I’ve blogged about downloading movies before, but I just read this article, which claims that over 25 million people have illegally downloaded a full-length movie, and I was moved once again to discuss the subject.

The study quoted in that article also claims that “a downloader typically has 16 full-length movies on his PC.” I find that very interesting, for many different reasons.

Judging from my post on torrents I’m sure you’ve figured out that at the very least, I know quite intimately how to illegally download movies. I’ll go a step further and just straight-out tell you I’ve pirated movies. I’ll go ahead and make another admission: I used to illegally download music, but I don’t anymore. Wanna know why I stopped? Because I can now download music online for a reasonable price legally. It’s that simple.

The RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) is still making it hard for online sites to easily provide users with downloadable music, forcing them to encode the songs with DRM (digital rights management), which makes it hard to burn the music to CDs. Despite that, downloadable music has become very popular. It’s easy, it’s cheap, and and people like the convenience of making their own compilation CDs.

If movie studios would simply provide users with the opportunity to easily download movies then I’m fairly certain we’d see the number of people pirating movies drop considerably. Yeah, I know that some places let you purchase movies online right now, but those movies are so crippled that you literally can’t do anything with them except watch them on your computer in a special program. No, let us pay for the movie, download it, and burn it to a DVD, and you’d see that illegal downloading statistic fall dramatically.

Those figures also illustrate quite clearly that millions of people just don’t think that pirating movies is that serious of a crime, if they consider it one at all. If that many people are blatantly ignoring a law then we clearly need to have a little pow-wow about the veracity of the law itself. I’m not saying we should ignore copyright laws, but something needs to be done legislatively. The article claims that ” 78 percent of those surveyed found that physically stealing a DVD from a store was a serious offense, but only 40 percent believed copying the movie digital also merited a serious offense.” Users are clearly distinguishing between tangible and intangible property, and that poses a big problem for movie studios. Since pirating became a problem several years ago, the studios have been very insistent at propagating the wholly illogical proposition that downloading a copy of a movie is the exact same as going into Best Buy and stuffing that same movie down your pants. Well, it’s not the same thing, and evidently I’m not the only one who believes that.

I like the fact that consumers are basically forcing the studios, and the laws, in this country to change their views of downloadable movies. Just remember, if it wasn’t for Napster then we’d never have gotten iTunes. Sometimes it takes an illegal mass movement to spur innovation. Just ask the twenty-first amendment.

• Kevin Federline Superbowl Commercial Leaked
  Maybe he’s not such a douchebag after all. Well, okay, he’s still a major douchebag, but just a little bit less of one now.
• It’s a series of tubes
  I’m not sure if this meme will ever get old.

How-to use torrent sites. Right. Okay, first off, I’m not telling you this so you can download the newest Shakira CD. In fact, if you listen to Shakira I’m going to have to ask you to leave immediately. Seriously, go somewhere else. No, I’m telling you how to use torrent sites because 1) There are legal uses for file sharing; 2) I want you to be able to catch up on your TV shows.

Just so you know, I wouldn’t go downloading HBO shows. HBO is a pay cable station, and they’ve sent out quite a few cease and desist letters. There are ways to obscure your IP address (that’s the thingy that makes you identifiable on the tubes) but you’ll have to figure that one out on your own.

Let’s get goin’:

1) First things first, you need to make sure you will be able to play the video files you download. The thieves kind folks that upload the shows will often put them in a compressed format so that the files don’t take so long to transfer. Wouldn’t wanna clog up those tubes with big files. Trouble is, neither Windows Media Play nor Quicktime will play these files (DIVX or Xvid) by default. You have two options:

a. If you want to keep using Windows Media Player then you need to download codeces that will interpret the compressed files. Download and install FFDSHOW for that option. After it installs use Windows Media Player as normal.

b. If you think WMP is a bloated piece of shit and hate it anyway, you can download a new media player called VLC. It’s open-source, lightweight, and it will play damn near anything.

2) Now you need a program that will download the torrent files. You see, torrent files are really only pointers that show your computer the location where the file you want is being shared. The client connects you to the “swarm,” which is nothing but a nerdy term for the daisy-chained group of computers sharing the file. Additionally, torrents also download in small pieces, and the client will reassemble those pieces into the useable file.

There are a ton of torrent clients out there, but I only recommend two: uTorrent and Azureus. I’ll be discussing uTorrent here, but for your use there won’t be much difference. DO NOT download any client that appears on the sidebars of various websites. These clients suck, and most of them are adware infested.

3) After you install your client you need to find the files you want to download. There are two types of web sites where you can find torrents: trackers and indexers. Don’t worry about the difference.

I’ll make three recommendations here: Torrentspy, The Pirate Bay, and ISOHunt. I use Torrentspy almost exclusively, but I’ve been known to use the other two as well.

Go to any of those three, enter the show you want into the search engine, and then choose your show.

4) After you get back your results you need to decide which file to download. Torrentspy graphically shows you the “health” of the file by a color system. Green’s good, yellow’s okay, and red’s not so good.

Torrentspy also gives you four other statistics with each file:

a. Category- This is the category the file belongs in. Pretty self-explanatory.

b. Size- If you don’t know what this one is then send me an email and I’ll come to your house and hit you in the head with a tack hammer.

c. Files- This tells you how many files are contained in your download. If you’re only downloading one show then this number should be one.

d. S- This stands for seeders. Seeders are the number of people who have completed the download but are still allowing their computer to share the file. A high number here is a very good thing.

e. D- This stands for downloaders. With a torrent client you upload (give pieces of the file to other people) while simultaneously downloading (taking pieces of the file from other people). The more people that are downloading is usually a good thing, too.

A quick note on file-naming conventions. Quite often the file names of television shows on torrent sites will be very long. You may see something like this: Heroes.S01E01.xvid-LOL [eztv] That probably makes no sense to you, but it’s actually a lot of useful information. Heroes is the title of the show, “S01″ indicates the show is from season one, “E01″ indicates the show is episode one, “xvid” is the type of compression used on the video file, and “eztv” indicates who recorded and compressed the video. Once you spend a bit of time browsing the torrent sites you’ll begin to notice that all the files that have been compressed really well were all done by the same people. If you’re not sure what season and episode you’re looking for, then TV.com is a good place to peruse individual episodes of television shows. The site gives you the all relevant information about every television show, including air date and reviews.

Once you decide on a file you want, then click on its page, and click to download the torrent file. At this point your torrent client, whether uTorrent or Azureus, will automatically open up. It will ask if you want to download or open the file. Click open and the transfer will start. Pay attention to where the client program places the file. If you don’t like the default download location you can change it.

5) Speeds on downloading torrents will vary. At the beginning of the download it will seem very slow. That’s because it takes a bit of time to get your computer linked up with the swarm. So if you start downloading and the client says it will take two weeks for your download to complete, don’t despair. Give it thirty minutes and then look again.

When you’re done downloading your chosen file the torrent client will stay on and you will automatically become a seeder. Nice people tend to seed shows for half as long as it took to download. If I see the show has a thousand or so seeders I don’t worry about it. If you’re done, then highlight the filename in your torrent client and terminate the transfer.

6) Now go watch your show. If you’re industrious you can stream them from your computer to your Xbox 360 or burn them to a DVD. If not you can watch’em at your computer. I don’t care.

I hope that helps out. If you need any help feel free to email. And to my nerdy-brethren: I know I left a lot of techno-info out, but we all have to start somewhere.

I didn’t have time this weekend to write up my how-to on torrents. Expect that later this evening.

• It’s Caturday!
  It’s Caturday over at the Fark forums. Trust me, you want to see these pictures. The one with Picard almost made me spit out my milk.

I don’t know why television studios aren’t embracing file sharing on the internet. It seems to me that they’d benefit from allowing viewers to catch up on their shows, especially the serial television shows that are extremely self-referential.

Case in point, I’d been hearing all about NBC’s “Heroes,” all over the internets; I knew it was the type of show that I’d probably like, but since I missed the first few episodes I never tried to watch it. When the show went on mid-season hiatus I simply downloaded all eleven episodes from Torrentspy and got all caught up.

Now? Now I’m hooked. I’ll watch the show every week. Because of illegal file-sharing NBC has essentially garnered an additional viewer.

I feel it is my duty to share the wealth. I found a YouTube user who has cut episode one of “Heroes” into five parts and posted it online. Here’s the first part:

Here is part two, three, four, and five.Just know that while episode one is good, it’s nowhere near the best episode. What amazed me most about the show was that by the end of episode eleven, which ends chapter one, I had seen a complete and self-contained story. My graphic novel reading brethren will love this show. It’s self-referential, it’s smart, and the creators really understand the superhero mythos.

“Heroes” is what the X-Men movies strived and failed to be.

Jeph Loeb, the co-executive producer, is an awesome comic book writer in his own right, and I have a feeling his expertise is playing a very big part in creating this show. Loeb penned such graphic novel masterpieces such as “Superman for all Seasons,” “Batman: Haunted Knight,” “Batman: The Long Halloween,” “Batman: Hush,” “Batman: Dark Victory,” “Spider-Man: Blue,” “Daredevil: Yellow,” and “Hulk: Gray.”

Episodes 1-11 illustrate that the creators truly understand how to write a superhero origin story. Episode twelve began chapter two, and if what I’ve seen so far is any indication of this chapter then we’re in for a helluva ride. Each character has a backstory that actually motivates their actions and behavior. I love all the heroes, but I gotta say, Hiro Nakamura is my new favorite comic book hero, and he’s not even in a comic book. And the bad guy? The supervillain? Well, he’s a scary, scary badass. You’ll just have to watch the show.

Piqued your interest? I hope so. If you want to get caught up as well, I’ll post a how-to on downloading shows tomorrow.

YouTube is experiencing downtime, whatever the hell that means. They’ve been experiencing it since last night. Normally I wouldn’t give a damn, but since I have several YouTube videos embedded on the page it looks kinda jacked up. Sorry about that. Not my fault.

• DVD Rewinder- only $16.49
  I added this to my shopping cart, but I’ll wait to buy it to avoid shipping charges. I know the Jeep will need blinker fluid in a few weeks so I’ll order it then.
• Thank GOD!
  These may very well change the life of millions of unhappy wives.

Two weeks ago I wrote a post called “HD-DVD And Blu Ray—DOA.” I recommended that you hold off in investing in either format based on the assumption that storing data on a disk is a paradigm that is rapidly coming to an end.

But, if you absolutely must buy one of the two you need to make sure the one you buy will be around for a while, so I’ll go ahead and tell you to purchase an HD-DVD player if you just can’t wait.

On what basis am I making this suggestion? Well, it’s really quite simple. Sony is the primary corporation backing the Blu Ray technology, and they have already stated quite clearly that they aren’t going to allow producers of pornography to use their disks. Yeah, you heard me right…no porn on Blu Ray.

Truthfully, I don’t think I’d even want to see a porn encoded in 1080p high definition. You’d see every razor burn and stretch mark the “actor” or “actress” had. But whichever technology, whether it be HD-DVD or Blu Ray, entices consumers with superior title choice will be the winner of the format wars, regardless of who has the best technology. If Blu Ray isn’t even going to offer porn then they’ve blown their load before the camera was ever switched on.

Lest you think I’m overreacting to this news, let me remind you of some not too distant facts. Sony also owned Betamax. Betamax was technologically superior to VHS. Sony would not allow film producers to record and sell pornography on the Betamax tapes.

And we all know how it turned out for Betamax.