2y ago

What is the safest way to pirate without spending money.

Honestly, im scared to get into piracy because im afraid of getting in trouble or failing, basically im worried for no reason. I also have some random questions about piracy.

should downloaded things be put on a internal or external hard drive. Because my external hard drive can be weird at times and i know some files required them to be installed internally.
is there a way to help out the piracy community without breaking any rules or breaking the bank?
are direct downloads safer or torrent, or something else?

that is all i have at the moment but feel free to add on to this if you wish too.

36 comments

Your local library.
No joke: Many have sizeable media libraries and it's easy to rip optical media
- ive tried that and its great but they always have some sort of block that prevents you from downloading/copying dvds, and they only have so much and what if i want something like a video game or software, what do i do?
  
  The power of Linux
  
  It’s trivial to get around these blocks. Handbrake will do most of the work for you. Start there.
  Video game piracy is a lot harder. Even with older systems, you need to be comfortable with command line apps and a lot of trial and error. Start with the physical discs and go from there.
  
  Jeff Geerling has a great video on Blu-Ray ripping using MakeMKV.
  
  Don't use DVD decrypter because it might infringe on copyright.
  
  I’ve never been blocked using Handbreak.
~$5/mo VPN and torrents
For free and safe, i2p, for <10$ and safe, there are plenty of good vpn recommendations here.
Shouldn't matter unless you've looking to be really paranoid about it. The aim should be not to raise the suspicion of the authorities, not to prevent them from catching you if you do manage to give them reason to suspect something.
This might be controversial, but I'd say just participating by getting stuff is good in itself.
HTTP(s) over Tor (use Tor Browser) is free and safe.
- People may complain if you tell them you're downloading big files over Tor, though
  
  I've heard you shouldn't torrent over Tor because it creates and destroys circuits rapidly which bogs down the Tor network, but I've never heard that HTTP over Tor for large files (which would create only one long-lived circuit at a time (per file)) would cause any issues for the Tor network. I thought that kind of scenario was exactly what the Tor network was designed for. Do you have any good sources saying one shouldn't download large files over Tor?
Seedr.cc has a free account 2gb but totally usable
There is also a free 10gb account for windscribe vpn
Stick to reputable sites and use magnets
Doesn't really matter imo. Internally maybe slightly faster, maybe some games require internal, but i run games on my external, loading may go slower unless you have a nice chunk of ram.
Seed
What do you mean by safer? Both can be dangerous if it executes code. If you mean getting caught torrenting leaks your ip address (hence why people use vpn)
If you dont want to spend money there is i2p, set up an i2p router, configure a browser to use it, http://2.postman.i2p is a tracker there, just paste the magnet into i2psnark, no vpn required.
Note it will be much slower download
You can get started here: https://geti2p.net/en/
- So I installed the i2p Android application but can't figure out how to access i2psnark. Is it accessible from within the Android i2p app?
  
  Did you install i2p or i2pd?
  If it is the java version (not i2pd) you would access in browser like this http://localhost:7657/i2psnark
  But idk if it works on android
Everyone here talking about VPNs, how about tor?
- Tor is going to be way too slow in most cases to download anything sizeable. Most of Tor's benefits are when browsing onion sites and used in conjunction with other tools.
- Tor typically discourages torrenting. But i2p has torrenting capability built in and has there own trackers
telegram bots ftw
- Care to enlighten us?
  
  just search for keywords of what your after, there is a bot that I'm aware of (join channel), you search for the media you want, and it gets it ready and downloadable for you. 🤫
The location of your downloads, generally, does not matter. It can matter where you install your media after download however (e.g., video games, operating systems). There are a few considerations you should make regarding download location:
Reliability - is the device going to fail and lose your data? For this you should research backups and redundancy.
Size - is the storage device able to store large files? Obviously a 2GB USB drive is not going to fit a 100GB game. You should also research drive formats as, for example, FAT32 cannot store files over 4GB in size.
Speed - transferring large files can take significantly longer on slower drives. You may also run into issues, for example, playing UHD HDR media from a slower/portable drive.
By "breaking any rules" I'm assuming you mean laws. Short answer: no. Longer answer: outside of advocacy and lobbying engaging in piracy is generally illegal.
Both have pitfalls to look out for. A lot of sites are scams designed to take your money, serve as many ads as possible, and infect you with malware. If you stick to reputable sites and make efforts to protect yourself (e.g., install uBlock Origin) you should be mostly fine. Torrents are generally better as they aren't easily taken down but may not download if nobody is seeding the files. Direct downloads can link to dead links but may be useful if the file is not popular enough to seed.
In general:
stick to reputable sites
install and use a VPN
install and use an adblocker
If you use a free service you are the product.
Get a 2 year VPN subscription it will cost you next to nothing.
Seed torrents if you want to be a good boy.
Your ISP can see torrent packets unless you are using a VPN. The other alternative is to setup a VPS and a torrent client on it. Then you download the completed files.

36 comments