I wanted to write this article because I started seeing online a new
wave of people getting into Piracy and starting to promote this
movement.
Before getting into anything philosophical or technical about this subject, I wanted to share my story regarding piracy.
Before
getting started, I wanted to say that I'm not here to give anyone a
reason or justify pirating. I'm writing this to share my experience and
also give you a few tips and tricks about this subject.
I. HOW I STARTED PIRATING
As
a child growing up in Eastern Europe, I didn't really have access to
games/movies or cartoons. (you could still watch movies and cartoons on
TV, but you couldn't really find them easily and for a reasonable price)
My
mom would usually call some of her friends or work colleagues that were
more into computers and ask them to put some cartoons and movies on
DVDs. That's how most of the people would acquire their games and media
throughout the 2000s and early 2010s.
There would also be small shops that would sell CDs and DVDs with all sorts of things.
As I grew older, piracy became more of a niche thing, and a lot of people stopped doing it when Netflix arrived in our country.
Unfortunately, not all people could afford or had access to Netflix and even if they had, you couldn't find everything on there.
So there we're still people that would turn to piracy for their daily dose of games and media, including myself.
When
I received my first computer, at the age of 10 if I remember correctly,
I started my first unfortunate attempts to pirate games. I say
unfortunate because after of week of googling: free minecraft download,
I had so many viruses on my pc that we had to call a neighbor to reset
it.
After that, I would bother my neighbor every time I would want to
play another game, but sometimes he would be busy or not at home.
After a few months, he started to teach me how to torrent things and from where, since he was getting tired of helping me.
At
first I started using ThePirateBay (which is no longer safe) and for
movies an app called PopCornTime (not great quality movies on there, but
it would do the job).
I also saved up money and purchased a 2TB external hard drive, so I can watch movies and TV shows on my full HD TV.
I also used IGG-GAMES to download and play games. (before the drama and the doxxing)
Fast-forward a few years, now I'm 14 and recently discovered Reddit. (mostly
for the fake clothing, not the piracy, but that's a story for another
time)
I also discovered the piracy subreddits, like r/piracy,
r/piratedgames, r/fmhy, r/roms etc. Here I started diving into the
guides and megathreads and trying different sites, switching from
uTorrent to qBittorent, ditching Avast and only using Windows Defender
and so on.
At this time, I also had an account or two on some private trackers, which I still use to this day.
After
discovering these resources, I slowly started to learn how to use them
and expanding my movies and games library more and more.
Fast-forward to present time, I have a 64TB server in my bedroom, a 4TB HDD
full of games, and I'm not planning to stop anytime soon. (I also become
somewhat of a data hoarder)
II. WHY I THINK YOU SHOULD PIRATE
In most cases, people pirate out of convenience, especially people from poor countries, like where I'm from.
They
also pirate, because of censorship or certain content not being
available in their region, but you don't need to be poor or in a
totalitarian country to have a reason to pirate.
Until like 10ish
years ago, there were a lot of people that didn't even trust companies
like Netflix and Steam where I live. So a lot of people were only
watching TV because you could pay for it in cash. (most of them were
afraid of getting their CC info stolen by the Nigerian Prince)
This
could be a really good reason to start pirating. A lot of pirates are
young people that either can't access the information from where they
live, or they don't have enough money to access it.
There is no shame
in taking this route, since I think each and every one should have
unlimited access to information. Some people just have to take a detour
to get to that information. ;)
There are companies that do not accept payment options from certain countries. (for example, from Russia)
There
are also people, like me, that download in mass and like to preserve the
content and share it for as much as possible. Mostly because there are
movies/TV shows/games that get lost through time. They're either not
popular enough or not appreciated enough.
The worst out of all
people are the ones that act like they're fighting against the system,
and have the urge to tell you that every 5 minutes or so. I don't mind
them that much, but come on, don't you have a better way to fight
corporations and the government. (you can find most of these specimens
on Reddit, they are the same people making those silly posts, instead of
using the search bar or the guides)
You probably won't end up in
any of those categories, since you are most likely normal users with
not a lot of needs. Maybe a game here, a movie there, you won't really
need to sell your kidneys for a server or HDDs.
I gave you a few examples, but I never answered the question: Why I think you should pirate?
Well... I
don't have an exact answer for you. I personally do it because I can. I
don't have other ulterior motives. I also can help relatives and
friends with movies or books for college.
III. SHORT GUIDE ON HOW TO SAIL THE HIGH SEAS SAFELY
There are a lot of dos and don'ts, but I'll try to tell what is most important to get you started
Stop using uTorrent and start using qBittorrent. From what I've read online and on a bunch of posts, uTorrent had spyware and crypto miners inside the program at some point.
You don't need a separate antivirus, just use the default windows antivirus. It's good enough. If you think you have a virus on your PC, you can download MalwareBytes and do a scan with the trial version.
There is also VirusTotal if you want to scan a certain file or executable. Just keep in mind that if you are running cracked games, there are high chances that the crack (the thing that makes the game run) will be falsely flagged as a virus.
This happens because a lot of cracks have a similar behavior with that of a virus, but do not harm the computer. (they trick the game into thinking it has an official license and makes it run as a paid copy)
(IMPORTANT) If you are not from Eastern Europe or from other third world countries, use a VPN before downloading anything.
There are high chances that your internet provider will see that you are trying to illegally download something and will send you a warning or a fine.
My personal recommendation is Mullvad VPN (it's not the cheapest, but I think it's the safest out there)
Another important thing, do not download from ThePirateBay. It is well known that the site is no longer safe.
Other popular sites like RARBG, TorrentGalaxy, etc are no longer online. (but you can still find content that was uploaded there, which is safe to download in most cases)
Choose a browser that is not Chrome, Opera or Edge. (that has a good reputation of being safe and private in the community) (I use Firefox, started going downhill lately tho)
Also change your search engine, Google tracks most of the things you do, there are better options that give you the same results as the google search engine. (I use StartPage)
Add uBlock Origin as an extension to your browser, even on your mobile phone if possible. (stops those annoying adds)
I also recommend programs like JDownloader (which is free) or Internet Download Manager (not free), if you are planning to download directly from a website. (faster download speeds and more stable connection)
As a general advice, I highly recommend using common sense. If something looks fishy, it probably is. Also use virus total and other resources available.
I also really recommend you to go to the subreddits I listed below and to read the guides/megathreads.
You will find far more resources and a bunch of safe sites, so you won't have anxiety attacks every time you download something.
r/piracy megathread
I'll also link a list with software and other things I use:
MalwareBytes
Mullvad VPN
qBittorrent
VirusTotal
JDownloader2
VLC media player/Media Player Classic
BCUninstaller
WizTree
uBlock Origin
Bitwarden
ViolentMonkey with the following scripts (AdsBypasser, AdGuard Extra, Simple Sponsor Skipper)
Privacy Badger
Firefox/Brave/Chromium
Playnite (in case you want a steam-like interface for your pirated games)
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