Any site - ANY site, claiming to host this sort of material itself is phony. ANY site charging a notional fee in return for access to hundreds or thousands of dollars' worth of the latest movies, software or video games is phony.

Storing these materials on their site or distribution from their own webspace would be so obviously illegal that they'd be closed down at once, hence you may be sure they don't have them in the first place. So it's most likely that any such site will simply steal your money, since they have nothing to send you once you've paid anyway, and once they've figured that out, it's a simple step to getting your card number and cleaning you out. The nature of international credit card transactions is such that they are almost guaranteed to be able to get away with it, and even if someone comes looking they've already had your money and it's gone.

If you truly want to go looking for, say, Avatar or Photoshop and you don't want to pay the correct price for it, then you're looking for an illegal copy, let's not pretend anything else. But it's against what you might call the "pirate code", if you like, to charge for something that's been stolen in the first place, so if someone does want to charge you, even if it's only a small amount, you know they're phony.

Nothing much has changed, pre-Web or Web 1, or Web 2.0, except that people who were once happy to pay a fair market price for things now expect to get them for free because that's what the Web is all about. This site is a honey trap for anyone who wants to do that, but doesn't know how, and is vague about the whole something-for-nothing scene. Rather than sniff around the dusty corners of the Web looking for the genuine pirates in the hope of getting something completely free, they'd prefer to give up their financial details to someone who in their judgment looks less like a pirate and therefore more trustworthy. Understandable, but dumb. Don't make this mistake and end up as the mark of some online conman.

asked by Chris O. on 5/29/10