I previously covered my history with piracy in the Huffington Post, and gave a breakdown of important pirate terms to know if you want to follow my footsteps. Piracy isn’t the most legal hobby, but it’s an important part of our society. The issue came up yesterday morning on HuffPost Live when a couple of asshole trolls tried calling me out and threatening to turn me in to the RIAA during a Pharoahe Monch interview. Monch took the exact stance I’ve always had, making the trolls look like the dickless morons they are. In honor of these idiots and their ignorance on the subject, I decided to cover an important part of piracy for my fellow cable-cutters: watching live sporting events online for free.
The Cable-Cutter’s Lament
Cable companies have done as much as possible to keep services like Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube from taking away their profits. Knowing that timing is everything, they delay popular shows like Modern Family and The Simpsons for a week or more, while keeping syndicated heavy hitters like The Big Bang Theory off the net completely. The most difficult events to watch without cable used to be live sporting events, but as technology evolves, so, too, does the pirate’s toolbox.
Finding Streams
Busting the myth that Netflix killed Blockbuster.
Searching for live streams of popular UFC, boxing, and championship games is similar to warez sites back in the day. In order to find them, you’ll have to traverse dangerous websites that trace your IP, install malware on your computer, and can keep you caught up in a never-ending barrage of popups. By the time you find a stream, it ends up being grainy, choppy, and nearly unwatchable. Luckily there are better ways than the Flash-based streams found in normal URL’s.
Playing Streams
The first thing you need to do is download VLC Media Player, which I covered in thisBest Desktop Media Players lifehack. This program has the most extensive video codec library, which will ensure your computer can play any video format. If you watch videos on your computer, this is a must-have. Next, download SopCast and Ace Player. These programs are similar to the TOR and torrent protocols, in that each computer connected to the stream contributes a part of their bandwidth to other users. The more nodes connected to a stream, the faster the connection is. Using this protocol turns your choppy and blurred small-windowed video into an HD-quality stream you can play on your big screen.
Livestream Piracy Tips
Once you have this software, all you have to do is search for a stream of the event you want to watch. Many sites will have streams, and if you specifically search the event name and the format you wish (i.e. – “Mayweather fight SOP” or “UFC 167 ACE”), it becomes easier to find. Sometimes Google will block a popular piracy site, even if they aren’t directly hosting the pirated streams. The Pirate Bay constantly uses mirrors to circumvent this, but, as they expand, it’s only a matter of time before sports-streaming sites like wiziwig and firstrowsports are blocked from Google’s searches as well. In order to bypass this obstacle, use DuckDuckGo, and anonymous search engine. It takes some getting used to at first (especially if you’re not tech-savvy), but once you do, it becomes almost second nature. Don’t try it unless you have decent security software (an antivirus, malware blocker, firewall, and PeerBlock, at the very least), or your computer and personal data will be compromised. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you can host your own fight parties for big sporting events. Hell, you can even make a profit by charging people at the door. Consider this your expressed written consent… Brian Penny is a former Business Analyst at Bank of America turned whistleblower, troll, and freelance writer. Penny is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post,Lifehack, and Main Street. He documents his experiences blowing the whistle on the banks and working with Anonymous on his blog.