Discovers and explores the web's best places and resources for downloading the latest music, movies, games and software for free. http://www.secret-download-techniques.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Mon, 27 Jun 2005 23:10:59 +0200 Mon, 27 Jun 2005 23:10:41 +0200 FeedForAll v1.0 (1.0.0.2) unlicensed version Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems do not operate on secure lines, thus providing a conduit for hackers to enter a network or computer, access personal and confidential information, as well as deploy viruses or worms. Users of P2P systems are prime targets and/or launching points for malicious hacker attacks simply because it requires downloading and sharing electronic files or programs, not to mention usage on publicly open and interpretable industry standard protocols and industry standard codec. A Staff Report submitted by the Government Reform Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives (May 2003), entitled “File-Sharing Programs and Peer-to-Peer Networks – Privacy and Security Risks”, stated that users of these programs have inadvertently made their personal information available to other users. “A search of one P2P network found at least 2,500 Microsoft Money backup files, which stores the users’ personal financial records, available for download.” Personal information includes tax returns containing you name, address, and social security numbers of not only you, but your spouse and dependents, financial information such as income and investments, medical records, business files such as contracts and personnel evaluations, and attorney- client communications, to name a few. Spyware and adware programs are frequently bundled into P2P file-sharing software. These programs collect personal information for marketers and provide access to your computer by malicious hackers. In an article located on Vnunet.com entitled “Users Fume at Grokster ‘Drive-by Download’”, these two programs “…can redirect a user’s homepage to a different website, install a new browser toolbar, insert entries into the users’ browser bookmark list, reinstall itself after uninstallation, and ultimately crash a user’s system.” Another grave concern for both individuals and businesses when using P2P software is unknowingly having your computer used as a supernode. A supernode occurs when your computer is arbitrarily assigned as a hub. When you are running the software for P2P services, your computer’s disk space, bandwidth, and processing power are used to help other users on the same system operate their software more efficiently because of their own network or firewall constraints. Not only can this overload systems or networks with excessive data, disk space, and network bandwidth, unscrupulous hackers can also insert arbitrary code in each supernode’s address space or crash all supernodes. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems such as Skype operate by taking bandwidth (information carrying capacity) from customers on their service to assist other customers using their service - analogous to a symbiotic relationship. The tools that enable them to accomplish this are bundled in the software their customers download to access their VoIP service. The above information is an excerpt taken from an in-depth and exclusive Report entitled “Why Hackers Love Computer Phones – A Shocking Report You Must Read!” by Dee Scrip available only at http://www.whypay4calls.com/gtp/to.pl? l=ART-02 Learn how to find your favorite TV Shows, Movies, MP3s, Software and Videogames. Visit http://www.secret-download- techniques.com http://www.secret-download-techniques.com Mon, 27 Jun 2005 23:10:41 +0200 Movies are a tremendous source of entertainment for most people. The reason? It’s probably because even people who have little in common can find a movie to enjoy together. The moviemakers apparently understood the need to create films that appeal to a wide audience. Otherwise, the good guy wouldn’t take time out in his pursuit of the bad guys to kiss the girl. The girl wouldn’t get herself in a wreck that required a heroic rescue before she got her guy. And – perhaps the most obvious example of all – the cartoons wouldn't have such great humor that appeals to the adults almost as much as the children. Technology has played an important role in broadening the appeal of most movies to encompass a wider audience. Consider the movies of a half-century ago. There were spacemen on Earth and earthlings in space, but the scenes were usually very plain and the almost everything was left to the imagination of the view. Today, the vistas are bigger than life, futuristic scenes are more incredible than the average imagination could have conjured on its own and the stunts are unbelievable – because they are humanly impossible. But even when we’re watching a stunt that can’t possibly have happened in real life, we’re awed and amazed and can’t wait to see it again. And again. And that’s the beauty of the movie experience today. Not only are there thousands upon thousands of movies to watch, many are available to buy, rent or download onto your PC. You can watch them as often as you want, shelve them for awhile and watch them again. While technology is playing an important role in the movie- making process, it’s also important for movie watching. The fact that many movies are now digital files on DVD allows moviemakers to apply a myriad of special features into the movie file itself. Surround sound is one of those special features and if you have a home theater set up with surround sound, you’ll be able to hear the special effects just like you do at a commercial theater. Ever wonder how it is that a door squeaks to your right, while a woman screams to your left? The answer is surround sound technology and a DVD has ample space to store those kinds of programming features. You and your spouse will probably never agree on every single movie. But with the many movie titles available for you to rent or own either on DVD or to download to your computer, it’s likely that you’ll find something that you both want to watch tonight. And maybe even something that you both want to watch again. And again. Learn how to find your favorite TV Shows, Movies, MP3s, Software and Videogames. Visit http://www.secret-download- techniques.com http://www.secret-download-techniques.com Mon, 27 Jun 2005 23:10:41 +0200 If you're a digital music fan, you probably have problems organizing your music file collection. For me, I used to have hundreds of MP3 files lumped in one folder in my hard drive. Can you imagine the pain I had to go through to find one specific tune to listen to? Organizing your music files is an important skill to learn. Once your collection is nicely sorted out, you'll be able to find the songs you want quickly and easily. So set aside some time and read through the following tips I've come up with. 1. Create Subfolders The single most important tip for organizing your music files is to create subfolders in your hard drive. Don't ever leave your MP3 files in one huge folder called C:My Music. Create subfolders like C:My MusicClassical, C:My MusicPop and C:My MusicSoundtracks. 2. Ensure your ID3 Tags Are Correct ID3 tags are used to store important information about MP3 files. Things like the song title, artist, album are kept and will be displayed by your MP3 player. Take the time to properly edit these tags - many MP3 files you download have the ID3 tag information all wrong. A good software program for editing ID3 tags is TagScanner. 3. Invest in Good Music Management Software There are several excellent pieces of software out there for managing music files. Two good ones come to mind. The first is MediaMonkey and the second is MusicMatch Jukebox. Both programs offer excellent music management features like an integrated music player, CD burning features and ID3 tag renaming. 4. Get Your Music Files from Legal Sources If you've been downloading music using P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing programs like KaZaa, you will very likely get music files which have strange names like 56_HeyjAck.mp3. My advice: Get your files from legal sources like online music services iTunes or Napster and you will avoid this problem. 5. Create Good Playlists Most software music player (e.g. Winamp) will allow you to create playlists. For example, say you're in the mood for rock songs, you can point to your folder called C:MusicRock and create a playlist from that folder. Save the playlist after it is created. When you next feel like listening to those songs, all you need to do is load that playlist instead of trawling through your hard drive and folders. 6. Get A Huge Hard Drive I know this sounds a little crazy - but running out of disk space can and will ruin your well-organized music collection. Make sure you have enough hard disk space to store your music files. Say you have 10,000 music files that you absolutely must retain and listen to. It is a very bad idea to store, say, 8,000 files in Hard Drive A and 2,000 files in Hard Drive B. Very messy. It's better to store them all in one hard disk. So get your hands on the biggest hard drive you can find. Conclusion I hope this article helps you to organize your music collection a little better. I know it takes effort, but once your music collection is properly catalogued, listening to your music collection will be a much more pleasant experience. So don't hesitate - get organized now! About The Author Gary Hendricks is computer enthusiasts. He runs three websites about digital video, digital music and computers. http://www.secret-download-techniques.com Mon, 27 Jun 2005 23:10:41 +0200 Most of you have probably heard of the RIAA's quest to crush online music piracy. The illegal sharing of copyrighted songs via the MP3 format over the Internet costs the music industry billions of dollars. This is conventionally done using illegal file sharing programs like KaZaa and iMesh. This article explores the legal ways to download and enjoy music from the Internet. Method 1: Check out Free Music Sites There are many free music websites which provide free music downloads. These are not the websites of your music pirates - they are totally legal. Don't expect to find full albums to download, particularly if the song is from a famous artist (only music pirate websites allow full album downloads). You'll only find a few "teasers" intended to make you want to buy the artists' CD. Independent, less well-known artists are an exception - many of them will let you down their complete song catalog to promote themselves. Here are a few of the free music websites which I recommend: * Secret-Download-Techniques.com * AMPCAST.com * Amazon.com Digital Music Downloads * RollingStone.com * ElectronicScene.com * The Internet Underground Music Archive Method 2: Buy Music Online An increasingly popular way to find and download music online is to head for legal online music services. The most popular of these is the Apples iTune service. Currently it provides over 400,000 songs from all five major labels. Each song is available for a standard price of 99 cents each. Here are the best online music services I've come across: * EMusic.com * iTunes * MusicMatch Downloads * Napster 2.0 * Rhapsody * Weblisten.com Conclusion It is very tempting to use KaZaa and other file sharing programs to download music - but please don't. If you wrote a song and sold a CD, would you be happy to see millions of people distributing that song for free? No. You don't have to break the law to find and download free MP3 music. There are many websites out there offering free music - you just need to find them. http://www.secret-download-techniques.com Mon, 27 Jun 2005 23:10:41 +0200 On July 28, 2004, French Internet access providers and music copyright owners signed a joint national charter aimed at cracking down on illegal downloads and expanding the amount of legal music tracks available online (AFP). This is the latest in a series of moves taken across the world to combat music piracy as production labels see more and more of their profits being lost to illegal downloads of music files. The music industry has been saying the same thing for several years now: peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks are exponentially distributing pirated music across the world through the Internet, and this constitutes a copyright infringement. In English, this means that the fact that I downloaded a Tori Amos track through Kazaa yesterday and am listening to it right now makes me a criminal. So far, so good. Quite true as well. But the real problem is not that people do not want to pay for music. Often I sample new music off the Internet before buying the CDs. Chances are that if I like most of the album, I’m going to buy it. On the surface this is what radio stations do when they play music. The difference, however, is that it has become insanely easy for me to acquire almost-as-good- as-original quality mp3s of any track that I want to listen to, and even if I don’t pay a dime, no one is there to catch me. http://www.secret-download-techniques.com The principle of accountability has vanished. When one sees that there are two ways to acquire the same product, but by sacrificing a ‘little’ bit of quality you can get it for free without being penalized for it, what would most rational people do? P2P networks have made finding music off the Internet ridiculously easy, and most of us tend to ‘forget’ our social responsibility when it comes to such ‘trivial’ matters. To contribute to this, copy-protection techniques used on CDs by major production houses are always a step behind the latest cracking algorithms, and steps taken to prevent ‘ripping’ of CDs and DVDs have proven fruitless so far. Enter music downloads of the legal kind. Disregarding the small number of ‘free’ legal music available for promotional purposes, more and more artists and labels have begun to provide a pay-per-download music service. In essence, you can purchase individual tracks or complete albums through a secure online transaction and then download your ‘purchase’ and, with variable limits to personal use, pretty much do whatever you want to do with it (Several providers digitally encode the files to prevent them from being played on other computers, or to be burned onto CD-Rs) This is both a move to encourage free-riders such as me to start acquiring ‘legal’ music and an economic adjustment to the digital music revolution. Developing technologies are changing the way people perceive and use music. The advent of iPod and other mp3 players has meant that more and more people are becoming accustomed to carrying around their complete music collections with the latest players offering space for around 10,000 songs. This holds frightening possibilities for record companies. There is a very real concern within the industry that the CD format is fast going out of style, and as technology evolves, consumer demands for the best ‘medium’ will change as well. Till a few years ago audio CDs offered unparalleled music quality, a factor record companies used to encourage people to ‘buy instead of steal (download)’. However, today’s high-quality digital formats mean that audio quality is comparable, and in some cases equal to, CDs. Some experts are even starting to predict that within a decade CDs will become history as digital music will evolve to a point where we will be have access to our entire music collection (hopefully paid for) wherever we want it: in our car, at work, anywhere in the house, even on the beach. Matched with promises (and the reality) of audio quality, this is a serious threat to traditional business. Thus, providing legal music online is a means of the industry trying to position itself to take advantage of the rising trend of portable music collections. A quick glance across major online music stores tells us exactly so. While offering free- riders affordable music (allowing them to purchase only the tracks they like instead of forcing them to buy the complete album) to ensure that they do not turn to music piracy, sites like eMusic and Apple’s iTunes are backing the new trend. iTunes, Apple’s online music store, has the added distinction of being supported by perhaps the best mp3 player in the business, the iPod. In this combination, Apple has found a very secure marketing brand and ensured that it takes full advantage of this cross between technology and music. Legal music downloads appear to be the perfect answer to stopping music piracy, at least the downloading kind. Therefore there is no surprise when one sees major record labels pushing to expand such services. However, recent developments tend to make us question what the overall agenda really is. After a period of consolidation of the digital music market in the last two years, albums available for download online are being priced higher than they would normally be in retail stores. It used to be that you could download a song for $0.99 and a complete album for $9.99, but now stores are setting higher prices, with tracks going for $1.50 or even $2.49 and $11.50 albums being sold for $12.50 and $13.00 online. What is going on? In positioning themselves to take advantage of changing market forces, the music industry has also hit upon another major factor in determining sales: consumer behavior. Legal music downloads offer people like me the comfort of never having to waste time in retail stores looking for my favorite track from high-school days or wondering when the latest album of Nickelback would hit the shelves. Instead, all the hassles are removed with everything easily searchable, previewable and downloadable from the comfort of my computer chair (and this baby is very, very, comfortable). Consumers may not be usually rational, but they are always looking to save the effort when it comes to making any sort of purchases. Online stores (or is it the major recording labels? Who knows…) are now cashing into this very aspect of human psychology and are beginning to charge extra for a service they are portraying now as a privilege. Having already consolidated their core target market, the time has now come to increase revenues. Would this drive people back towards music piracy? Highly unlikely. People are not evil, or criminal, by nature. Appeals to their better nature usually work, and that is the strategy adopted by agencies like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) who are actively involved in putting a stop to illegal music sharing. Media campaigns encouraging music lovers to pay a dollar or two for tracks instead of ‘committing a crime’ by downloading them for free are actually working as slowly but surely, more and more people flock to online music stores. And with existing customers sticking to this more ‘comfortable’ way of buying music, the industry is finally starting to win back ground it lost due to music piracy. http://www.secret-download-techniques.com Mon, 27 Jun 2005 23:10:41 +0200