I'm stuck in a hotel room for a week and they have a limited selection
of cable TV.  To my horror, no FX (I am missing "Over There"!) and no
Comedy Central (can we say Daily Show withrawl?)!  I have come across
a web site - tvshows.org - but I am nervous.  It looks legit at first
glance but the only links on the page say "Click here to download...".
 It puports to be a place where we can download any TV show.

My question:  Is there a trustworthy web site or organization out
there that acts as a clearing house, of sorts, where you can check to
see if a web site is legal and truthful?

Because even though I would really love to download tonight's episode
of "Over There" and trust my antivirus software & firewall,  they are
just not worth the risk of the kind of headache that comes with
downloaded worms or whatever.

Not having luck finding such a verification site - thought maybe you
guys could help?

Hello bhoddigrrl,

Tvshows.org has the same administrator as at least one peer-to-peer
(P2P)  site, http://bittorrents.com, and apparently another one as
well, http://gnutelliums.com.

"Tvshows.org"
Whois Source
http://www.whois.sc/tvshows.org

"Bittorrents.com"
Whois Source
http://www.whois.sc/bittorrents.com/

"Gnutelliums.com"
Whois Source
http://www.whois.sc/gnutelliums.com

You may notice the bottom of http://tvshows.org states, "This site is
meant for educational purposes only.  You will find a complete online
guide and proprietary file sharing software within the member's area. 
Plus, get access to leading free P2P software, tutorials, tools and
music resources."

In other words, this is a P2P site, as discussion of Tvshows.org in
Google Groups suggests.

Searched all groups for: "tvshows.org"
Google Groups
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22tvshows.org%22&start=0&scoring=d&filter=0

If you're comfortable and experienced with P2P sites, and confident
about copyright issues, then perhaps you might explore this site.  But
otherwise, I think it's best to err on the side of caution.

- justaskscott

P.S.: I suspect that all "Over There" episodes will be repeated on FX
at the end of the season, if you can wait that long.  Moreover, if
this week's pattern holds, today's episode would be repeated be next
week after two showings of the new episode.  FX loves repeats.  (I'm
kind of miffed myself that I was able to catch only a few minutes
tonight.)


Search strategy:

Searched on Whois Source for:

tvshows.org

Searched on Google and Ixquick for:

marc molinaro
spring texas
bittorrents
bittorrent
"bit torrent"

Searched again on Whois Source for:

bittorrents.com
gnutelliums.com

I was interested in this issue too; out of curiosity I clicked a link
posted on the buy.com website (I seriously doubt whether buy.com has
vetted all the vendors that have links on their site).
I was taken to tvshows.org, and it seemed too good to be true.  So, a
little checking out (more current than the info above) yielded this
link, which is very instructive:

http://www.complaints.com/directory/2005/september/9/26.htm

Does tvshows.org look legitimate now?  You decide.

Well I actually signed up tonight supposing it was a legitimate
service.  It is absolutley not.  It provides links to BitComet, a free
torrent download tool and links to popular known torrent websites like
piratebay.org and torrentreactor.to.

These things are of course violations of copyright laws and such, but
ofeering a seemingly legitimate service and then linking to open
source or public web sites is wrong.

In my opinion this kind of fradulent behavior is criminal.