When I was younger, I used to wait all week for Wednesday. It was the only day I would finish my homework by 7pm, and I’d wait in front of the TV, dying to find out if this was the week when agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would finally uncover the truth out there about aliens in The X-Files.

Back then, there was always this anticipation, when you’d wake up in the morning and check the daily TV guide, or even the Sunday weekly guide, to see what’s on so you’d know exactly when to wait in front of the TV or when to programme your VCR to record your shows.

But that weekly sense of excitement and anticipation over a TV show is becoming increasingly foreign to young people these days, thanks to illegal downloading.

If you told me I could have all 202 episodes of The X-Files in a computer back when I was a kid, I would’ve said your truth was pretty out there.

But it’s a reality now. Anyone who has an Internet connection, a computer, a sizeable hard disk – and the will to ignore intellectual property laws – can have all the latest episodes of their favourite shows in their computers.

21st century couch potatoes
Wong is a 19-year-old college who downloads Hong Kong TVB drama series as well as some Hollywood shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and he tells us that downloading is “very common” among students.

“Most of my classmates don’t have money to subscribe to Astro, and many of those living away from their hometowns don’t even have TV sets, so they download programmes and movies,” said Wong, whose estimated 16 gigabyte collection of downloads is considered tiny (a 50-minute episode of a TV show is usually about 0.3-0.7 gigabytes).

“I don’t have a huge collection because I tend to delete the files after watching. Some of my classmates have more than one terabyte (a thousand gigabytes, approximately 2,000 episodes, or 1,000 movies)!

“And there are also those who have a lot of pornographic shows, and I’m telling you, it’s scary how much they have,” he added.

Downloading TV and movie content from the Internet is so easy these days.

These modern couch potatoes are no longer confined to couches. As with most “downloaders”, Wong keeps his collection in an external hard disk, which he brings around with him like a portable entertainment device.

“I’m usually quite busy because I study and work part-time, so I bring my laptop and hard disk with me every day to school and work so I can watch my shows whenever I get a break,” he said.

It’s so convenient, some young people don’t even feel like going to the cinema anymore. Engineering student Rahim, 20, has “a few hundred gigabytes” of mostly movie downloads, and he said: “The way students watch TV series and movies is changing. People are more impatient now. We’re getting too lazy to even go to the cinema, to wait in line for tickets, or to dress up for it. If I’m really interested in a movie, I’d rather enjoy it at home alone.”

Instant gratification
Speaking about being impatient, some downloaders even watch movies before they are released in Malaysia.

Movies are often leaked online after a film has made its debut at festivals or closed screenings, which are usually held before it is released for general screening. The online community of downloaders pounce on such files very quickly, even “helping” to spread it around.

Rahim said: “I download Hollywood movies so I can watch them before anyone else. You can usually download them about a week before the local release.

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was leaked online before the movie was even completed! I was one of those who downloaded that version. These comic adaptation movies tend to be leaked pretty early.”

In a way, you have to admire how quickly these “file-sharers” (they think the term “pirate” is a bit harsh) operate. By the time Wolverine was released in the cinemas, there were already an estimated 4.5 million downloads of the leaked version, which apparently came out so early you could still see the stunt wiring on the actors that was supposed to be digitally removed from the final cut.

Some students are too impatient to even download their movies or TV series, so they head over to streaming websites like SurfTheChannel.com, or even YouTube.

But with downloads, of course, you get to keep a library of everything. And if you’re as enterprising as Monash University student James, 24, you could even make some money out of it.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is one of the movies that was leaked online weeks before its general release date.

James painstakingly downloaded all the Manchester United season reviews from the beginning of the Premier League era, and since he already had them, he decided to cash in on them.

“I burned them all into DVDs and sold them for RM15 each on online Manchester United fan forums,” said James, who has about 2.5 terabytes worth of downloads.

File-sharers
Downloading is now so common, it’s even becoming something of a worldwide movement.

The most common method of downloading would be using BitTorrent, which can sometimes account for up to an estimated 55% of all Internet traffic, according to Wikipedia.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing protocol that allows users to transfer large files. Websites like the Sweden-based Pirate Bay (along with others like Mininova and BitMon), however, help people find BitTorrent downloads of movies, TV series, music, software and so much more from other users; making it the target of various lawsuits over copyright infringement, and allowing it to make its boast of being “the world’s most resilient BitTorrent site”.

Four individuals involved with Pirate Bay were recently charged in Sweden with copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and fined RM14mil, a conviction which set off several campaigns in support of file-sharing.

Public demonstrations against the conviction were held in Stockholm, Sweden, while the Facebook groups “Free the Pirate Bay” and “Save the Pirate Bay” have about 280,000 supporters.

Filesharer.org asked file-sharers to send in mugshots of themselves in their “This Is What A Criminal Looks Like” campaign, claiming that if anyone should be on trial, it should be the general public, not the four “pioneers of file-sharing”.

Legal alternatives
The folks at Filesharer.org also say on their website that “File-sharing is good, allowing people to share music, movies and culture”, and that’s how chemical engineering student Wei, 23, feels when it comes to downloading good movies.

According to Wei, many good films don’t make it to our shores, so students who are movie buffs need to go online to watch them.

“It gives students more exposure to the creative world. Most people still download popular stuff, but I want to broaden my horizons, so I take time to download movies with good reviews that I can’t find here.

“Like this movie I watched recently, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas. It was a really good movie about a boy in a German concentration camp which I wouldn’t have been able to watch if it wasn’t for downloads,” said Wei.

The Pirate Bay is one of the most popular sites for downloading TV series and movies.

There is a way to get the best of both worlds now, though it is also against the rules.

The iTunes Store, Apple Inc’s digital media store, isn’t officially available in Malaysia, but some like film and TV student John have found a way to use it anyway.

“If you have a friend who stays in a country that does have iTunes, you can ask him to register an account for you, and you can use it anywhere, including Malaysia, though it’s actually not allowed if you read the fine print,” explained John, who has been downloading movies and TV content from iTunes for almost four years now.

You can download or “rent” pretty much all major movies, TV series or music albums on iTunes. The only difference with this file-sharing is that you’ll have to pay for it.

People like John buy iTunes gift cards whenever they’re overseas to pay for their purchases because they can’t use a credit with a Malaysian billing address.

You can buy a movie on iTunes for US$9.99 (RM35) or get a 30-day rental for US$3.99 (RM13), while TV shows can be purchased for US$1.99 (RM7) per episode or about US$30 (RM105) for a “season pass”, where all episodes will be automatically downloaded the minute they are released.

“I definitely think it’s worth the money compared to illegal downloads,” said John.

“You get high quality videos, you get it on the day of release, and you can watch it anywhere on your iPod, iPhone or AppleTV. “And a lot of BitTorrent sites are getting shut down after what happened to Pirate Bay. Anything that’s illegal has to end someday,” he added.

* All names in the story have been changed to protect the downloaders’ identities.