Most of us have either downloaded something illegally or know someone who has. I am repeatedly asked by people on how they can download their favorite music and movies for free. I don’t go into the moral or ethical issues of “pirating”; I simply ask them if they are willing to deal with all the headaches that go along with this. They immediately assume that I am talking about the RIAA and the very small chance of being caught and taken to court. This is only a small portion of what I am talking about.
Pirating of digital content has become such a large issue that it is now often possible to download feature movies before they are released in the theatres. With a modification to the circuit board of your Nintendo Wii you can play all the games you can download, the same goes for the XBOX. Companies spend millions to billions of dollars to prevent the piracy.
One of these efforts comes in the form of making what you are looking for difficult to find. My best friend’s older brother works for a company that is hired by the major motion picture studios every time they are going to release a feature film. What his team does is flood the pirating sites with bogus content. If you’ve ever downloaded a movie only to find out that it goes to junk after 2 minutes of watching, or you can hear the whole movie but the screen is showing the wall of the movie theatre instead of the screen, chances are it was his team. They put so much junk on the market that looks legitimate; they hope that eventually you will just give up. It is pretty effective too. It is not uncommon to download days worth of video and never find what you are looking for.
So outside of wasting time what else is there to worry about. The major thing is malware. When you download illegally it is virtually impossible to know if the file has been tampered with. Pirated content is an ideal target for hackers. The files they are tampering with are already illegal to download so there is a feeling of safety for the hacker. Why waste your time going after someone who only targets people that participate in criminal behavior. In the past 10 years, the computers I have fixed that were in the worst shape always had very large quantities of pirated material. I once fixed a computer that had over 10,000 infections; the machine was so loaded down it took 20-30minutes just to log in.
Having antivirus and antispyware software is not guaranteed to protect you from these malware programs that are on the music you download. It’s actually a pretty safe bet that given enough time, you will become infected regardless of how carefully you pirate material.
One of the other major issues is that software like Kazaa, Bearshare, Limewire, and Bit-torrent are huge bandwidth hogs. You pay your internet provider to download a certain amount of data per second. If you or someone on your network is using one of these programs to download files illegally it can really slow everything down. Instead of everyone using what they need, the pirate is eating up most of the bandwidth.
Illegally downloading music, movies, software, or anything else just isn’t worth the time or risk. The time spent trying to find what you are looking for coupled with the time and money spent dealing with the infections your computer will receive will easily overshadow any savings you may reap. Plus you may be the lucky person who does get caught and ends up having to pay tens of thousands of dollars just so you could listen to the new Usher song.
Use services like Yahoo music or Pandora to listen to the music you like. Pay for Netflix or Hulu, it will allow you to watch all the movies you like at a reasonable price, plus you can watch your favorite TV shows online. There are options out there that don’t involve stealing. Take a look around, you may be surprised.
