Perhaps by now you've heard in the news about the police take down of popular Swedish torrent search engine The Pirate Bay, and it's subsequent re-launch two days later in The Netherlands. They and countless others like them have been a thorn in the side of America's movie and recording industries for the last few years. Apparently the police acted on the direct orders of high ranking government officials who chose to ignore that The Pirate Bay was doing nothing illegal under existing Swedish law. It seems pretty clear that these officials were responding to pressure from the US Government who itself was no doubt responding to lobbying from Hollywood. Anyway, this has caused a big political scandal in Sweden and may even lead to the full legalization of file trading in the country if The Pirate Party can get enough votes in upcoming elections. Whether they win or not will likely make little difference however, as it seems clear that file sharing is here to stay. Some big TV networks are finally catching on that they can't just keep doing business as usual and have begun to make episodes of their shows available online for the first time. For a while now, a few networks have been placing their shows on iTunes and charging per episode, while more recently others have begun offering them for free with commercials.


Anyway, why am I going on about this? Well living on my own in Noheji leaves me with lots of downtime, and aside from the occasional Morning Musume Lizard Contest there really isn't much on Japanese TV that interests me. Luckily thanks to Bit Torrent, television has finally become the global village that what's his face went on about all those years ago. Pretty much all the best shows from all over the world are now just a few clicks away.. that is if you know what you're doing anyway.


With the exception of You Tube, downloading and watching videos from the web can still be pretty tricky for novice computer users to figure out. What resources there are online about using Bit Torrent usually go into a lot of needless and confusing details that average people just don't need to know. As a result many JETs have no choice but to waste their precious free time studying Japanese, reading books or getting exercise. Well I hope to change that with...


Jamie's Guide to Downloading Stuff with Bit Torrent


Short version: Install this, and this. Go here.


Long version:

Follow up:

Step 1. Download a free Bit Torrent client, such as Azureus. This is the program that lets you download stuff and share files. There are lots of different ones out there, but I will use Azureus for this guide as it seems to be the most popular at the moment, plus it works on both PCs and Macs. What this means is that you also must have the JAVA programming language installed for it to work. For many of you it will already be on your computer, but if not just grab it from here.


Step 2. After you have downloaded and installed Azureus, you need to find a website that offer torrent files that let you download movies and shows. Of course there's The Pirate Bay, but other sites I like include Torrent Spy, Full DLL's and Mininova. You can find more using Wikipedia's list of major torrent sites, or just by searching on Google. There are also lots of secretive private sites you can join, often by invitation only. If you know of any really good ones then please let me know!


Step 3. Search for something you want to watch. Most sites will include both a search box and a directory. Once you find a show, click on its name and then click "Download this torrent" on the next page. That brings up a pop-up window asking you to open, save or cancel. Click 'Open' and Azureus will load.


Step 4. Inside the now open Azureus client another window will pop up. Just click okay. Now the pop-up vanishes and your video should be listed under "My torrents" at the top of the screen as it begins to download. Once it is done, it will move automatically to the bottom half of the page. You can leave it there and share it with others (called seeding) or right click and remove it from Azureus if you don't feel generous.


Step 5. Open your download folder and click on your new video to watch it. Now here's the tricky part. Downloading videos is pretty easy, but sometimes making them play properly can be harder than it looks. If your newly downloaded video doesn't want to play, you may need to install a new video player or something called a codec.


Step 6. Most videos are distributed as '.avi' files, but are encoded using different codecs. You will need to have these codecs installed on your computer to watch most videos. That means downloading one more thing, a codec pack. There are lots of different ones out there and I'm not sure which is currently the best, so I'll just recommend the good old K-Lite Codec Pack. Following this link should take you to a page with tons of download links to different codec packs. Maybe start with "K-Lite Codec Pack 2.72 Standard" and see if that works for you. Download it from any one those links to the right.


(Note: If you're kind of computer savvy, then I recommend AVIcodec for analyzing what specific codecs your video files may need instead of using these codec packs)


Speical notes:


Some files downloaded with Bit Torrent will download very fast, while others quite slowly. This depends on how many other people are sharing a complete version of the file you want. Azureus rates each file with red, yellow and green to indicate how healthy it is. As a rule very new files and very old files are generally slower than ones that have been around for a few days. Sometimes a file might take several days to download or even fail to finish if it is not popular enough.


Most codec packs include a handy video player called Media Player Classic. Another good program for both OSX and Windows XP is VLC.


Most schools and office networks have firewalls running on them that prevent file trading. If Azureus seems to work for you at your place of work, I would still recommend that you resist the urge to use it. Bit Torrent involves large amounts of data being transferred, and it will certainly draw attention to you if you're gobbling up all your office's bandwidth.


Sometimes videos will come in archives (.zip or .rar files) and need to be unzipped before you can use them. You may need to install WinZip or WinRar for these files. I think Mac OSX can do it with its own built in method.


Final note: Using Bit Torrent isn't illegal, and there are many things being distributed with it that don't violate any copyright laws. That being said, the vast majority of TV shows, music, software and movies being shared don't fall into this category. Copyright law differs from country to country, so please be aware of the ones in your area and the risks you are taking before you begin file trading. In other words, don't go blaming me if some tall blond Swedish policemen burst though your door and take away your computer.



Arrrrrr!