How to protect yourself from the RIAA/MPAA/BSA

Proxy servers are a way of staying anonymous on the internet.  A proxy server is a server that gets files from the Internet and sends them back to your computer.  So if you access microsoft.com with a proxy server, it will appear that the proxy server is downloading the page, and not you.

The best socks proxy server is Tor.  It consists of many servers around the world, and, while it will slow your down your file transfer speeds, it will also almost certainly keep you anonymous on the internet.

There are different kinds of proxy servers.  HTTP proxy servers are the most common and can only be used to download web pages.  HTTPS proxy servers are similar to HTTP proxy servers, but since HTTPS data is encrypted, an HTTPS proxy must be able to download data to you without understanding it.  Therefore, it is possible to download most TCP data through an HTTPS proxy server, using utilities like Proxycap and Freecap.

Socks4 proxies allow all TCP traffic to be proxied through them.  Unlike HTTPS servers, however, Socks4 servers are designed with this in mind, and they support some additional TCP data not supported by HTTPS proxies.

Socks5 proxies are the same as Socks4 proxies, but they also have the ability to proxy DNS lookups and UDP data.  Note that not all Socks5 servers have this capability, but it is supported by the Socks5 standard.  Tor is a Socks5 proxy.

Most P2P programs that support proxy servers used to require the proxies to be Socks4 or Socks5.  Today, eMule and most BitTorrent clients support HTTPS proxies.

Also it is important to note that you should not enable port forwarding if you want to use P2P applications through a proxy.  If you do this, users will connect to you directly to share files and these connections will not go through the proxy.  Unfortunately, this means your speeds will slow down even more.

Summary

  • Download and install Tor
  • Set your P2P applications to use a Socks5 proxy, server: localhost, port: 9050
  • Disable port forwarding on your router (this is disabled by default) and UPnP for your P2P apps