I was wondering where Machinists get their mp3 etc these days. I used to use the Russians, great site, great service, great price and not definitively illegal. But the damn WTO shut them down - free trade my hole!

So where would you recommend I spend my dollars these days? iTunes is full of DRM crud I hear, I like my music free. What are my other options?

I just use youtube a lot now or a usb stick in the car with ripped mp3s from CDs - which is not legal either I believe. Recently in the Guardian there was an article on this business of downloading and the idea was that broadband companies charge a music download levy of around 30 quid a year and you were waived from penalties if you downloaded. That sounds fair enough I suppose.

coc wrote:

WTO

God bless Russia.


www.piratebay.org ?

I've not bothered figuring out this torrenting malarky. I was similarly 5 years behind the curve on the whole napster thing, with the result that I didn't accumulate 50Gigs of tunes in the heady days before they were decomissioned.

The cost of iTunes is outrageous. 99c per song? The Russians were charging 2c per MB (approx 10c per song). At 99c per song it is almost as cheap to buy the CD from these boyos and rip it myself, which is what I have been doing recently, even though, as you point out, it is definitely illegal. At least then you own the disc, though not its contents!

Here's a site I'm starting to like: LINK.

It features unsigned bands and solo artists. Some great music to be had there. And you can be pretty sure that nobody else'll have it if you download it.

Someone just recommended the piratebay site I don't use it at all.

It's not enforceable that you rip your own CDs and it is illegal. It's very unnatural that technology has progressed to the point where the Law is definitely asinine. I'm not going to stop doing it anyhow if I want to. I've spent a fortune on CDs and continue to buy them so I don't see why I should be a criminal for using them for my own private uses.

That's it Hermes, music consumers and producers will adjust their tastes and interests to the availability of media. I'm sure there are hundreds of great bands allowing free downloads and so on. Radiohead started it and Moby has produced an album of music that may be used freely for soundtracks. These lads will be remembered while the enforcers of the Law will not.

But how am I going to get the latest Jonas Brothers for my kids? Obviously I'd rather steal it if at all possible, but if I must buy then price is definitely the overriding consideration.

Piratebay is a good site. I used to use torrentspy a lot but the man shut it down...

See website notice - http://www.torrentspy.com/

A great site to stream TV shows and movies is surfthechannel.com - no pesky downloading.

Hundreds of thousands the torrentspy people spent .. ? Hopefully this shite era of the internet will pass into a realm of free art and creativity. More and more I'm watching amateurs on youtube doing it in the privacy of their own bedrooms anyway

If the mainstream wants to shoot its own foot then why not ? The thing that will sort it out, if it isn't there already, is "pennyclicks" - you can donate literally pennies to your favourite blogger. Can you do this already I wonder ? One amateur I watch gets up to 70,000 views - if everyone clicked a penny then he'd get 7k per show ...... I think we need to breed this culture cos no one will miss pennies and it bypasses all the corporate toolism going on between.

coc

what's Jonas ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

coc

what's Jonas ?

They're like the Waltons...except even more insipid. They wear tight pants and chastity rings.

draiocht23 wrote:

Waltons... insipid.

draiocht23 wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

coc

what's Jonas ?

They're like the Waltons...except even more insipid. They wear tight pants and chastity rings.

The Jonas Brothers? OMG, they make me sick. They make Take That look edgy and controversial.

The Pirate Bay is definitely the place to go for me. I was reluctant at first to use Torrents, because I too fear what I do not understand. But they're actually extremely simple.

I agree with Audi though, it's a strange and uncomfortable thing that technology has advanced ahead of the law to the extent that it cannot be effectively regulated. I still download music though, with little regard to the legal status of my actions, or what it's doing to a poor little multi-millionaire musician. As a law student and prospective lawyer I suppose I should know better, but thankfully I am for the free flow of ideas and the toning down of copyright law so the cognitive dissonance is reduced for me.

I use www.mininova.org, great for mainstream stuff but not so great for anything even slightly alternative. This is a problem with any torrent site though. I haven't bought a CD in ages so I'm please with that.

Sounds like the torrents are the only show in town. I thought the way they worked was that all users hosted bits of everything so that to get it to work you needed to be online all the time or at least a lot of the time, which is why I never bothered. The other option would be to send Castro or Ahmedinijad or Chavez an email asking them to set up allofmp3.cu, allofmp3.vz or allofmp3.ir to stick it to the yanks.

I 'll try the torrents for now.

coc wrote:

Sounds like the torrents are the only show in town. I thought the way they worked was that all users hosted bits of everything so that to get it to work you needed to be online all the time or at least a lot of the time, which is why I never bothered. The other option would be to send Castro or Ahmedinijad or Chavez an email asking them to set up allofmp3.cu, allofmp3.vz or allofmp3.ir to stick it to the yanks.

I 'll try the torrents for now.

Yaay - another user trying something techie out live on MN! BuchaillBeo downloaded and installed Linux there recently (he hasn't been around since though )

Keep us posted of your progress!

I used to use Limewire until they started populating it with fake files. I started getting worried about viruses then.

Is Limewire still the number one file sharing utility?

Everyone here seems to use Mininova.org.

The fake files thing is a worry. Mininova allows users to leave comments on each file - if something is bad you can find out before wasting time/bandwidth. I'm not sure is other sites have this facility.

I don't like signing with websites engaged in that stuff. With Limewire you don't have to register but I think it is behind the bittorrent times.

Well I haven't used it so i can't comment - there are loads of equally goot torrenty sites and limewire certainly has an excellent reputation.

However, there is no registering for mininova.org. I really can't recommend it highly enough. I used use Morepheus which was in many ways excellent and really quick, but it slowed my PC down a lot. I may also have accidentially infected my parents PC with a virus becasue of it. I haven't had any of this since I began using Mnova.

No registering for the Pirate Bay either

Just to add to the list, isoHunt.com is fairly good too, particularly for music. Lets also not forget that these networks share perfectly legal and/or open-source. creative commons, content too.

just install utorrent with peerguardian2 and you're away.
http://www.utorrent.com/
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

Here's George Bernard Shaw on the free use of information.

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple.

But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. " ~ George Bernard Shaw

i.e you can't exclude people from something that can be copied and produced so easily. The whole process lacks excludability and anatagonism which makes paying for such products utter nonsense.

This is all enforced under the WTO and the “Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights” or TRIPS
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS ) which also denies millions in developing nations (and elsewhere) from creating cheap generic medicine for the treatment of AIDs for instance.

Sure remunerate the artist for the effort and sacrifice of writing, acting, playing etc, but not indefinitely, and if further remuneration is required then temporary credit can be given to the original author. But handing millions over to the music corporations? Eh, yeah right.....

George Bernard Shaw was right back then and even more right now, lets not slow or halt the spread of culture, original ideas and inventions through such archaic and outmoded means as intellectual 'property', patents and TRIPs.

Youtube under pressure -
http://www.breakingnews.ie/entertainment/mhsnkfqlaucw/

While we can still enjoy it on Youtube, here is a song I would like to dedicate to the government, the regulator, and all the other dogs that did not bark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aykPkVnvJo&feature=related

Does anyone here have a rapidshare account?
I find it to be the best way to download music.
Rapidshare is a file hosting server, which you pay about 7 euro a month for almost unlimited access (there's a download limit but I can't remember what it is - very high though).
There are a myriad of forums where people just go and post links to all their music and movies etc. www.warez-bb.org is one i can think of off hand.
It's quite illegal but it works.
If you don't have a rapidshare account you can use the free service but you're limited to 1 download per hour.

Helium Three wrote:

While we can still enjoy it on Youtube, here is a song I would like to dedicate to the government, the regulator, and all the other dogs that did not bark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aykPkVnvJo&feature=related

I'd neverr heard that before he3. Good stuff.