If you use Kazaa as your P2P of choice and try to down­load an mp3 or two you prob­a­bly often run across fake copies of songs, the ones that fade away to hiss after a few moments. Usu­al­ly this does­n’t hap­pen to me, but often enough, an album or a sin­gle I would like to lis­ten to has been nigh impos­si­ble to obtain. Get­ting ahold of Pow­er­man 5000s lat­est record and Dave Gahan’s new release have been the two tough­est expe­ri­ences I have had get­ting an mp3 or two.

I fig­ured out how to get around this, sor­ta. Although the bogus user­names abound, you can tell if the serv­er they are on is owned but a Mon­ey Hun­gry RIAA Syco­phant™ if the band­width is ridicu­lous­ly high. I just sort­ed the results by band­width, and DLed the songs that were low­er than 636. Eure­ka! It worked. Now I will be able to decide if I want to buy Paper Mon­sters after all.