How not to get caught downloading illegal MP3’s and music

Posted on November 28, 2007 at 11:48 am

Make sure to read other posts from the How-To Tutorials series!

How to connect your Laptop/PC/Computer to your TV
How to reset or unfreeze an iPod Nano, iPod Touch, iPod Classic, or iPod Shuffle
Capture a video of your PC screen and share it online using uTipu
How to access blocked web sites from school, office, or work using JAP
How to record yourself online using your PC’s webcam
How to check all of your email accounts from Gmail
How not to get caught downloading illegal MP3’s and music

Working so long with computers, I’ve seen how things have changed over time when it comes to illegal music and MP3 downloads, from a carefree free-for-all type to a fairly risky activity. If you’ve been using Kaaza, Bearshare, or Azureus to download tons of illegal MP3s onto your computer, you run a pretty high risk of being slapped with a lawsuit from the RIAA. And judging by the news reports I have read, you REALLY want to avoid that.

So I’m writing this guide on how you can avoid being caught downloading MP3’s illegally. Note this is not some kind of hacking guide on how to get free music by bypassing security measures, etc, it’s simply a clean and legal way to listen to your favorite music without running the risk of having legal action brought against you.

Picture Source: PrisonPlanet

There are a couple of ways to avoid illegal MP3s and some of them will be obvious, but any route is better than having to worry about the RIAA.

Stop using file sharing services – First thing you want to do is get yourself off of those peer-to-peer networks altogether! Even if you download a few songs every once in a while, you can still get in trouble by accident! There have been many lawsuits filed against the completely wrong people, but because they had an account in Kazza, etc, they got picked accidentally instead of the real distributor.
Download MP3s for cheap prices – Obviously, if you’re using file sharing networks, you’re looking for free MP3 downloads. However, the prices on single songs and full albums has gone down dramatically in the last few years and it’s well worth the small price for owning your own songs. Also, there are so many choices for downloading legal music, such as iTunes, Amazon, MP3Fiesta, eMusic, MP3.com, and tons more. Everything except iTunes is DRM-free, which means you can listen to it on any device and copy it as many times as you like as long as you don’t try to make money off of it.
Find free songs online on the Internet – One myth that most people think is that there are lots more songs on the peer to peer networks than just on the Internet itself. People think that way because if you try to perform a Google search for a song, you’re not going to find an MP3 (unless you use some advanced filters, etc). However, that’s a pain and no one will do that all the time. That’s where services like SeeqPod and Songza are absolutely fabulous. They index all the songs on the Internet (whether they or legal or not) and you can simply perform a search and listen to them, absolutely nothing illegal about it. Songza has found just about every song I have thrown at it.
Listen to other people’s songs – Finally, you can go to sites like Anywhere.FM or Streampad and listen to music uploaded by other people. They can upload illegal MP3s and you can listen to them like a radio station. You won’t be able to download them to your computer.

However, if you’re hell bent on getting the MP3s onto your local hard drive, you can actually record streaming audio to your computer and save it as an MP3 file. That way, if you just want to get a few songs as MP3s onto your computer instead of having to listen to them online, you can play it on Songza or Anywhere.FM and record the audio output. I wrote up an article previously on how to record streaming audio here.

Hopefully, that helps shed some light on how you can avoid getting caught for downloading illegal MP3s. There really is no way to truly hide yourself, unless you download the music from a completely different computer not in your house or office. Legal is always better though! Enjoy!

[tags]how not to get caught downloading illegal mp3s, illegal mp3s, download free mp3s, illegal mp3 downloads[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

45 Responses to “How not to get caught downloading illegal MP3’s and music”

Nirmal said on : November 29th, 2007 at 6:31 am

Will they file law suit against people in other countries like India?

akishore said on : November 29th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

Nirmal,

I don’t think they can get to you if you’re outside of the country, I’ve only heard of cases here in the United States. However, I’m not 100% certain about that, so you might want to look it up online. Thanks.

Ryan said on : January 14th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

do you know how to get past filters??

kendall said on : January 14th, 2008 at 7:25 pm

what about limewire…?

Leo said on : February 25th, 2008 at 5:14 am

Well,
Here’s the Best suggusetion for you all.

DON’T USE INTERNET and you’ll be 120% be safe……….^^

Cheers!!

Annie said on : March 16th, 2008 at 11:47 am

Ok obviously for Itunes ur going to have to pay like a doller for each song and once u add that up and u have 500 songs u would have to pay 500 dollers but anyway what about Limewire. You didn’t mention it above as being an illegal way to download music but is it illegal? like i only download a couple of songs.

jake said on : April 1st, 2008 at 6:10 pm

check out radioblogclub.com, it free, no download, and legal.
-may be updating now
-if it doesnt work, try radio.blog.club.com

Mystica said on : April 3rd, 2008 at 1:46 am

Aren’t you guys ashamed to have a discussion like that. When you illegally download something you are cutting down on someones lifes earnings. This no different that a third rated CHEATING!

mu said on : June 10th, 2008 at 7:39 am

or you could just continue in your piratey ways and download peer guardian

Angel said on : July 5th, 2008 at 4:29 pm

Well, in my experience, you can just find the songs online and delete them when you’ve uploaded them to your MP3 player.

And for those of you who don’t have one: WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWNLOADING SONGS?! Youtube has every song that you could want to listen to, and if you’re downloading songs on Kazaa, you probably have Internet. I would understand if you simply couldn’t afford to buy songs online at all due to credit card issues, or if you were downloading foreign songs that – let’s face it – you can’t get AT ALL on I-tunes or something similar because of some stupid language issue, which is something that I’m rather familiar with.

I do feel horrible about what I’m doing, because most of my music is from my favorite singer, Utada Hikaru, but I simply cannot afford to buy music. I won’t get into it, but all of my money is used for necessities and bills. (And yes, for me, internet is a necessity that rates along college courses.) As soon as I get money, I will buy songs, but I just can’t right now.

Talen said on : July 8th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Lawsuits be damned. I just wouldn’t pay, regardless of the decision. I once lived in a trailer park where the owner often sued tenants for various reasons. He had a stack of decisions that were in his favor. He never saw a cent of the money. Just don’t pay.

Wise Reader said on : August 4th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

Of course this post doesnt correspond to the title as it should be.
The correct title for this kind of post should be like “Stop downloading illegally and start downloading free (horrible) musics and paying for them.”

And the correct post for that kind of title should be “Allways use encryption while under peer-to-peer programs, if you can, buy a ip-hide program and use it when you want to download things from rapidshare and etc, and never show off your illegal file collection over the internet”

Ditto.

Ryan Austin said on : August 6th, 2008 at 4:51 am

Dude, thanks for the tips but “Wise Reader” has a point: so Mr. Dumas…. Why don’t you encourage him to help us out more! Where in the heck do you get these ip-hide and encryption thingies????

Matt said on : August 28th, 2008 at 8:27 am

To listen to music for free, you have websites providing radios and smartradios, but there are also real music-on-demand websites! The best one, to me, is http://www.deezer.com/en which offer a huge catalogue in quite a good quality!!!

KuriousGorge said on : September 18th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

Hey guys,
I’m wondering if sites like zshare, speedyshare, etc. often linked to from blogspots are “getting-caught worthy”?? I’ve been DLing songs like this exclusively, as my school caught me once using torrents. Anyone have an answer?

Nick said on : November 21st, 2008 at 8:50 pm

If you rarely download torrents (i can coutn the number of times i’ve used torrents on one hand) are you running a big risk?

John said on : November 25th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

You didn’t even tell me how I can ‘illegally’ download music

Katie said on : December 7th, 2008 at 5:38 pm

Every single person that is illegally downloading here- BASTARDS.

It’s people like you that are the reason the music industry is in such a mess. As time goes on less and less artists will be out.

In one week of putting out a single I have lost £2000…how are artists supposed to make any profit when they have so much money to pay back to labels?
It’s just like stealing the cd out a shop.
Bastards.

Fighthepower! said on : December 20th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

The reason why the music industry is losing money and people are downloading illegally is becsuse artists today are simply putting out terrible music! If im going to spend my hard earned money on a cd, I want the music to be worth it. Dont just put out a cd just to say you put out a cd! Come correct and you wont have to worry about people not wanting to purchase garbage!

Focused said on : December 28th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

Throw a song in google….followed by some random file sharing service like megaupload, sendspace, rapidshare, etc… and you should be good. If not, just go to youtube. You can download anything that’s on youtube. All you have to do is download the .flv file that youtube plays, then convert that to a audio only .mp3.

Alternatively, you could join one of the thousands of online forums that share files via free file sharing sites. The file might be called “rhcpam.rar” and inside it’s a zipped folder of Red Hod Chilli Pepper’s albums.

Gordo said on : January 5th, 2009 at 10:51 pm

Perhaps you should find an alternative to the record industry Katie… It seems to me from your post that the record industry is stealing from you, not fans of your music.

This article does not explain the big picture.

The music industry is going to target consumers who are using the most popular methods of distribution. It is the path of least resistance for them. The methods that provide the most transparency will be the most risky. Its much easier to investigate file-sharers on Kazaa because anyone on Kazaa can know what you are doing.

The solution is to find a method that is lesser known and less popular, but still has the selection you want. One way I have found is IRC chat rooms. There are traders on IRC who have enormous libraries, and are willing to send mp3s for free. The software behind the exchanges is robust enough to allow for searching and batch downloading as well. Also, the RIAA targets those who provide the files you are downloading, not the one doing the downloading. IRC allows you to place the risk squarely on the distributors. Bitorrent does NOT provide this protection. Torrent downloaders are involved in the uploading process as well. The only way around this is by hacking the actual torrent software, and this is a good way to become unpopular quickly. If you are on a private torrent network, then congratulations, but the RIAA has been working to infiltrate these groups as well.

Here is a quick tutorial on mp3 file sharing on IRC:
http://www.mp3daze.com/findmp3irc.htm

Another risk free method was mentioned in the article, however it is not nearly as hard to do as the article would have you believe. It involves doing Google searches for mp3s. It is possible to practically automate the process with Firefox.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to use Google to download MP3s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv953XZX6Y

Lastly, the RIAA will not target downloaders who share music outside of thier own labels. The RIAA is a dynamic, every changing entity. Labels come and go. http://www.riaaradar.com/ is a resource that keeps track of what tracks are protected by the RIAA. You can search riaaradar.com’s database for a song. If it comes up clean, you can download from anywhere without risk of litigation. Just be wary of compilations and discographies. Batches of files (i.e. most music torrents) will contain both RIAA label and non-label tracks. Downloading these is still risky. Musicians often times use multiple labels so one album in their discography might be safe, whereas others may not. Be thorough when you investigate.

Fred said on : January 14th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

I always thought downloading music from the internet without using p2p (so like using songza or any other mp3 search engine) was completely legal, but there are some extremely short-tempered people (oy, they’re always such a pain) who insist that the very fact that I’m downloading music for free is illegal.

So, which is it?

ken said on : March 3rd, 2009 at 12:54 pm

If I own the CD, why is it illegal for me to download the mp3s using bittorrent? If a show is on TV, why is it illegal for me to download and watch at my convenience instead of at the broadcasters convenience? Why is a song that I can listen to for free over the radio different from a song I download and listen to on my computer?

Noname illegal downloading god said on : June 18th, 2009 at 11:37 pm

As this foolishness spills forth about this whole downloading thing, whats right, whats wrong well i have to say that i have to laugh, I probably download 150-450 gigs a week (slow week). I’ve got 115 1-tb hd’s (all not in use obviously) full of stuff i downloaded “illegal” and i purchase tb hd’s by the 10-20 or more (i get a deal) (i buy em in cash and i don’t use my real name!) .

I use tunneling software/multi redundant ip cloaking(my own version invention) I have a cisco pix hard firewall and a Sonicwall, and im hubbed out around the usa and i have hubs in other countryies (one of the benefits of being a network test developer-the other countries don’t even know about my hubs!!) I have been doing this since the dawn of DRM/cd copy protection/since downloading was doable and i don’t thing im going to get caught-I invite riaa/mpaa/drm idiots to try and take me down-i sell and trade more music in a day than they do in a year-i think i’ll keep doing it forever and send them an email or 500 from paraguay about how they are SO SLOW AT FINDING EVEN ONE OF MY HUBS!!! I GOT HUNDREDS to “spawn from”

Thank you and good night
NO NAME Illegal downloading god

I normally don’t brag about this-but i had to finally announce that i’ve been around in the backround all along-watching listening, learning, This will be the only time you hear from me…………………..

SCREW RIAA
SCREW MPAA
SCREW DRM
SCREW CD-COPY PROTECTION/VIDEO PROTECTION-I broke macrovision-encoding on vhs-tapes in an hour in 1991 and i was a kid……….

Davey said on : June 18th, 2009 at 11:53 pm

Can you get caught using torrent websites? I don’t use limewire or anything

RaventheDove said on : June 22nd, 2009 at 8:32 am

Well, it’s illegal no matter where you download it from. I’ve learned a number of ways to avoid detection but I’m always willing to learn more. “Stealing” music is the wrong term for this, though. It’s not a physical product and you aren’t reducing their inventory, therefor you aren’t stealing anything.

What we’re doing is unlawful reproduction. They don’t lose money because I download. If I stole a cd, they wouldn’t be able to sell it; they would then lose money. That’s theft. If I download a song (or entire cd) they still have just as many songs and cds that they can sell and thus have lost no money.

I download music because I didn’t have the money to legally purchase it at the prices they put this stuff out. So, really, they don’t lose any money from my downloading because I wasn’t going to buy the damn song anyway. Whether I downloaded it or not, they wouldn’t get money. Considering the falling costs of music production hardware and software, maybe music companies and artists should think about reducing their fees and pass that on to consumers. Then we would buy their shrink wrapped, mass produced crap.

On the other hand, as it stands now, I have a much larger income than I had in the past so I purchase more than I download illegally. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop completely. Illegal downloads are leading to more purchases from me so they should really be thanking the file sharing community. Anyway, that’s my take.

blabla said on : June 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm

how about websites like zshare, airmp3.net? you can download off the websites for absolutely free of charge, they just upload the song files there. I wonder if it is illegal?

emmerrrrrr said on : July 1st, 2009 at 5:34 am

Why should we pay for music? Music should be for everyone to hear and enjoy. so what if we’re ’stealing profits’ from the artists? no offence but they’re probably still making at least double what we are!! its not like they now have no money because of us! the decent artists are the ones who are in it for their love of music, not necessarily the money.

Like ken said – we can listen to music free on the radio – whats the difference? it does my head in to be honest. yeh sure its only 79c to download a song.. i currently have nearly 10,000 songs on my itunes, which would have cost me nearly £7,900 if i’d have bought it. i LOVE music, and would not be without it. therefore, will not pay for it!!

Al Jerky said on : July 28th, 2009 at 2:43 pm

Go to your library and check out CDs, then rip them and return them to the library. Go to another library and do the same thing. I have 80GB of MP3s from this method.

No name said on : August 21st, 2009 at 4:04 pm

What about downlading music where the music isn’t for download in the first place? It’s a website where you can just listen not download music but I use a program (of sorts) to download it. Is this illegal? Can I get caught this way?

Adam Clifton said on : September 7th, 2009 at 7:48 pm

Did you know you can actually just save YouTube videos to your computer? That includes all of those music videos or songs people upload. With a MP3 converter you can convert these FLV files to Mp3s.

Just an idea.

Flexible C said on : October 7th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

Lawsuits be damned… why should each one of us pay for music copied to a CD by a company’s CD-cloning machine? That the artist has made NO EFFORT to record the CD you’re listening to, so why should each and every CD, on which the artist himself has spent no sweat?

I believe artists should get their pay for performing, not by sitting at home. Singers from live shows, actors from movie theatre ticket sales, game creators from online advertising and P2P gaming (access to which should be paid, higher levels should be paid too).

CDs, DVDs should never be sold at such ridiculous prices – but at cost price. No profit, no loss. Only then will this wanton culture of celebrities and hyper fandom drop to believable levels.
Let them really earn their lifestyle, then we’ll see some real talent shine through.

TheTruth said on : November 20th, 2009 at 6:02 pm

The author of this is an idiot “If you’ve been using Kaaza, Bearshare, or Azureus to download tons of illegal MP3s onto your computer, you run a pretty high risk of being slapped with a lawsuit from the RIAA”, high risk? Nearly everyone I know use’s peer to peer connections and no lawsuits.

I hope everyone doesnt think that if you download song BAM!! Your SCREWED!! No, its not like that. Who actually cares beside the artist about it? Actually my brother who is in a band actually freely distributes his music. Why? Because he more than happy to know that people like his music and listen to it. Not like those greedy artists.

zero said on : December 25th, 2009 at 12:40 pm

if i download rar. music files from the internet can i get caught, or am i in the clear?

HMMM said on : December 30th, 2009 at 1:18 am

Bands get paid a lot anyways..sure 14.99 x P2P = shitloads of money off the windows.

but we still have concerts and everything right?? if i really like the band, i just go buy their cds(:

Bryan said on : January 1st, 2010 at 11:33 pm

LimeWire, and all those other clients are illegal, yes…

Here’s a better way.

Do a google search for software called “Peer Guardian”
There are windows and mac versions, and the program BLOCKS the IP address of the known monitoring computers that are attempting to sue you. By blocking their addresses, they cannot track or connect to you, and you will therefore be invisible to them.

I use piratebay.org to gather torrent files, then Transmission to download the files. I’m on a Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard, running Peerguardian 1.6b2, and am currently blocking 1.3 BILLION IP addresses from connecting to me.

Downloading music, videos, and any other type of shared copyright materials is illegal. but like all cyber crimes, it’s hard to catch ya, and hard to track ya. With the right software on your side… it becomes near impossible.

Have Fun Guys!!

John said on : January 2nd, 2010 at 9:21 pm

In the future, records will be made to promote tours. Right now, tours are to promote records. More money is made touring anyway.

More tours are successful than records. People who give a shit about the art of music don’t care about the CD factories.

The Man said on : January 4th, 2010 at 1:43 pm

Warez-bb.org You’ll never have to worry about being caught.

The green man said on : January 8th, 2010 at 5:37 pm

What is the risk of downloading Bit-Torrent mp3s files and then transfering them onto an mp3 player using Windows media and iTunes can I transfer mp3 files directly onto mp3 players {like creative zen} without having to use the windows media and itunes software and websites?) – do we not transfer Bit-Torrent mp3s over to our mp3 players most of the time??? hmmm

vampire said on : January 10th, 2010 at 2:05 am

the web site is frostwire.com i have it on my computer and personally i think it is WAY better then limewire.com and the songs sound great

Gary Numan said on : January 14th, 2010 at 4:50 pm

I sometimes use this site called beemp3. It has a lot of songs you can download for free.

Daisy said on : January 26th, 2010 at 6:07 pm

I am an artist and a musician and I don’t mind if people “steal” my art as long as they are not pawning it off as their own. I like the concept of people enjoying my art and telling their friends about it, spreading the word, and coming to my shows. So what’s the big deal if a broke college kid downloads a couple songs by an indie artist? Who knows they might be the tipping point for the artist and spread news of them to all their hipster friends, who in turn will tell all their hipster friends, and so on and so forth. Artists should be flattered that people want to be a part of their art. The money will come, stop being so greedy and start thinking about what really drives you to create.

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