Lately, while browsing Twitter, I’ve been seeing a lot of irresponsible piracy on the site. I’m going to tell you how to pirate each type of whatever piratable content you can.
Software
Software is the most common pirated type. Let’s go over the checklist:
- Make sure it’s from a torrent tracker
- If not, make sure that the person sending you something like a Direct Download Link has the original Torrent file or hash and verify the directory.
- You can do so with any bog-standard torrent client, by linking the directory, limiting downloads/peers to something like 0 or 1 if it doesn’t let you, and direct the torrent at your directory where the contents lie.
- Make sure it’s from a trusted source
- Most give you names from the torrent trackers. You can visit them, or visit the r/piracy megathread for a reference point.
- If it isn’t a trusted source – then you might get infected with malware. Always check software that smells fishy to you via VirusTotal, or ask someone to extract potential installers to verify their legitimacy
- Make sure that the file size matches what the vendor expects – if your copy of Photoshop CC 2026 is 30MB, then you got scammed and if you ran it, you potentially got infected.
Music
Music is safer because it can either come in a compressed or uncompressed format. There’s no malware – but let’s go over the needed checklist anyway:
- Make sure what you’re downloading is lossless
- FLAC, ALAC (in the .m4a container), APE or WavPack (.wv and .wvc for error correction) are lossless compressed file formats
- WAV, AIF(F) and CAF are Pulse-Code Modulation files. They’re generally unfavored due to their giant file sizes, and the latter two are incompatible with many devices, despite being functionally and pragmatically the same as WAV.
- If not – Make sure that the bitrate is somewhere above 128kbps on all formats. Anything lower sacrifices a large amount of quality and kills the music.
- If it’s not on any torrent tracker, find it on the Internet Archive
- If it’s not on the Internet Archive, find it on SoulSeek
- If it’s not on SoulSeek, obtain a physical copy and contribute
Video Games
Video games have a lot of common sense, but let’s reiterate:
- Watch out for fake FitGirl repacks sites.
- Consult the megathread.
- Emulated game files can’t have malware in them because emulators have isolations. You only have to watch out if your downloads are actually what you want.
- Consult the Internet Archive for some retro ROMs. You might need an account to view some.
- Find native installers for modern consoles (e.g. Switch, PlayStation® 3/Vita™, et cetera)
VST/AU/CLAP Audio Plug-ins
- Make sure that the version is plausibly late
- Follow the best practices for Software
Movies – TV
- Involve yourself into Servarr and Plex/Jellyfin.
- Regarding Servarr:
- You have to supply your own indexers, including trackers, NZB (Usenet) services, et cetera.
- Sonarr is for TV Shows
- Radarr is for Movies
- Lidarr is for Music. Generally not recommended.
- Prowlarr is for searching/indexing. Much more aggressive than what Sonarr/Radarr offer, and much more unified
- Bazarr is for subtitles. Links with Sonarr/Radarr, and searches the internet for subtitles.
- Regarding Downloading:
- qBittorrent is a good torrenting client that can interface with Sonarr/Radarr
- SABnzbd is for Usenet downloads.
- Regarding actually streaming/playing:
- Jellyfin is a FOSS implementation of the last version of Emby before it went closed-source. It has many issues, especially with content matching.
- Many of its apps are web-app wrappers and/or have media compatibility issues, especially when it comes to Dolby Vision, Atmos or HDR content.
- Many apps that try to overcome this by using system-native components (like Infuse) lack in features, but are plausible for most users. However, Infuse costs $2/month. Don’t expect free stuff when using this.
- Navidrome/Subsonic have horrible UX. Absolutely ditch it if anyone tells you to use it
- Plex is a media server, highly regarded because of its top notch content management. Sonic analysis of audio files, intro/credits detection on TV shows, and the ability to work without any need of port forwarding.
- However, it costs Money. Plex Pass money. It’s $8 a month, but you get a much better experience.
- Native apps on every single platform that has a screen, et cetera.
- Jellyfin is a FOSS implementation of the last version of Emby before it went closed-source. It has many issues, especially with content matching.
- Regarding Servarr:
Hope that’s all! Reply with suggestions, and I’ll consider something else