Methods of Bootlegging or Copyright Infringement

Before you read this article, it is important that you not only agree to not hold the author responsible for anything said in this writing, but also acknowledge that the spread (in any manners) of illegal, copyrighted material, is against the law of every country, and that you should not be committing these crimes for not only financial reasons (as very large fines/lawsuits can be imposed) but also the penalty of prison.

Methods, I hear you ask? Well, the most common method, and one that I have followed closely from a computer and software analyst point of view is p2p. P2P, for those of you who do not know, stands for Peer-to-Peer, and is by far the most common method of sharing illegal copyright material. Different programs, such as Kazaa, or Limewire, are the stereotypical P2P programs, yet many users are confused as they claim they are 100% legal. Yes, that is absolutely correct! The program itself is 100% legal, however, the content that you share over their network and via their program is what is potentially law-breaking, and you are held fully responsible yourself for every file you decide to upload or download with your internet connection. This also is an issue that may be taken up with your ISP; however, issues of the Privacy Act are still being discussed as it is believed that Internet Service Providers should never release information of their customers.

When a user downloads and installs Kazaa or Limewire, they are also subjecting themselves to viruses, as most often (unless downloaded from a safe server/website) these programs are binded with a virus. Binding in terms of a virus, again for those who are unfamiliar with this term, is the combination of two .exe files (one of which being a virus) with a setup file. For skilled hackers or black hat computer users, the virus is normally undetected, meaning that an anti-virus program cannot detect the malicious intent of the program. So, when you run the setup file (setup.exe), it will silently (most often) install the virus to your computer without your consent. So, this is another con to P2P and pirating copyrighted material.

Another and perhaps more common method of the illegal spreading of copyrighted material is via torrents, which are large networks (yet are still P2P) amongst users who both index and search for files via websites that are the source for the files. However, while these websites index the files, it is still downloaded and uploaded 100% by users (yet, there is one exception, which is known as a seed box: a seed box is a 10/100mbit server that uploads or seeds the torrents at very fast speeds). After a file is submitted to the website, a .torrent file is created; from there, it is linked, if you will, to a tracker. The tracker is basically what keeps "track" (pardon the pun) of the file that has been submitted or indexed. After that, users are able to search website(s) that are indexing the file, download the .torrent, and then via the help of the trackers, begin downloading from peers who are willingly sharing that file. So, those are the steps of most illegal copyright infringement - that is, the bootlegging of it.

Many people are unfamiliar with the following way, as it is a more discrete way that copyrighted materials are shared. The way (shh...keep it secret) is via IRC. IRC stands for internet relay chat, and was originally created for users to connect to different servers hosting IRCd's (which is the software that allows the users to connect and submit commands, etc.) and converse amongst each other. It, perhaps, was uses as a means to create relationships, strengthen existent relationships, or just a place for people to "chill" and get stuff "off their chest." However, it is now a realm of both hacked computers and file sharing users that upload files via certain commands. These files are almost always illegal, especially when they're using hacked computers' internet to share the files. This, perhaps, is the most illegal means of sharing these files, as there is not only copyrighted material being shared, but it's being sent through a hacked computer, which, in and of itself, is a felony.

As the writer of this article, I hope that through identifying the different methods of bootlegging warez, we may as a generation of technology, be able to put a stop to what we all know is wrong. No matter how often you do it, or how little you do it, I believe we can all come to the agreement that stealing copyrighted material and spreading it for free, with no benefits to the creator or author, is wrong. Just ask yourself this question: if you put months and months, perhaps even years, into a specific creation of something, and it was your life's work, would you want someone to steal it and give it to people for free? I didn't think so...so why would you do it now?

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootlegging

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Warez

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O12-warez.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limewire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_file_sharing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.torrent