College: You finally made it. But now that you're here, how should you spend your first few weeks at school?

By filling up the hard drive of your brand-new Toshiba R500 with loads of music and video files, that's how. By harnessing the full file-sharing power of a high-speed, university-class network.

But how? Is it safe? Legal? Faster than asking your parents to burn a few DVDs and put them into their monthly care package?

Excellent questions – the mark of a true student. Welcome to File Sharing 101.

How to Get What You Want

Assuming you've got your machine connected to the internet and cleaned of viruses and spyware, it's time to choose a network. Heard of Napster or BitTorrent? Both are peer-to-peer networks through which your computer, equipped with the proper software, can find files to download. The actual file transfers happen between your computer and other computers using protocols that distribute the file-sharing load among all the computers, or "peers," on the network.

There are several networks, and for each one, a wide variety of clients (the software that runs on your computer) that will let you connect and share files. Network choice is important because it determines how much privacy you have and how much you have to share in return for obtaining access. We recommend two: BitTorrent and Direct Connect, plus a third option – one-click hosting services – for the truly paranoid.

(Educating yourself about legal issues is an important part of your research. Check the second page of this article for more information on the risks involved before you dive in.)

Education 2.0

This story is part of a weeklong Wired News series on educational tools for the digital age.

Monday: Student Gear Guide

Today: File Sharing 101

Wednesday: Best Social Networks

Thursday: Future Careers

Friday: Online Education

BitTorrent

As a true P2P network without a central server to be sued, raided by police or otherwise confiscated, there's little chance of BitTorrent ever being shut down. The protocol's great popularity means there's no shortage of juicy intellectual property to fill every last perpendicularly stored bit your hard drive has to offer.

Be prepared to Google for your content: Before you can start downloading, you'll need to find trackers (which list files that are available through BitTorrent), and most trackers are hosted on websites that are just as likely to be shut down as their centralized P2P counterparts. (One possible exception: The Pirate Bay, which is based in copy-friendly Sweden, has so far resisted legal efforts aimed at its destruction and has recently announced that it will revive Suprnova, an now-defunct search engine for torrent trackers.)

WIRED The more popular a file, the faster the download. Lots of legal content is available as well.

TIRED No anonymity – anyone downloading the same file can see your IP address. No incentive to share content means niche files may never finish downloading. Ads (some for explicit content) plague many tracker sites. Many colleges block BitTorrent traffic.

Recommended clients: uTorrent (Windows) or Transmission (Mac)

How to get your content: Search the BitTorrent Download Guide, The Pirate Bay, TorrentBox, Torrentspy and TorrentReactor, or use Google searches with your search term plus the phrase filetype:torrent to locate files you can download.

Direct Connect

Relying on central hubs for indexing purposes, Direct Connect is somewhat risky business for college students who seek large quantities of internet content. Every new public hub you visit is one more that might reveal your queries and the files you're sharing. However, over a high-speed local area network (like the one running through the walls of your dorm) Direct Connect's weakness becomes its greatest strength. Set up a private hub with university-limited IP ranges and password protection, and you have yourself a bona fide darknet capable of transfer speeds that put BitTorrent to shame.

WIRED Serious darknet potential allows for speedy sharing and privacy – outsiders need to be on the same LAN and have the password to snoop effectively. Simple search feature finds what you want fast, assuming it's there. You can browse through each user's shares individually. Get to know your dorm mates better using integrated chat.

TIRED Cut off from the outside, darknet content quickly gets stale. There's also the inherent dilemma of whom to invite: More users mean more shared files, but also a greater chance that the password will leak to the wrong individual. Direct Connect is slow and unsafe over the public internet.

Recommended clients: DC++ (Windows), Valknut (multiple platforms)

How to get your content: Set up your own hub and invite your friends to join, or bribe the existing nerd ringleaders with your HD DVD collection.

One-Click Hosting

When privacy is at a premium and download speed doesn't matter, it's hard to beat one-click hosting services like Megaupload, RapidShare and Sendspace. Upload your file to the server, send a friend the URL and you're done. Pick a hosting solution outside the United States, and you may even be able to evade the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

WIRED Simple sharing has maximum privacy.

TIRED Registration is often required. Maximum file-size limits are common. It's often faster to carry a flash drive to your on-campus friends.

How to get your content: Reach out and IM someone you know.

Legal Risks

Legal interpretations may vary about what constitutes legitimate sharing of copyrighted content, and we're not lawyers. Sharing a few music clips with your friends may not violate copyright law, but distributing the latest Hollywood blockbuster to 30,000 other fans almost certainly does. So give some thought to your file sharing before you start. While one-click hosting is fairly private at the moment and darknets keep content away from prying eyes, it's all for naught if your university actively monitors traffic and is determined to shut down peer-to-peer activity.

We recommend you check your college's "acceptable use policy" and similar documents to determine their position on file sharing before engaging in potentially illegal activity, or at least make sure you save three grand, the going rate, in case you get caught.

For the legal perspective, go right to the source: the United States Copyright Office FAQ.

You may also want to read online piracy statements from the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's handy guide, How To Not Get Sued for File Sharing.