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Since our good friend OJ Simpson has written his If I Did It about how he would have killed his ex-wife and her boyfriend, I’ve decided to write a similar piece about stealing music and software from the internet. I’ve never actually done this, mind you, but if I had, this is how I would have done it.

While it is possible to find some of this stuff on Limewire or similar P2P (peer-to-peer) systems, the most effective way to get what I’m after is by searching torrent files. “What is a torrent file?” you ask? Basically, a torrent distributes a file over a group of people so that when another person tries to download it, it is coming from multiple locations instead of just one. This creates more reliable downloads since there isn’t one single server that could be overwhelmed or offline, and also prevents the network from being shut down.

Before searching, however, I’d need a program that can download the torrents. The best one for such an activity is probably uTorrent (which I could download by clicking here); the nice thing about uTorrent is that you can select individual files to download before the process commences. It also doesn’t take up much space on your computer.

Once that is installed, a search may begin. It is my understanding that two of the best places to search for torrent files are TorrentSpy and Demonoid. If I were looking for a CD, I would just search for the artist or album name, or the name of a piece of software I was after. Let’s say that I was hypothetically looking for the new Norah Jones CD at Demonoid. From the main page, I would click the Torrents link at the top, and on the following page select Music from the Category drop-down menu. This is what the results might look like. Let’s take a look at this in pieces, shall we? Read the rest of this entry »