The Every Guy’s Guide: How to download movies illegally
Colin Joliat 
Last week’s guide was a fairly comprehensive review of different ways in which to legally rent movies. The feedback on the column was a mixed bag of “Thank you, I had no idea about ‘XYZ,’” and “You’re a moron; why don’t you just download them?” These posts are meant to be entertaining reads, but also somewhat informative. And while we all love cost-free, some people value jail-free as well. That said, I am a man of the people, and the people want to know how to steal their movies instead.
If O.J. can author If I Did It and Casey Anthony can consider penning Party Like Your Kid’s in the Trunk, then I can certainly get away with writing how to do something such as downloading movies. Let’s be clear though, this is illegal. I only know about these techniques because I totally do it all the time of my top notch research team. People do actually get sued for this. 23,000+ were hit with a lawsuit for downloading The Expendables, which is a waste on the small screen anyways, and another 25,000 were busted for The Hurt Locker. When I Googled “download movies jail” and sorted by past year, almost all the results were for sites to download Madea Goes to Jail though, so I’m still not sure if anyone has actually been locked up. I couldn’t find any cases about it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
I’m sure there are tons of ways to download movies, but for the sake of brevity, I am going to stick to torrents. It’s the most popular way to sticky finger a film, and it’s what is referenced when industry people talk about which shows and movies are the most pirated. A quick trip to Wikipedia will tell you that BitTorrent “is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data.” Essentially what happens is that an identical file is uploaded by multiple people at the same time, and you will be taking bits and pieces of it from each person. By operating this way, you can transfer files significantly faster than just directly downloading from one person. Depending on your connection speed and how many people are “seeding” the file, it can take anywhere from a couple minutes to forever to hijack a movie. There are 3 key components to this process.
Find a Client
First and foremost; you are going to need a BitTorrent client. This is a program that will do the actual movie downloading for you. Because you are taking bits and pieces from multiple people, you need something that aggregates them all into one file. That’s what the client does. If you were using LimeWire a few years back, before it melted your computer, then you were unknowingly downloading torrents this entire time. Congrats! Two of the most used and highest rated clients right now are µTorrent and Vuze. There are at least fifty different options out there, so if you are using something else, don’t both feeling slighted. µTorrent is small, simple, and fast. Vuze on the other hand is a much more powerful tool with significantly more functionality, but we aren’t trying to get into the many uses of torrents right now. Just pick one and move on.
Torrent Web Sites
While there is a search function within µTorrent, that’s not going to be the most efficient way to seek out a copy of Big Mommas: Like Father Like Son. The key is to go to a torrent Web site. You’ve undoubtedly heard of ThePirateBay before, but that’s just one of many of its kind. Once there, you can determine just how shitty of a movie you are willing to watch. While, like I said earlier, I’ve never illegally downloaded anything before; if I was going to I would stick with at least DVD quality. You can do this by adding DVDrip or BDrip to the title for which you are searching. This will give you only torrents that have been ripped directly from a DVD or BluRay disc. The downside is that these typically don’t come out until about a month before the DVD is actually released. If you are truly impatient, there are plenty of crappy bootlegged versions out there as well. Another option, which Howard Stern just got busted for allegedly allowing, is downloading a screener, which is a copy sent to industry folks in advance of award voting. You can find those by attaching the term DVDSCR. They are better than bootlegs, but often have a watermark… or so I’m told.
Picking a Torrent
So you’ve picked your site and narrowed down which movie and what quality you want, now what? Well there are still going to be plenty of options from which to choose. There are dozens of copies of everything floating around out there, so it’s important that you get in where the action is. Torrents function through “seeders” and “leechers.” The more seeders there are, people currently uploading the file, the better. The more leechers, there are, people downloading it, the slower it will be. As long as “S” outweighs “L” by a decent number, you’re in good shape. You always want to go for the one with the most people seeding the file. This will get you your pirated booty as fast as possible, and I know you don’t want to have to wait any longer to watch Paul Blart 2 The Zookeeper. You can also see who ripped the file (MAX, KickFoot, TWiZTED) in the first place by looking at the end of the file name. After a few viewing experiences, you will start to recognize some people’s work as higher quality than others, and you can search for movies by creator as well. Once you’ve picked a winner, download the file and then open it using µTorrent.
Bonus Tips
Peerblocker is a program that allows you to control who can see your computer. It has many practical uses, the most relevant of which is that it can block computers who are monitoring peer-to-peer activities. Essentially it hides your IP address from people seeking to bust you for downloading copyright materials. I don’t know exactly how well it works, but I put it in the, “hell, couldn’t hurt to have it,” category.
I know some people who always connect to a neighbor’s wireless network before downloading things illegally. This doesn’t exactly hide your IP address, but I suppose you would have a heads up that the Feds are on to you when they break down the door of the 80-year old woman who lives next to you. I’m going to assume it’s an old person, because who else has unsecured networks these days? Only 1 of the 46 signals my laptop is picking up right now is without password protection.
One problem you may run into downloading rogue files is that many of them need a specific codec in order to play. Windows Media Player and Quicktime will typically work, but you don’t want to wait through an hour of downloading only to find out you can’t play your movie. VLC Media Player somehow manages to play just about everything, so if you are going to get into this nefarious business, I’d highly recommend downloading it. It’s free and legal too, so good job on not being a horrible human being!
Ready, Set, Download
You should now have enough info to get out there and secure your illicit copy of Season of the Witch. It takes some trial and error to truly get the system down, and you will certainly have some more questions along the way. Feel free to leave those queries here, and I will do my best to answer them for you and the rest of the readers. If you are embarrassed to admit something, you can send me a message and I will treat it will limited discretion. Just remember, if you start down this path, Judge Dredd could show up at your door at any minute.
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