The recent cap in unlimited internet bundles has dealt a deadly blow to some of the country’s more notorious internet users. This band of vagabonds abuses all the freedom that the internet has to offer. While the common market is browsing, other subscribers are illegally downloading music, movies and software.
On a more local scale, Kenya has over 11.7 million internet subscribers representing 28% of the population. There is no research available for the number of people who exclusively browse but there is evidence of illegal downloading.
So while most people are simply surfing the internet, digital pirates sail through an endless sea of information, looting and pillaging anything they can find.
When was the last time you saw an original box set of DVDs? Or maybe an Album from some famous international artist? The fact is, Kenyans would rather buy a cheap movie than spend hundreds of shillings on a genuine product. There are a variety of vendors more than willing to procure copies and sell them at throw away prices. Some internet uses prefer to go a step further and download the movie themselves.
Game of Thrones takes the crown as the most popular illegally downloaded series with 3.9 million downloads per episode since its debut in 2011. The popular series currently has 20 episodes, reaching a total of 78 million illegal downloads.
In the music industry, Lady Gaga is the most popular artist in terms of illegal downloads according to a survey by iLeaks.com. Katy Perry is a close second, followed by Ke$ha, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj.
Avatar tops the list in the movie industry with over 16.5 million illegal downloads. The Dark Knight takes the second place. Transformers is third followed by Inception and The Hangover.
How do they do it?
Torrents
Torrents are the tools of the trade for digital pirates. The average dictionary would describe a torrent as a rapid stream of water. In this particular context, a torrent is more like a gateway to a digital ocean which allows people to share data using peer to peer networks.
Seeds/ Peers
Peers are a network of personal computers which are used to share pieces of data during the downloading process. A seed is just another name for a peer. Think of peers as pieces of a puzzle. Each piece is held by separate individuals who each have a complete puzzle of their own. If you are the downloader, you need these pieces because they represent the data you want. So the peers share data in the form of separate pieces. A completed download is like a puzzle with all the necessary pieces. Seeds are like wind to a digital pirate’s ship. The more the seeds the faster the download.
Leechers
As the name suggests, these are the parasites of the digital sea. They limit download speeds by sucking out all the efficiency of a balanced system. Leechers are people who are downloading the same file at the same time, resulting in slower speeds. In essence, every person who uses torrents starts of as a leecher before they can become a peer. When a leecher’s download is complete, they automatically start seeding. The more the leechers, the slower the download speeds.
Below is a list of illegal downloads based on their popularity:
