growing increasingly frustrated with streaming services upping their prices and adding advertisements in the middle of the show you can’t skip? can’t find that show you watched forever ago on streaming? fed up with the insane amounts of money the entertainment industry is making off of you because there are no other options?

have I got the solution for you!

my friend asked me today if I could help her acquire a show (in Minecraft) because she and her partner had been watching it on streaming previously, but whatever movie studio had taken it down, moved it to another service, whatever. that shit is stupid. there’s no way to have a legal physical copy due to companies favoring a recurring revenue model, you can’t just purchase a copy of most movies anymore unless you do it secondhand. so like, what do you do if you don’t want to pay $11.99 a month to a company that makes more money in a week than you’ll ever see in your life? yarrr, well let me tell ye…

prerequisites:#

  • a computer with an internet connection
  • torrent client (I recommend and use qBitTorrent)
  • a place to download your torrents
  • uBlock Origin preferably, or another adblocker
  • a VPN (optional, I rawdog it because I don’t care. I recommend Windscribe and have personally used them)
  • ability to reshare (seed) your torrent after downloading it*

Step 1: installation#

download and install your torrent client of choice. as mentioned above, I prefer qBitTorrent, but there are a plethora of clients out there. I like it because it has both a desktop app and I can install it in a container on my Proxmox host then use it through a web app. you do you though. as long as you don’t use uTorrent. also, if you have Xfinity/Comcast or worry for your privacy, use a VPN. do not use the free ones. find one you can trust, send them a few bucks, and download away.

Step 2: finding acquirable media (is that a word?)#

like I said, there are plenty of places to get your stuff. I personally use a private tracker, but I only do it because I have a seedbox and I can seed for basically ever. also: if you can seed your torrents, please do. (seeders gave you what you wanted, be nice and share it with others!) popular websites can be found via web searching. if you have friends that are remotely techy, you can ask them too. when on the site, you can search whatever you’d like! (reminder you should be wary of software here too. just always be wary of downloading executables from people/places you don’t absolutely trust.)

Step 3: downloading#

when you find what you want, click on its name. if you get a choice between “torrent” and “magnet”, you should usually go with the former. it has the metadata built into the file. some sites only have the latter, though, and it’ll just have to download the metadata from seeders. also, this is where having an adblocker is recommended, if not required. a lot of websites will have iframes or some shit over the download buttons and will redirect you to… not where you want to be. good adblockers will detect them and block them. if you click on the download button and a box pops up then goes away, your adblocker did its job - click the button again and you’ll get what you want.

Step 4: you’re done!#

good job! you’re now a proud hater of copyright law. how does it feel? good, right?!

disclaimer: I am not responsible for you installing viruses on your machine, cops knocking on your door, or a warning letter from your ISP. by following this guide, you are assuming all responsibility by taking on this task. proceed at your own risk.

* seed as much as possible. my favorite thing about torrents is that you can just share and share and share. unless every single piece of that data has been wiped out, there will always be a copy someone can share from that same torrent file. also, it’s been faster time and time again for downloading Linux ISOs for me and getting stuff from archive.org. keep information free, make sure you seed!