I recently read the article on squidoo regarding the activities of these sites that say they offer free and unrestricted downloads of all types of music and movies. The article says they are scams and believe me many are for as long as I can remember in writing for this blog, I’ve come across tons of them.
Some sites offer free downloads at the beginning in exchange for subscriptions for their music service (which has declined in the recent years with the proliferation of P2P download sites that have all the latest tracks up for grabs). They give you a couple of tracks and then offer you more, for a fee of course. Some sites are totally commercial and have you subscribe up front to get access to their vast collection of stuff which is by the way the best one to go with for the music you get from them is considered to be licensed. The more devious sites hook you in, keep you on the line and pull you in along with the sinker and all. They do crazy stuff such as drop malware and viruses as they go exploiting vulnerabilities in your system’s configuration. They even contain stuff that shouldn’t even be available to those who don’t want or are not even interested in them (porn and other dirty stuff) without you even asking for it.
But along the way, I’ve come along some unexpected sites such as the BBC and other library sites facilities that have a lot of archived free stuff that you can get for personal use. The industry has stopped research and development into copyright protection for all types of media simply because they are futile and people still get them somewhere over the internet. Responsible users do respect the rights of the owners and buy licensed originals but there are just too many people who want it for free. Hackers make this possible with deep rooted hate towards industry for their ways and monopoly. Others, do it for hatred of the people who make the software and music so whatever the reason it might be left to the user to say enough is enough and initiate control over them (which is next to impossible) but we can make a change by starting on your own.
Tags: Free-music, Free-Stuff, Free-Video
Categories: Applications, Downloading Legally, Freeware, Mobile Phones, Music, Photo Images, Podcasts, Providers, Resources, Videos, ipods
Named after the famous character from the Matrix series, is another of the P2P file sharing programs on the net offering tons of free downloads and other free stuff. Like many of the P2P systems in use, the program does not yet include a function that prevents control over copyrighted content but they promise this in future versions. There are tons of downloads available once you get the client interface software from the site which is by the way also free to download. They have video, audio, pictures and many more items available for download. The P2P platform has managed to stay in use due to the ease at which large files are shared and transferred from user to user through the internet.
Other download methods simply take too much time and come with the risks of malicious programs embedded within the file itself. P2p is fast and safe for most of the part and they can be used for free or as part of a paid service where you pay a certain amount for a number of downloads per month. The improvements regarding copyrights are coming and might make it a bit harder to share files but unique and original content from all over the world shared by other users always remains free like all P2P programs and systems.
The client software also has a one-click CD burning function which allows the downloaded content to be burned directly onto a disk for portable computing and use. It also features parental control which many other programs lack allowing better control over what gets through and what doesn’t.
Tags: Free-music, Free-Stuff, Free-Video
Categories: Applications, Downloading Legally, Freeware, Music, Photo Images, Podcasts, Providers, Resources, Videos
The company has had a ton of stints with the law but guess what, they are now legal, or they claim to be. The company is one of the foremost music source for those who wanted free music and many more and took the role from the damned Napster which was forced to close due to many legalities they couldn’t cope with a few years back. The new iMesh offers legal downloads with licenses from many record labels in their move to maintain their many a loyal following. The site has been around for quite some time which now boasts over 2 million strong collection of songs and other free stuff you can download and burn directly to cd’s or DVD’s for your listening pleasure.
iMesh is recognized to be the pioneer of the multi-source download which allows people to download songs and other content from a variety of sources(swarming) allowing faster and more reliable downloads. The site offers a free download of their latest software which includes a mini-player and more stringent privacy functions. They have also been offering hassle-free resumable downloads which allows long files to be downloaded easy making it one of the best sites to get stuff from. Everybody has experiences of interrupted downloads that you spend all night waiting for and end up with junk due to a power glitch or fluctuation causing the download to hang or have useless parts having you downloading it again and so on and so forth. The continue function allows you to cut a download, get to doing whatever needs doing and get back to it while you are at the helm of your computer to monitor the progress of the process. Check out the iMesh.com site for more information on the new stuff and hottest songs/tracks that are available for download from their library of legal and free stuff.
Tags: Free-music, Free-Stuff, Free-Video, Imesh
Categories: Applications, Downloading Legally, Freeware, Graphics, Music, Photo Images, Podcasts, Providers, Resources, Videos, ipods
The site is a quite recent newcomer and it offers royalty free downloads of many stuff offered for producers and animation artists. They have a selection of Flagship downloads for titles and some instant downloads allowing web developers easy access to much needed content for background themes and many others. It is quite a nifty site that has theme packs, sound effects and broadcasts all in one site which if one was quite in need of much needed resources say for a web site under development and many other applications.
Some are available for a price and some are free but the best stuff come from their paid sections which would give you quite a lot of value for money. The theme pack series comes with all the necessary stuff from one genre giving you access to all the relevant and best tracks for audio and video content development all in one disk for the said genre selected. The SFX library gives one access to any of the 800 natural or SFX electronic stuff contained sound tracks for use on a variety of applications. The broadcast series contains stuff for use on your custom program and the best part of it is that most are royalty free meaning you only purchase one time without the hassle of paying for use every time it is used.
The site offers a whole lot more so be sure to check them out for more neat and useful stuff fro all your web development sound and effects needs. Yeah, they might be asking for a price but you get the stuff all in one neat package for parcel delivery or immediate download.
Tags: Free-music, Free-SFX, Free-Video
Categories: Applications, Downloading Legally, Graphics, Music, Photo Images, Podcasts, Resources
The Sweden based site has faced prosecution and has had their web servers confiscated but a few days after they were shut-down, guess what they’re up again. The Pirate Bay.org is now considered to be one of the biggest if not the biggest Bit torrent tracker in the world that used to be run from an office which has long since disappeared due to anti-piracy moves by the government. The government has had it’s eye on the form since it was founded late 2003 when they started to do their business as a group of people who hated copyright laws. Since they were raided in 2004, the site has managed to remain open due to cat and mouse tactics which had the web servers moved overseas way out of the reach of the government and one server has even been placed into a bank vault hopefully to keep safe from actions towards it by the authorities. The pioneers have shifted to hard-wired laptops rather than wirelessly connected ones for they say they don’t trust the airwaves.
They have emphasized again and again that they are not doing any wrong due to the fact that the servers that they maintain and operate do not have any copyrighted content but merely mirrors of the bit torrents that are relevant to a search conduct. This has met repeated resistance from the government and anti-piracy groups in hopes of protecting the intellectual and copyright policies now being implemented all over the world. To date, the site has managed to remain open with the founders shifting locations to avoid being traced and as long as people want free stuff and don’t want to pay for them they will be there to serve the world’s bit-torrent downloading needs.
The founder’s motto, “ I take whatever I want because I can!”
Tags: Bit-torrents, Free-for-All, Free-music, Free-Video, Pirate-Bay
Categories: Applications, Downloading Legally, Freeware, Music, Podcasts, Resources
YouTube is considered to be one of the best sites for sharing stuff on the web such as video, Music video and video logs or simply blogs in video format. From humble beginnings in 2005, when the company was conceptualized by three former employees of Pay Pal it is now considered to be the best way to share video on the world theater. The final deal came when Google purchased the rights for the company to the tune of more than 1.5Billion US dollars worth of Google Inc’s stocks.
Media as a whole loved the free spirited approach of YouTube without the hassles of multi-million dollar advertising deals and many other legal stuff that comes with it. Though many treat it as a place where they can say or show anything, well think again. YouTube follows the rulings and provisions of the United States Copyright law and do take out materials that are categorized to have broken these said laws. Nudity and vulgar content is also un-allowed and they are removed from the site accordingly.
The control and freedom have to be balanced and the site has to ensure that the rights of all are protected whatever side they may be on. They are always open to new stuff that can be shared to the worlds billions upon billions of users who visit and upload stuff they deem necessary. The legal side of YouTube is that many people who are directly affected by the said site, celebrities remain very much divided on the said site and how it works. Marketing people love the site for they use it in a form or another to promote stuff they normally spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars in ad fees and many other costs associated with it. The Legal advisors on the other hand hate it due to the proliferation of pirated stuff on the site which cannot be taken out of circulation on time. Recently, the company allowed Media companies to ban their stuff and pull them from the gallery without prior approval from the owners or the company.
So what do we expect for the future of YouTube, well like all things that start out to be free and un-regulated it will mature into a site that satisfies most of the parties involved. So future moves by the site might mean more strict controls and other measures to filter out stuff automatically but there will always be detractors as with any other issue.
Tags: copyright-infringement, Copyright-Protection, Free-Video, legal-issues, youtube
Categories: Downloading Legally, Freeware, Photo Images, Podcasts, Providers, Site News, Videos
I recently read the article on squidoo regarding the activities of these sites that say they offer free and unrestricted downloads of all types of music and movies. The article says they are scams and believe me many are for as long as I can remember in writing for this blog, I’ve come across tons of them.
