It may not be discussed as openly as it was perhaps a year ago, but piracy in regards to downloading is still a hot topic. How do I know it when I'm not seeing new articles about it splashed across the different news sites? It's quite simple. The search history of my analytics service shows it to me every single day.
Search Terms
The most frequently used search term that hits my blog is "shaved pussy", a social experiment I started in February of last year. It's totally harmless and the searchers should know what they're going to get from the optimized title ("Shaved Pussy | Just Cats | LOL") that appears in the search engine results. Of course, it's now getting searched for "lolcats" as well, but I'm not complaining.
All digressing aside, the number 2 search term is actually a combination of terms that leads to my "Downloading Pirated Anything Is NOT Illegal" article, my zombie post from hell.
Just to give you an idea of how prevalent this is, here is a sample of the hundreds of searches done within the last 3 days:
- download movie illegal upload
- downloading from torrents is piracy
- downloading illegal
- downloading is not illegal
- downloading pirated music is the same as stealing from a retail shop
- downloading pirated videos
- fines for downloading pirated movies
- games download torrent legal piracy or pirated
- how do authorities know about pirated music?
- how do they prove you download illegal movies
- illegal downloading
- illegal pirated films
- is downloading illegal if you own the cd
- law for downloading pirated movies
- make a copy of a pirated movie and pass the customs
- not illegal to download movies…
- penalty for downloading pirated material
- penalty for downloading pirated videos
- pirated dvd without downloading it
- public domain torrent search
- public domain torrents
- torrent searches
- why it is downloading illegal
There are a lot of misguided people out there and it's no wonder. The US copyright laws have been changed many times to suit the entertainment industries, with other laws thrown in to confuse them even further.
IP Blocking
If you're in a country that doesn't follow the copyright laws of the US, don't worry about it. If you're in a country where they do, but they don't enforce it (like here in the Philippines), don't worry about it. If you live in one of the other countries, including the US, you don't need Big Brother spying on you. Protect yourself with software that's designed strictly to keep the "authorities" away from your IP address. If you use Windows, I recommend the Blocklist Manager from B.I.S.S. - Bluetack Internet Security Solutions be installed for use with whatever BitTorrent software you're using.
Even if you're downloading files that aren't pirated, like open source software, you still don't need people spying on you. Keeping people from spying on your IP address is a basic security measure that everyone should employ. I'm willing to wager that if everyone used one, the scourge of spam and viruses would decrease tremendously.
Torrent Sources
I'm probably going to get rapped in the teeth for this, but there are some good torrent sites where you can get the music, movies, and even television episodes you want without worrying too much about viruses or spyware. They are, in no special order:
- Super Fundo — Movies
- EZTV — Television
- The Pirate Bay — Miscellaneous
- Public Domain Torrents — Legal (and old) movies, which I previously mentioned with "Public Domain Torrents".
I'm sure there are more, but I'm not actively looking for any. I'm not going to condone downloading anything you think is pirated, but I'm not your mother and I'm not Big Brother. You do what you think is right.
The Answers
I hope I've already answered, indirectly, numbers 9 and 10. I can't answer the rest. The laws are too convoluted for me to interpret and have been interpreted differently by judges in different jurisdictions. If the legal system can't get it right, how do I even stand a chance?
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