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Piracy

2023-09-10


0. PIRACY IS GOOD

I hope if you're reading this you already understand that.

1. BLOCK ADS

This is no joke, this is extremely common vector of attack that gets people infected with malware or fall for phishing and lose access to their accounts. Also, ads are annoying. Fuck advertisers.

Use the best adblocker there is: https://ublockorigin.com/

Find the uBlock Origin extension for your browser and install it (that's two clicks to be much safer online). The website above will help. You can use it both on Chrome and Firefox, but ad-blocking generally works better on Firefox. Google is a business selling ads, obviously it's in their incentive for ad-blockers to be less effective.

2. SEARCH AND YOU SHALL FIND

Again, searching on Google will not be very effective, since their search engine is heavily censored. You know, to comply with demands of industry giants that advertise there and spend big money. Also DMCA.

A meta search engine like SearXNG would be more effective, but it's a little more advanced. Find a working instance and search from there: https://searx.space/

DuckDuckGo should give decent results for casual searches and it's even easier to use than Google, since it doesn't include ad spam in top results: https://duckduckgo.com/

3. STREAMING

Now that you have WORKING AD BLOCKING set up and you know how to effectively search the web, it's time to finally watch something.

Here's a list of a few websites you can use for streaming movies and series. Very simple to use. Just be cautious. Don't fall for scams and don't fall for phishing. Exact domains can change with time as they get shut down, but at least you know what to look for.

There are lists of links too:

If you choose to create an account on any of the piracy websites - don't use anything that could be related to you. Use a completely random password or some simple throw-away that you've never used anywhere before. You can be identified by the password you use, not only by e-mail or username. Don't reuse passwords.

For music you could use a modded Spotify app for free or download your music from elsewhere. Again, see the resources above. If you find the modded .apk I would advise to scan it on virustotal.com before installing it on your phone.

Don't ever pay for streaming.

4. DOWNLOADING

You can download anything you can stream and more. When you're streaming something you're actually downloading the media piece by piece while displaying each piece as it is ready to be played. If you save these pieces when you recieve them - you can effectively just download the media file. Some of the streaming sites mentioned above will give you an option of direct download for simplicity. For others, like YouTube, you may have to use a specific downloader, for example: yt-dlp.

To download a YouTube video:

$ yt-dlp [link]

To download audio only:

$ yt-dlp -x [link]

You can find direct download links to most things with enough effort.

4b. TORRENTS

The rest of this section will be all about torrents.

There's one simple catch when it comes to torrents - it's a peer-to-peer network, which means it only works when people who download also upload the same content for others to use. Uploading is where the copyright infringement lies. In short, downloading should be legal, uploading may not be. In your torrent client settings you can set limits for upload or use a proxy/vpn to hide yourself a little bit; although in some countries, as long as you don't pirate movies produced in that country, you're probably better off just using your raw connection without a foreign VPN.

You need a torrent client to open .torrent files or open "magnet links" to download stuff.

My favorite torrent client is Transmission: https://transmissionbt.com/

You will need trackers to track the peers that seed (upload) the file you want to get. The list of trackers that your torrent client will use is usually included with the .torrent file or magnet link. There are private trackers that may provide better service or have some rare content available, but I won't go into details on this.

Here's a list of a few websites where you can get your magnet links:

When I say "best quality anime" I actually mean it. It's usually better than any streaming. The highest quality, best encoded, best looking releases you can find are over there. You're welcome.

5. STAY INFORMED

News website that covers piracy-related topics and more: https://torrentfreak.com/