Editor’s note: This is part one in a three part series. The second part will appear on Monday. Names of students have been changed to protect privacy.

In a few short years, the Internet has transformed digital piracy from low-key and hidden to mainstream and second nature. Entertainment industries are just finally starting to mobilize their legions of lawyers, firing salvos of lawsuits every few months. Can anything stop the flow?

Brian, a sophomore living off campus, is just another ordinary college-aged pirate. He has been downloading files since before the rise of Napster and lived through the rise and fall of peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing empires. From IRC to Napster to Kazaa to Kazaa Lite to the latest p2p tool BitTorrent, Brian’s been downloading pirated software and media since “way back when I was a little kid.”

“A lot of movies that are out right now you can get in DVD quality because they are sending out screeners for the Oscars,” said Brian, who lived in University housing last year.

Obtaining copyrighted material is nothing new to Brian, and it’s easier than ever. According to CacheLogic, a firm based in Cambridge, England, one-third of Internet traffic comes from BitTorrent, and you can bet that a good portion of it is moving pirated goods at alarming speeds and incredible volumes. Movies can easily be found and obtained using Web sites such as torrentspy.com. Search for any of the Best Picture Oscar nominees for the 77th Academy Awards and they are available for download in amazingly clear quality.

Asking Brian if he worried about getting caught, he said casually with a grin, “No, not at all.”

Unlike Brian, Robert has been busted before by CITES for file-sharing while on the University network.

“If companies can download from you, then they contact your ISP and let them know,” said Robert, a junior who now lives off campus. “Usually, it’s just a slap on the wrist, you know, no big deal.”

Despite being caught once during his freshman year for using the p2p program eMule to download and upload files, he continues to still download movies and music. Except this time, Robert uses more secure, secretive methods, which has kept him under the radar.

“There’s anything and everything you could want. They do movies, music, applications, video games, computer games, Xbox games, e-books, music videos, DVDs. It’s just ridiculous,” Robert said about the diversity of illegal files available – if you know the right people.

Robert uses a NFO site that lists the latest releases on the piracy scene. NFO sites are private and are often hard to get into. But once you’re inside, a wealth of information is at the keyboard. These closed forums post information about private FTP servers that are hosting the latest pirated titles to be premiered on the Internet. The legitimacy of NFO sites is unclear.

“They’re not illegal, but they are sort of in the gray area because they aren’t hosting illegal material. They’re hosting information about illegal material,” said Robert. “You can’t do any direct downloading, but you can find out what’s been released.”

These NFO sites, however, are not the apex of the piracy scene but rather a link lower in the distribution chain. At the very pinnacle of the distribution chain are the topsites. They have insider access to the latest movies and are the first to release ripped files from DVDs that originate from screeners sent to film critics or picked up early from an employee at a DVD manufacturer.

After a new movie is obtained by a topsite, it is then ripped and re-encoded with video and audio codes that preserve a surprising amount of quality into file sizes that range from one to three CD-Rs. The information and programs needed to do this are free and openly available on the Internet to anyone with a curious mind.

Finally, these large files are broken down further into 50 smaller 15 MB chunks that are recompiled later to create the full file. This is done to help servers that have pre-installed scripts to error check the files. Then, the movie is ready to be “premiered” and the race is on.