Quickly Filling Up 150GB of Legal Media Files?

Fred Nowicki asks: "If you have ever used the P2P client Direct Connect (or DC++) to find media on the Internet, you know that the best hubs have ridiculous sharing requirements, i.e., over 100GB. It isn't too difficult to amass a collection of 100GB of illegal movies and MP3s with all the crap that's out there, but I'd like to play it straight: I want to collect 150GB of pure legal stuff. So here's my million dollar question: What is the best and fastest way for me achieve this? I want to offer interesting, neat stuff (movies, music, programs, etc.), not just Linux distros, mind you. One thing I've found so far is a mirror of the Prelinger Archives on archive.org, which offers over 37GB of wacky, interesting stuff on divx format (in MPEG-2, it's over 350GB, but that seems like cheating if I take that route). One downside of this site is that it's not a very fast connection (about 50KB/sec through their FTP via my cable modem -- I'd like a throughput of at least 100KB/sec). I've considered mirroring the Gutenberg project, but there are all sorts of redistribution issues with a bunch of their files, and I don't want to go through all that hassle. Come on, Slashdot. Give me some URLs!"

SHN Audio of Live Bands

[owsla]

Many bands allow taping of their concerts and the redistribution of audience recordings. Lately, the most popular method of distributing these recordings is as .shn files which are a type of lossless audio. A two hour show can be about 1.0 GB so that's one way to fill a lot of space quickly. You can get started at http://www.etree.org [etree.org]. There are many other sites out there that will allow to download SHN shows right from their servers including, for Dave Matthews, http://www.antsmarching.org [antsmarching.org].

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Get legal mp3's
2. Convert legal mp3's to wave (preferably using dbPowerAmp). This will help you approach 100gb about 20 times faster
3. Profit! er... Download!

* Alternatively, you could do the same for legal video footage (convert compressed footage to a bulkier format).

**I know it's the lame way out, but come on, 150 gb of legal stuff, without Gutenberg files?

Download...

[phaln]

...every possible game and app demo you can. Then you'll most definitely have your 150GB.

Fan Films

[Depris]

I'd collect a lot of legal fanfilms in DivX. Especially Scifi ones. You'd be helping film students get their movies out. Open Source software, and music creation files are highly sought after. People are always looking for soundfonts and high quality sound fonts are usually in the 128 mb area. They are just a few ideas. Just do a few searches... that can easily be done.

scene.org

[dknight]

You can mirror them, they host demos. Those are really interesting, and not too many people have them. Admittedly, I dont think that it would be the whole 100+ gig you're after, but you could get a good 20-30 that way.

Re:SHN Audio of Live Bands

[MayorQ]

Check out http://www.furthurnet.com [furthurnet.com] for a P2P Java app.

- MayorQ

Live Concerts

[estoll]

Furthur [furthurnet.com]

Origin of the 24-hour myth

[yerricde]

The (mis)conception of a "24-hour trial period" in the warez community comes from various exceptions in U.S. copyright law pertaining to libraries. Warez sites claim that they are "checking out" files to patrons, putting the patrons on the honor system to "return" the files by deleting them. And the warez curators just may be able to pull it off if they disable each download for 24 hours, marking it "Checked Out".

Perfect solution

[W2k]

Anime. Unlicensed episodes which are not illegal to distribute because there are no licensees outside of Asia. At 150-200 megs per episode, you'd be able to fit quite a few series into 150GB.

An excellent source for unlicensed anime epsiodes, subtitled in English, is AnimeSuki [animesuki.com], where they're downloadable via BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org] - you know, the P2P App with Brains [slashdot.org]. Downloads are usually quite snappy.

As an added advantage to collecting unlicensed anime, it's usually quite fun to watch. The downside is that once a series becomes licensed, you have to stop sharing it. Right now, there are several good series being released. I recommend Naruto [animenfo.com], Mahoromatic [animenfo.com] and Wolf's Rain [animenfo.com].

Re:What's the problem with PG?

[zapod4]

I was thinking the same thing. From a PG header:

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this "Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, or:

[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as *EITHER*:

[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and does *not* contain characters other than those intended by the author of the work, although tilde (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may be used to convey punctuation intended by the author, and additional characters may be used to indicate hypertext links; OR

[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that displays the etext (as is the case, for instance, with most word processors); OR

[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form). [2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small Print!" statement.

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.

How many copyrights do they infringe?

[yerricde]

Almost all of the recordings available at overclocked.net (except possibly for some arrangements of Russian folk tunes such as Korobeiniki, labeled as "Tetris" remixes) are derivative works of the songs in video games and thus infringe copyrights owned by (the songwriters who licensed the music to) the video game publishers.

Music videos for major-label recordings that include footage from animated television shows infringe three copyrights: 1. the copyright on the TV show, 2. the copyright on the song, and 3. the copyright on the recording.

Re:scene.org

[BenV666]

Not only demos, but entire parties with movies (animation/wild compos), music (mp3/tracked) and more :)
Of course the 32 Kb game and 64 Kb intro compos wouldn't really fill up those 150 Gb but at least they're worth every bit they take.

These days a decent party has about 5 Gb of stuff so that'll fill up your space quite nicely...

Legal 'bootlegs'

[Kruid]

Good & Legal music... http://www.furthurnet.com/

Analysis of your ideas

[yerricde]

look up some DJ Demo Tapes

DJ demo tapes usually contain continuous mixes of copyrighted recordings of copyrighted songs, and because there's not as much of an "open source" community in songwriting as in programming, most songs ("song" in copyright law refers to the melody independent of any recording thereof) are not published under a license allowing free redistribution of recordings.

movie trailers

This could work. I'd assume that at least one of the seven major American motion picture studios [mpaa.org] would be happy to let you mirror advertisements for its movies. Just ask first.

look for serious abandonware sites

Strictly, copyright lasts ninety-five years, but the fact that the copyright owner has allowed the program to fall out of print may constitute an admission that the work has negligible market value, and market value is one of the four primary factors of fair use.

host linux distros

This should work. However, you should look closely at the license for the distribution; some distributions of free operating systems (such as Theo de Raadt's official OpenBSD) copyright the directory structure of the distro CD and do not license it for free redistribution.

watch /. and wget/archive the referenced web sites with a distinctive name, then posting a link in the /. discussion with the filename (would be coolest if you had it on several p2p networks)

This can actually be legal in the USA under the proxy and caching exemptions passed as riders to the DMCA.

driving video

[Hadlock]

every ameture wheel to wheel racer owns a camcorder and each race produces about 100 megs of video. corner-carvers.com usually spits out about 100 megs of unique video each day, and there's links to gigs of good race footage from inside the car on famous tracks (leguna seca, for example). these videos usually get pretty low traffic so it's not uncommon to get > 1 megabit/s off of multiple files.

that's how i spent my last saturday morning

How to clean up a PG etext for redistribution

[yerricde]

If you delete the "small print" section and all references to Project Gutenberg, you can do whatever you want with the text.

However, a few of the PG texts are copyrighted. Even so, if you know Ruby, Python, or Perl, you could probably whip up a script that does the following:

1. Reject any file that does not contain the exact phrase *END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS* or any of the other similar phrases that PG has used over the years.
2. Copy all lines after that line into a new file.

RE: Community service

[fshalor]

Ask some local community orchestra's/playing groups if they'd like you to host their concerts on your site. I already have about 1 GB of local recordings and growing from just one group. And most of it's great music too! Most groups give about 4 concerts a year. Approx 150MB per concert. (MP3s @ 256k)

Then go ask the local high schools if you can do the same. Should be good for another gig a year, from band and chours.

Walk around with a mini-disc recorder near christmass, good for another couple hundred meg.

Then there's the "Cooledit" solution. I'm sure you could get 150GB in a couple of hours of hacking around. Just let the thing loop! Develop about 10 different effects and run them in batch mode on every other MP3 you have...

3.???
4. More MP3's? :)

DJ Demo tapes are usually illegal

[sirshannon]

DJs play records. Those records are usually either copyrighted or are themselves illegal.

Re:Perfect solution

[FunkyChild]

Bzzzt! Wrong. It's illegal as per the Berne Convention.

Read: Japanese Animation Legality and Ethics FAQ, by Andy Kent [tripod.com]

Mirroring Gutenberg

[gbnewby]

For servers based in the US not trying to profit, there is no restriction on mirroring Project Gutenberg. In fact, we'll even list you in our official mirrors list (http://www.gutenberg.net/list.html) if you'd like!

If you're outside of the US, you might be mirroring some stuff that is under copyright in your country. But many mirrors still do this, prefering to mirror the whole collection rather than try to select items based on copyright rules. For commercial redistribution, the "small print" applies (basically, you need to pay a trademark fee -- details are in each eBook).

Here is the skinny:

The Project Gutenberg etext collection is distributed primarily by
FTP, although you can have your Web server point to the same directory
and distribute by HTTP. For example, these addresses point to the
same content:

ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg
an d http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg

(though ftp or rsync is best for mirroring; see below)

The collection is over 16GB (January 2003), and expected to grow another
few GB this year. New etexts are added almost every day, so it's best
to mirror nightly.

Our experience has been that a static IP address and T1 (~1.5Mb
symmetric) or better permanent network connection is desirable for
mirroring; DSL and cable modems do not seem to offer the necessary
bandwidth and sometimes suffer stability problems.

The best place to mirror from currently is our master download site at
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg . Most mirrors use
rsync (easiest), wget (easy) or the mirror PERL software (requires
some configuration). Here is an overview for each:

1. Rsync (available for all Unix systems; standard on Linux). The last
argument is the local directory for the mirror destination:

rsync -rlHtSv --delete [e-mail]::gutenberg /home/ftp/pub/mirrors/gute
nberg

2. Wget: Freely available from any GNU mirror. With appropriate
command-line options, this can be used with either a HTTP or FTP
interface, but please use the FTP URL above for Project Gutenberg.
The key is to only get updated files, not files you already have. A
wget command line that should work with some adjustment for your local
needs (run it from wherever you want the mirror to go) is:

wget --mirror --no-host-directories --passive-ftp --no-parent --cut-dirs=4 \
--output-file=/tmp/wget-gutenberg.log \
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg

The wget homepage is http://www.gnu.org/gnulist/production/wget.html

3. Mirror PERL software: Available from
http://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/ (among other places). We can
help you set this up for a Unix system. The mirror PERL software has
been reported to work with PERL for WinNT, as well as Unix/Linux/BSD.
Note that the wu-ftpd software patch supplied with the program must be
applied for it to work!

For any mirror method, run a daily job to check for newly updated
files. Unix/Linux employs cron for this; Windows systems could use
the task scheduler.

I can help you with setting up the mirroring software, or any other
details, if you would like.

We don't distribute the Web-based search engine that's available on
the main PG page at http://promo.net/pg. However, we'll add your site
to the list there, so people can find you. The FTP directories are
the only part we offer for mirror, while the central list of mirrors
and search capability is centralized at promo.net.

Once you tell us your mirror is active, we'll announce it in our next
weekly & monthly newsletters. After a month or so (to confirm
stability) we'll add you to the mirror list and download facility at
http://promo.net/pg

Let me know how else I can help. If you decide to go ahead with the
mirror, email me and/or [e-mail] so we can add you to the
mirror list.

Thanks again for getting in touch! And, thanks for your interest in
helping Project Gutenberg reach more readers.

-- Greg

Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with EIN 64-6221541
[e-mail] // 919-962-8064

Here's 700 MB

[fugue]

I have a site dedicated to providing free classical music recordings. The recordings are performances that I've been part of (some are not great, but there are a few real gems), and I'd cleared the legality with the other members of the groups, sound engineers, etc. I'd like to see more people do this, and in the interest of encouraging this, please check out my Free Classical Music archive [mit.edu].

-Ben

Free music (in the sense of freedom)

[juhtolv]

There exist many musicians, that think about music in more or less same way as Free Software Foundation thinks about software: It must be free as a bird. Some of them are against a notion of "copyright" and "intellectual property".

So, get some free music. It will fill at least few gigabytes. Some of that music has such licence, that forbids selling that music, but for your purpose even that kind of music is good.

Here are my URLs:

http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/fma. ht ml
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.ht ml
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/co pyin g_primer.html
http://www.twisted-helices.com/th/t wisted_helices. html

http://www.negativland.com/

http://logosfoundation.org/
http://logosfoundat ion.org/copyleft/copyrigh.html

http://www.janisian.com/

http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/hipit/

http://www.vorbis.com/
http://www.vorbis.com/mu sic.psp
http://www.vorbis.com/musicsites.psp

http://www.creativecommons.org/