Okay that title’s a little long, but I thought “better ways to pirate” might get the wrong attention.

I think Bram Cohen is a genious, but I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Bittorrent. In that, I love that it brings me my downloads, but I hate how slow it does it.

Everyone is always “oh you need to tweek it” and “it’s your ports”. Lol, I’m no newbie. I’ve opened the correct ports, tweeked the correct settings, and come to the conclusion: You can only download bittorrents fast, if you use private trackers.
I get banned from private trackers, because I download far too quick, and don’t get time to re-seed as much as I download. That’s due to me having a crazy download speed, with a shitty upload speed – gotta love that UK Broadband industry con.

So I found an alternative.
Years ago I used to download wares over Usenet. But I stopped it was so messy. As far as I knew, there was no index for you to search, you just had to browse the different binary groups and look for things you liked. Then download all the the posts with that software name. There were a few half-decent Newsgroup readers, that would look for softwarename.par01 and download them all – but it was all so clumsy.

Okay I might be a newb, because I’ve only just discovered NZBs.
An NZB file is a lovely XML-based script file that does all the work for you. You go to an NZB indexing site, search for the software you want to download, then import the NZB into your downloading software.
The NZB contains all the information it needs to grab all those pars/rar, including the newsgroup servers etc.
You don’t even need to look at an alt.binaries. It does all that.

I use a program called hellanzb, for Ubuntu. I leave it running in the background, then when I drop a .nzb file into the Queue folder, it begins downloading, just like a torrent would, only with speed.

To give you some perspective, I download films in under an hour, and it took me under 2 hours to download Gears of War 2 (to try it, before I purchased it)!

.NZB is the new .Torrent in my house.

I know, I’m really splashing out this month lol, a song and a game!

I’ve owned an xbox 360 for about 2 years, I have played ~50 games, and I’ve never bought a single one. Actually I’ve bought XBLA titles, but never a full game.

Gears of War 2 is just that good that it made me actually order the disc.

I got banned last year for playing ‘backup’ games on my modified 360, so I sold it and bought a new one. That cost me about #30 on top of what I got for the old one. Meaning I paid less than the price of a game, and I gained an extra controller.

Why did I pirate? I think games are ridiculously over priced. I’m a poor student! I can’t afford to pay #50 per game. Buy a handful of games and you’ve paid for your console twice over. Tbh if I couldn’t pirate my console games, I wouldn’t own one. You don’t see me playing on a PS3 – the console is over 300pounds, and then you have to pay 50pound per game… that’s a ripoff to me.

PC games are far more fair-priced. I’ve always bought my PC games (and I’m a PC gamer long before I’m a console gamer), and I’ve paid for many MMORPGs, which feature monthly charges. So it’s not that I’m tight. I just don’t like being ripped off.

Gears of War (original) is what made me purchase an xbox 360. I played it at my friend James’ house and I thought it was revolutionary! Gears of War 2 is just as good, if not better. So I feel it deserves my 40quid.
That and I want the bonus maps. The old Gears 1 maps have been re-made for Gears 2 and you can only download them with a code that comes with the Gears 2 box.

Maybe techniques like this would work for other titles in the future, to stop piracy. Big companies like EA need to stop screwing their customers with horrible, horrible, DRM solutions, and just offer bonuses to people who buy their game.
Bonuses/Rewards > Punishments. They are all your (potential) customers, instead of trying to piss them off, try to win them over. Loyaly alone will get people to buy your games…

That and if you just charge a fair price, people will buy your product.
If I see something on Xbox Live I like, I just buy it, I don’t pirate it. Because I like to show my support to the company being fair. I’m about to buy Portal: Still Alive, which is an expansion pack to Valve’s Portal – which I thought was a brilliant game.

That’s how it works. Treat your customers well, and they in return will treat you well.

It’s a big deal for me lol. I can’t remember the last time I paid for music!

I bought the X Factor – Heroes song, both because I like it, and to support the cause.

I have no idea why a charity is even needed in this case though. If the government forms an army and sends these men to war, shouldn’t the government then pay for their treatment and rehabilitation if they get injured in said war?! Damn, such a cold world.

I don’t own a CD player, so I figured buying the CD would be a waste of time – I’d only end up ripping it onto my PC so I could actually play it. So I decided to buy the tune on my iPhone. Buying the track was nice and easy.

I have a Windows installation on an old desktop in the corner of the room, so I fired that up to find the music file and send it across to my Ubuntu desktop. Now here was the bloody annoying part…
The file was m4p format… Apple’s flipping DRM solution. Here was me thinking Apple had ditched DRM. I remember reading all the digg stories about how Apple was DRM-free now, and it was catching up with others like Amazon and AllofMP3 etc. Well, it must only be certain tracks or something.
I couldn’t even find a DRM-free option. So it was time to find a m4p-to-mp3 converter. Ugh.

m4p-mp3.com had a nice tutorial layout, with a simple file to download. But this damn trial only allows for the converting on 3minute clips. There was no way I would pay twenty something pounds for this software, to crack a 79pence track lol. So I headed over to Astalavista for the crack.

Once I got the program cracked, it was quite nice. Allowed me to encode in 300kbps mp3 or 100quality ogg. Leet. So I’m now the midly-happy owner of two 100q oggs of the X Factor – Heroes single.

What a bloody hassle though! I don’t think I’ll be buying any more music any time soon. Unless BBC Children in Need release a pro single or something.
I’m all for supporting charities and good music. It’s just the RIAA and their UK equivalent (BPI) that I can’t stand.

[Update]
I’ve just found that the song is available on Play.com too, but in mp3 format and quite a bit cheaper.
I wonder if there’s come crappy DRM? I assume not, Play.com are quite reputable.