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Chapter 5: Finding Files on Web and FTP Sites

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Chapter 5: Finding Files on Web and FTP Sites

Overview

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.

—John Cage

In the early days of the Internet, people didn’t have file sharing networks for swapping files with each other. Instead, if you wanted to share files over the Internet, you had to use File Transfer Protocol—FTP for short. FTP is just a standard method for transferring files from one computer to another.

Before the file sharing networks took over, many people used to share files (legal and otherwise ) through websites and FTP sites. Websites that offer FTP transfer simply display a list of files available, and you click the file you want to copy, as shown in Figure 5-1.

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Figure 5-1: The graphical nature of a web page lets you point and click on the files you want to copy, such as the movie The Matrix Revolutions or Microsoft Office XP.

FTP sites, on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of displaying graphics or point-and-click interfaces (FTP sites were around long before the World Wide Web popped up); they simply display lists of files within a cryptic hierarchy of directories and subdirectories, as shown in Figure 5-2. Essentially, you can think of an FTP site as a website without the pretty graphical appearance.

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Figure 5-2: An FTP site displays files organized in directories and subdirectories.

Web and FTP sites often contain freeware or shareware programs, software drivers, and scientific papers. Of course, many people also use web and FTP sites to share copyrighted information, including MP3 music files, pornographic photographs, full-length videos , and the latest versions of popular programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, or Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Setting up a website to distribute illegal material can be risky, but many people use free web hosting services, such as GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo. com) or Tripod (http://www.tripod.lycos.com), which they can operate anonymously. Still others don’t mind taking the risk of setting up a web or FTP site to distribute copyrighted files, because the authorities don’t have time to examine every web or FTP site on the Internet to search for illegally distributed files. To avoid prosecution , many of these web and FTP sites are located in countries like Russia, Germany, or India, which protects them to a large extent from prosecution by American companies and authorities.

If you’re willing to take some time and do a little more work, you can often find most any file you want on various web and FTP sites around the Internet with little legal risk to yourself (unless, of course, you start sharing your copyrighted files with others).

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TYPES OF SITES

When exploring FTP sites and websites , you’re likely to run across three different types:

Leech sites These provide free, unlimited access to all the files you want. They’re also extremely rare.

Ratio sites These force users to upload a certain number or size of files before the FTP or website administrator will allow you to download anything. A typical ratio might be 1:10, which means you need to upload 1MB of files, and in return, you’ll be able to download up to 10MB of files.

Banner sites These display banner ads (sometimes many obnoxious ones) that you must click before you can get access to the FTP site or website. Web and FTP site administrators get a certain amount of money for each banner ad their site displays, so these sites tend to force users to view dozens of such ads, usually offering pornography. The worst part is that many of these are themselves scams; even if you click all the banners, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever get access to the desired site or that it has anything other than banners. In fact, we estimate that close to 99 percent of these sites are scams.

Note

Many banner sites do nothing but display an endless series of banner ads at you without ever giving you access to anything useful.

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