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2022-03-07
Becoming a pirate and acquiring pirated resources is not a shameful thing. In the world we live in today, the arts are controlled by monopoly giants and are full of DRM and censorship. In such times, appropriately acquiring pirated content—spending your money where it counts (“on the blade’s edge”) and supporting independent authors you like—is a form of resistance. And peer-to-peer downloading is one of the most important ways to acquire pirated resources.
However, in many developed countries, especially in the European Union, North America, and Japan, becoming a pirate entails legal risks, and in some regions, it can even be criminalized.
There are two categories of popular peer-to-peer download protocols today:
The former is the famous “BT download” and its derivative “Magnet links.” The latter is “eMule.” On the Chinese internet, the name “Electric Donkey” (Dian Lv) might be more widely circulated. As for “Electric Donkey,” “eMule,” VeryCD, etc., there is a long and tedious history behind them which I won’t repeat here. Given that eMule is on the decline compared to the former, we will choose BitTorrent/Magnet here.
There are many software options for BitTorrent/Magnet downloading (hereinafter referred to as BT downloading). One can easily list a few:
Among them, the last one, XunLei, is our greatest enemy because it “leeches” from others.
The working principle of BT is “one for all, all for one"—meaning, after downloading from others, you upload to other users who haven’t finished downloading yet. "Leechers,” however, only download and do not upload, and are despised by everyone.
qBitTorrent is not only open source, but also has a modified fork. It can effectively identify leeching clients like XunLei and QQ Whirlwind, and can also one-click block unknown BT clients (leechers usually deliberately leave their client name and version number blank).
Therefore, we choose this enhanced version of qBitTorrent to introduce here. (Latest download address on Github)
Download links for version 4.4.0.10 (may not be the latest):
As for installation, there isn’t much to say, as you just need to click “Next.”
Open the configuration menu here:
First, enable the advanced feature to block leeching clients:
Then, there are some configurations related to the BT protocol. In order to find more users, we need to turn on the available user discovery features:
Finally, we need to add some tracker servers.
Let me briefly explain what a tracker server is. As mentioned before, the essence of BT downloading is “one for all, all for one.” BT files and magnet links are actually the “fingerprints” of the files to be downloaded. We need to shout out this fingerprint in the “plaza” to find out who owns the file so we can exchange parts of it. The tracker server is this “plaza.” Many BT files and magnet links come with a list of tracker servers, but the more the merrier; moreover, some magnet links do not come with a tracker server list. In this case, we can only find fellow Daoists who own the same resource through peer-to-peer protocols like DHT, and this process is like groping slowly in the dark.
Github has a very good list of public tracker servers. We just need to copy the content of this file into our qBitTorrent configuration:
The most famous pirate resource site is none other than The Pirate Bay.
Taking last month’s terrible movie The Matrix Resurrections as an example, results are obtained quickly after searching. Then, right-click the magnet symbol and copy to get the magnet link.
Next, open qBitTorrent and add the magnet link:
Finally, choose where to save the file, click OK, and the download should begin.
Of course, if it is a niche resource, the download may take a long time to start, or the speed may be very slow. In this case, one can only pray to the heavens.
There is also an unorthodox method: many domestic cloud drives provide magnet link offline download functions. If someone has uploaded this file to a domestic cloud drive and it has not been censored yet, you can download it directly using the cloud drive:
Besides The Pirate Bay mentioned earlier, RARBG is also a good place to go (Note added in 2023: The site has closed due to the Russia-Ukraine war). If it is for animation or ACG-related resources, Western sub groups will post on [nyaa.si]. Domestic sub groups also hang out at Dongman Huayuan (DMHY).
Additionally, Google is actually very useful. Searching with “Chinese Movie Name + Magnet Link” (磁力链) as keywords can yield massive results. Generally, if it is an English website, providing magnet links will result in a DMCA notice from copyright holders, causing the resource to be removed by Google. However, Chinese resources are a lawless land:
However, online resources vary in quality, so it is best to be careful and discriminate.
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