to the Internet, virtually guaranteeing it will be 0wned. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• You control the router between you and the Internet. If you’re on a school or corporate network, where the local cable monkeys control the telecom gear, you’re screwed. There’s no way they’ll poke a hole in the network so you can leech warez.

Typically, your router is a small box, made by Linksys, D-Link, NetGear, or one of roughly a billion no-name Chinese brands. I can’t tell you how to configure it, since each one is different. I can tell you that it’s very likely that your router has a web interface, and that it’s at http://192.168.1.1. If it’s not there, and you’re running on Windows, go to a Command Prompt and type ipconfig. You should see something like Default Gateway . . . followed by an IP address; your router is probably at that address, which you can type into your browser to access its admin interface. There’s (hopefully) a password protecting it; you probably set that at one time. If you forgot it, you’ll have to reset your router to factory defaults.

Once in your router’s configuration, you need do what’s called ‘mapping a port’. I don’t know how you do that on your router; it’s a common operation, so the docs probably cover it. You want to map TCP port 6881 to TCP port 6881 on your piracy computer’s IP address. If your piracy computer is running Windows, go to a command prompt and type ‘ipconfig’ to get your IP address.

Once you’ve set up the port mapping, fire up Azureus (as a non-admin user!!), and go to the Tools menu, and choose NAT/Firewall Test. The TCP port should default to 6881; click Test. It should say OK. If it doesn’t, you’ve screwed something up. Getting your network configured right is the trickiest part of the process, you might check the Azureus support forums for hints, or just go back to paying for your movies like the rest of the sheep.

Disk Setup

If you’re a good pirate, you’ll burn through disk space like there’s no tomorrow. Configure Azureus to store downloaded file on whatever disk has the most free space. Azureus is an easy to use tool; I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to set that up.

However much disk space you have, it won’t be enough. My friend has a 1TB RAID array, and it’s barely enough. (1TB = more bytes than you can possibly imagine).

Testing

You think you’ve got Azureus working? There’s no way to know for sure without downloading a torrent. Since no one likes torrents as much as Linux weanies, go to this site and download an ISO image of a Linux CD. Pick the one with the highest number of seeds.

When you click the torrent file, your browser will ask you to save or open; choose Open. Very quickly the download should finish, and Azureus will pick it up, starting a download. Depending on the speed of your link it will take more or less time to download, but after just a few minutes it should consume all your available download bandwidth, indicating you’re good to go.

Things You’ll be Downloading

There are torrents for all sorts of stuff, including legal downloads of free software and video content, and of course a range of pirate content. Depending on what you’re looking for, there are a few things you should be familiar with. Most of the information you’ll need about a particular torrent will be present in its name. In the text below, when I refer to a torrent being ‘tagged’ or ‘named’ with something, I mean the torrent’s name includes that text. This is why attention to detail is so vital to pirates; you must pay close attention to the entire contents of each torrent name to ensure you don’t get any surprises, like the Japanese version of House or Casino Royale in German.

General

No matter what you’re downloading, chances are you’ll run into a .rar or .zip file at some point. These are compressed files that contain one or more files inside them. Download and install 7-Zip to handle all of these.

Groups

The pirate scene is fed by pirate groups, which obtain and distribute pirated content. Groups specialize in different types of content, like games, software, TV shows, DVDs, etc. Think of piracy groups as a combination professional sports team and junior high school clique, and you have some sense of the sociopolitical lay of the land.

For the most part you won’t care about groups, except that as you download pirate content you’ll notice consistent quality from some groups, and shit from others. Just one example is DVDrips fro aXXo, which are always of the utmost quality; my friend automatically downloads anything from aXXo; his stuff is that good.

Software

Software is typically divided into two categories: ‘Appz’ and ‘Gamez’. ‘Gamez’ are, obviously, games. ‘Appz’ are everything else.

Most software is for Windows, but you will occasionally run across Mac OS X stuff. Usually you can tell from the description, but sometimes a fuckwit will upload a torrent like ‘Adobe Photoshop CS2 with keygen’, and it will turn out after downloading that fuckwit forgot to mention it was the OS X version. It’s a risk you take.

Most commercial software comes with some sort of copy protection scheme, like a serial number or an activation regime. Thus, most pirate copies of software include a serial number, a key generator (to generate your own serial number), or a crack. A serial number is best, as there’s no shady keygen program to run. A keygen is second, and a crack is worst, since cracks can easily destabilize the software, are a great place for malware to hide, and usually only work on a specific version of the software so you can’t upgrade to the latest build later.

Software torrents usually indicate what kind of copy protection bypass technique they employ, but sometimes they don’t. In general, if my friend gives me software that relies on a crack, I won’t use it unless I’m desperate, since it’s just too risky.

Speaking of risks, software is the most dangerous of things to pirate, because you have to install and run it. You should be very wary of software you download. At the very last, scan it for malware before running it. Also check the site where you found the torrent, to see if any users have posted comments about the torrent. Malware is usually detected and reported fairly quickly; if you get 0wned by malware you downloaded, it means you’re a very lame pirate.

Nowadays most software is distributed on CD or DVD. Pirates take advantage of this by taking a snapshot of the CD or DVD, and posting that snapshot. Snapshots have a .iso extension, and are called ‘ISO images’. You can burn these to a CD with any decent CD burning program (like Nero), or you can download and install DaemonTools (Careful that you don’t install their search bar; it’s spyware), which lets you ‘mount’ ISO images in a virtual CD-ROM drive.

Music

Music is the simplest content type to pirate. Music is characterized by the artist and title of the work, and the format it’s in. It’s best to download entire albums at a time; finding specific tracks will be more difficult, unless it’s a very popular single.

Often pirates will post discographies for popular artists, which contain every album published by the artist, often including live albums or boolegs.

Most music is in MP3 format, which you can assume if the torrent doesn’t say otherwise. Most MP3s are encoded at a specific bitrate, which reflects its quality. 192kbps is common, 320kbps is the highest, and 128kbps is the lowest you can go without losing alot of the music quality. ‘VBR’ means variable bitrate, which is a little smaller and (imho) slightly lower quality.

Other music formats include Windows Media (‘WMA’), Ogg Vorbis (or just ‘Ogg’; an open-source codec like MP3 but free), and FLAC (like MP3, but totally lossless, meaning literally CD quality; FLAC files are much bigger than MP3s, which is why they’re not as common). Any decent player can play all these formats; if yours doesn’t, you can use dBPowerAmp to convert to a format that you can use (or get a player that doesn’t suck).

Occasionally, you’ll download an album only to find it contains one big MP3 file and one .cue file. This is an annoying way of ripping an entire album in a single audio file. Download mp3slit and learn to use it.

Video

The video scene is the most complicated, as there are many ways to package and share video.

Format

Most video files are in the AVI format, and thus are .avi files. Sometimes you’ll find a Video CD (VCD), which is meant to be burnt to a CD and played in a DVD player; internally these are MPEG-2 video files. Video optimized for iPod viewing are MPEG-4 (.mp4). Variable bitrate Real Media files, sometimes used to encode a large collection of TV shows, are .rmvb.

Codec

Within the AVI format, there are dozens of ways to encode video; the so-called ‘codec’. The leading codecs are DivX and XviD (yes, one is the reverse of the other). DivX is a commercial codec and XviD is an open source alternative. XviD is ascendant, but there’s still plenty of DivX floating about.

To save the trouble of fucking with codecs, my friend and I both recommend the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. When you install it, there alot of knobs and dials with which you can fuck; do not fuck with them. The defaults work fine. If when playing back your videos you see reversed color, the signal upside down and backwards, or other weirdness, you probably fucked with the options.

Note also that new DVD players often support DivX and/or XviD, in which case you can burn the .avi files to a CD-R and watch it in your DVD player.

Source

Movies can come from one of a few sources: a camcorder in the theater (almost always shitty, unwatchable quality), a DivX or XviD rip of the DVD, a rip of a screener DVD distributed to reviewers and awards judges, or a (decrypted) copy of the DVD itself.

Movies from a camcorder are tagged with CAM or TeleSync or TS. CAM means a fuckwit with a HandiCam, while TeleSync and TS is a fuckwit with a HandiCam plugged directly into the audio source, so while you can see the fat bastard walking in front of the screen, you can’t hear his corpulent wife chomping down on a metric ton of popcorn. Of the two, TS is better, but they’re both a mixed bag; my friend’s brought over a few TS‘s, and they’ve all sucked. Think blurry focus, shifting camera angle, people walking in front of the screen, etc.

A rip of a DVD is usually tagged with DVDRip or DVD. These are typically high-quality rips, and often include 5.1 audio.

A rip of a screener is tagged with Screener or DVD screener. Screeners tend to be as good as DVD rips, with one caveat: they have various nag elements introduced by the studios to make screeners less appealing to pirates (as you may have guessed from this guide, they were not particularly successful). For example, I’ve seen a Crank screener that went to black and white for a minute or so every once in a while, with a ‘Property Of’ message at the bottom of the screen. These artifacts tend not to be too annoying (after all, these are review copies), but the more fastidious viewer may find them unacceptable.

A copy of the DVD itself is tagged with DVDR, reflecting that you’re meant to burn it to a DVD and watch in your DVD player. A DVD has 4.5GB of capacity, thus DVDRs tend to be about this big. You have to really care about quality to download a DVDR.

Sometimes you’ll see VCD or SVCD, which indicates a Video CD or Super Video CD as noted in the Formats section above. VCDs and SVCDs tend to be of lower quality, and are kind of tricky to watch without burning to a CD, so favor DVDrips if you have a choice.

Language

Just because everyone on your high school golf team speaks English doesn’t mean the rest of the world does. American cultural imperialism has created a strong demand for our vacuous low-brow swill the world over. Imagine your disappointment when you download the latest episode of _24_, only to find it’s been blasphemed by Italian dubbing.

If the title of the video is in English, you can assume it’s in English unless tagged with another language. Common tags are Ita for Italian, Esp for Spanish (that’s ‘Espanol’, gringo), ‘Deu’ for German, ‘Pol’ for Polish (no, I’m not kidding), etc. Also check for wording in the torrent name that suggests subtitles in another language; generally the word ‘subtitles’ should clue you in. That said, subtitles aren’t that annoying; I spent months in Iraq watching re-runs of ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘House MD’ with Arabic subtitles; it’s not a big deal.

Note also that Borat is supposed to be partly in Kazakh. ‘My mustache still tastes like your testes’ is the same in any language.

Episode (For TV shows)

TV shows are much like movies in terms of language, format, and codec. However, a TV show has multiple episodes, so additional naming conventions have evolved. Generally, an episode of a TV show is identified by the name of the show, the season in which it aired, and the number of the episode. The first episode of the first season is Season 1, Episode 1, the second episode of the third season is Season 3, Episode 2, etc.

First, you can find entire seasons in torrents named with the season number, like ‘Season 1′, ‘Season 2′, etc. So, the first season of 24_ is probably called something like ’24 Season 1′. You can also find collections of episodes within a season, like ‘24_ Season 1 Episodes 1-4′. Finally, you can find individual episodes. Typically they are tagged with SnEm, where n is the season number and m is the episode number. So the first episode of the fifth season of _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ would be called something like ‘DS9 S05E01′. Note that leading zeros are typically used for single-digit numbers.

It’s increasingly common nowadays for TV shows to be broadcast in HDTV; if the rip came from an HDTV source, it will usually have ‘HDTV’ in its name.

Misc

A few other random terms you’ll see in torrent names pertaining to video (shamelessly stolen from the Video Terms Defined thread posted by RichieRags -=sUk=-:

‘Internal’ denotes a movie ripped by a group after another group has already released the same movie. If Group A releases Movie 1, then Group B releases Movie 1 as well, Group B must take care to make clear that they’re not claiming to be the first to release Movie 1, lest Group A and Group B go to war, by which is meant post insults on various boards.

‘Proper’ means someone else has already released a rip of the movie, but the quality was shit and this one is better.

‘STV’ means ‘Straight to Video’. When you’re at the video store looking for movies, you avoid Direct to Video releases like Home Alone 6 and Cinderella 14: Shut You Kid Up For Another Hour; you should do the same when pirating.

‘DSRIP’ means ‘Direct Satellite Rip’. If a television program is recorded directly from a digital satellite broadcast, it’s a DSrip.

‘WS’ means ‘Widescreen’, usually a 16:9 ratio.

Where to Look

Now that you know all about the minutiae of video encodings and nomenclature, you need to start finding torrents. There are three places where you’ll have the most success:

BtJunkie.org

BtJunkie indexes the torrents on other sites and gathers them into one place. It’s got a great selection of stuff. Some of the trackers it indexes are private; these are indicated with a padlock icon in the search results. BtJunkie wants you to pay to access these, but typically that’s not worthwhile.

PirateBay

PirateBay is the largest public tracker in the universe. That said, BtJunkie has a wider selection since it indexes multiple trackers.

TorrentSpy

TorrentSpy is a distant third. It’s ad-heavy and sleazy, but every now and again it’ll come through.

How to look

There are two ways to find torrents; browsing and searching. Browsing involves looking through available torrents and downloading stuff you want, while searching involves seeking out a specific program, album, or video file. Obviously, browsing is more fruitful since you’re sure to find stuff you want, while searching is more hit-or-miss.

All of the sites linked above have searching and browsing modes. Browsing is just a matter of choosing the category you’re interested in and going through the links. It’s oven useful to sort the results so the most-seeded torrents come first; there’s nothing more frustrating than finding that obscure trip-hop album you’ve been looking for, only to discover there are no seeds, which means it’s effectively not available.

Searching is trickier. All the searching tips that apply to Googling apply to torrent searches, like varying the generality of your search, etc. Searching is an art; you just learn to do it.

Etiquette

After you download a torrent, it’s considered good form to post a comment either affirming the quality of the torrent, or excoriating the poster for one of a number of reasons. As entitled as you feel to all the video, music and software content you can stand, those who upload torrents get nothing in return, so don’t be the prick that flames the poster for no reason. (Note that the one exception to this rule is misleading or malware-laden posts. Those who post such content take their life into their hands, and should be hunted down and killed.)

Also note that there are relatively few places on the Internet where it’s ok to ask for help with piracy. Forums are filled with techie dilettantes who always follow the rules, and were placed on this Earth by God to make sure everyone else does too. They will lecture you to no end about the evils of piracy if you so much as hint at downloading copyrighted content, and your only recourse is to go into troll mode and flame the pants off them, which will not make you feel any better. So, save yourself the trouble, and only post those ‘Downloaded AVI file; how do I play??’ questions in forums friendly to pirates, as indicated in their rules.

Examples

Here are a few sample torrent file names with the meaning of the various tags, which should help you become accustomed to the nomenclature of the torrent scene.

Most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica

If you don’t await every episode of Battlestar Galactica with baited breath, you’re far too lame to be a pirate. But who has the time to wait around for it to come on the SciFi channel? Pirates watch stuff on their schedule, not someone else’s.

Let’s search BtJunkie for ‘Battlestar Galactica‘. Here are a sampling of the results (note I sort by Most Seeded, so the most popular results will come first):

• Battlestar Galactica S03E12 WS DSRip XviD-aAF [eztv] – This a Battlestar Galactica episode, obviously. Season 3, episode 12. It’s in wide-screen format (WS), it was ripped from a digital satellite signal (DSRip, it’s in the XviD format (XviD), it was captured by the aAF group (aAF), it was published by the eztv group (eztv)
• Battlestar Galactica S03E01 WS DSR XviD-OMiCRON avi – Season 3, episode 1, wide-screen (WS), direct satellite rip (DSR), XviD format (XviD), released by OMiCRON
• Battlestar Galactica S03E11 WS DSR XviD-ORENJi avi – Season 3, episode 11, wide-scrren (WS), direct satellite rip (DSR), XviD format (XviD), released by ORENJi
• Battlestar Galactica S03E03-Exodus avi – Season 3, episode 3, released by Exodus. From the .avi extension, you can assume either DivX or XviD, but it’s bad form not to include the format in the name, which reflects the poster’s lameness.
• Battlestar Galactica [3x12] Rapture (2) HQ (X264 DJS) EnglishV – Season 3, episode 12, titled Rapture part 2, high quality (HQ) (generic term, not a particular format), X.264 codec (X264), released by DJS, in English
• Battlestar Galactica S02DVD5 PAL MULTi DVDR-S – DVDR (DVDR-S) from the Season 2 DVD, disc 5 (S02DVD5), the PAL version of the DVD (European video standard; NTSC is standard in US), released by MULTi
• Battlestar Galactica S02E12 Resurrection Ship P2 HRHD AC3 XVID-M – Season 2, episode 12, Ressurection Ship Part 2, high-resolution HDTV rip, audio in AC3 format, video in XVID

Ok, that’s easy enough. Next, I’d really like the entire fourth season of _24_. I’ll search BtJunkie for ’24 season 4′

• 24 Season 5 Complete HDTV-XVID-LOL – Season 5 (not 4) of _24_, recorded from an HDTV signal, XviD format, released by LOL
• 24 Season 5 [RMVB] – Season 5 (once again, not 4), in RMVB format
• American Idol Season 4 HDTV XVID – Um, no
• 24.Complete Season.4 – Bingo. No information about format or group, so assume AVI and DivX/XviD.

Now I’d like a movie. Children of Men came out recently; I’d like that. So, search BtJunkie for ‘Children of Men’:

• Children Of Men 2006 FRENCH TS XviD-CiNEFOX ALLTEAM – French language (not helpful), TeleSync (ugh; shit quality), XviD format, released by CiNEFOX and/or ALLTEAM. I don’t want it in French, and I don’t want a TeleSync. How about a DVD rip or a screener?
• Children Of Men DVDSCR.XViD – Hmm, that’s better. DVD screener, XviD format
• Children Of Men[2006]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo – Movie released on 2006, ripped from a DVD, in English, and released by aXXo; perfect!

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide has either scared you off the pirate scene, or equipped you with the knowledge you need to become a successful pirate. If Jack Valenti asks, you didn’t get this stuff from me.