The latest fad in file sharing is Port 80

2 years back i when i was still in college, i used to keep my computer on through out the night, downloading stuff on bittorrent, gunatella and half a dozen other file sharing networks. That was the only way to share divx movies and mp3s without anybody; except the Americans (cause the RIAA and MPAA were in their own background ) getting into any trouble.

You used to find the Longhorn builds here and there but M$ would take them down as soon as they came up. still those file sharing networks rocked in getting the latest/popular stuff on your HDD. speeds weren't very high and divx movies at times took 2-3 days to be 100% completed. But that was always fine cause the big stuff, pirated pc games were always available dirt cheap on the local gadget market. most people never knew that file sharing networks existed until any of their friends told them or until they saw the newspapers splashed with yet another RIAA lawsuit. Good old port 80 (HTTP), was just good for mail, game demos and forums. Illegal stuff hosted on HTTP servers was kind of hard to find.

Fast forward to 2007. Internet speeds have multiplied many times, more people are hooked on to the WWW and internet companies are throwing away server space for almost free. GMail is 2 GB, Y!Mail is 1 GB. If they can spare such ridiculous amount of server space on mere mails, guess what they can spare for your files.

There are now filehosting services [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_hosting_service] that give GBs of server space to a user for free, they do charge money for faster access, but the free services are more than enough for most. They make money through advertisements on their site.

So here we are at the latest and fastest way to get stuff on the net! Plain old HTTP, no underground networks, no special apps. Just rip the content you want to share, zip it all up, put it on a file hosting site and publish the url to the world. Yeah the media companies still come after us all. They threaten the file hosting site, the file hosting site already has guidelines against copyrighted stuff being published on their servers, they take down the file, the publisher isn't touched at all. But nobody is at a loss, by the time all this happens, a few thousands have already got their hands on the file, its now up at other file hosting sites, file sharing networks, p2p networks. It has replicated at such a fast pace all over the globe that it is next to impossible to take it down now.

And then finally there are trackers who get the links to all these files on their site, these are mostly forums or even public sites, only a few require you to be a member (memberships is mostly free) to get the links. Most trackers are specialized, some track only music albums, some TV shows, some content for mobiles, etc. Even though these sites have been up for quite sometime now, very few people know about them. I just started frequenting such site 3 months back.

All you have to do to get the latest music album/movie/tv show/game for free is to find such a tracker, become a free member in case it is required, look among the latest uploads, search for what you want, find the link (most of the time you would find mirrors on different servers) and download it over the browser. (for a test tryout http://www.simplemp3s.com/ for music, rest find on your own :P through Google, its very easy).

And if you really like a site and enjoy using the stuff you download through it, donate to help keep the trackers online and help them get more stuff out for all of us.

Plain and simple. No downloading half a dozen downloaders for each network, no more configuring ports and setting speed limits. No more worrying about your ISP or network admin blocking access to a port range.

Simple old HTTP to the rescue :) All hail Port 80!!