Here it is

Okay the title is a little overboard but I only spent about 15 minutes trying this technique out in Google search and found at least 5 open directories of “copywrite protected” music.

1. First Ingredient; Google

First what you need is Google, yes Google the lovable search engine that could, the search engine that no one has ever heard about and no one uses. Simply type in google.com into your address bar, or search for the address in Yahoo! and you’ll find it, I’m sure of it (it’s actually getting really popular these days).

2. Second Ingrediant; 1337 hax0r commands!

Next you’ll need some super elite uber commands to type into the search box that Google lists here on their Operators page, it’s smooooth.

a. -inurl:htm and -inurl:html

I used HTM and HTML, although PHP could work and I haven’t tried it without those commands yet.

b. intitle:”index of”

We use “index of” as that’s the Apache title given to open directories and Apache being the most common web server software in use today.

c. mp3 “kanye west”

These are your music/video/whatever keywords. MP3 has got to be there, unless you want to search for some Ogg or god forbid WMA files (or JPG, MPG, torrent, AVI etc.). And the “kayne west” part is where you instert your ridiculously embarrasing and shallow music taste (I’m only kidding, ‘N Sync was the best band ever I don’t care what they say about Backstreet).

For this example I chose Kanye because I’m a fan and he’s pretty popular right now so there’s a higher likelyhood that people will be hosting his music in MP3 form on their web servers.

The whole string should look like this: -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:”index of” mp3 “kanye west”

3. Third Ingredient; Sloppy/Dumb/Ignorant Users

And finally the last element, your favorite and mine, the END USER. See, anyone with a Monkey’s intelligence can setup or purchase a web hosting space, and hook a domain to it (or not even if you have a /~ account). What’s great about that is how easy it is, and therefore it attracts all sorts of ignorant, sloppy or just plain dumb users.

Let’s say they have a nice and shiney MP3 collection they want to access at work but ALAS! all the music is at home. What to do!?!? Inspired they have an idea in the shower that morning! They can upload their entire collection to their web hosting space and then go to that address at work to download/listen to their collection! GENIUS! Brilliant!

Exactly, it’s brilliant because most people don’t know how to protect their collection with simple usernames and passwords (.htaccess anyone?) and it leaves the directory wide open for anyone to see use, index, download, you name it.

Along comes Google Bot, it’s been indexing the web all day, and it stumbles across your directory with all kinds of indexible music content goodness. BAM! it’s now available to be accessed by beeeellions of Google users each and every day.

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This is just one of the many “exploits”, “hacks” or as I like to call them “uses” for the amazing Google Search. Most of the links you’ll find if you use the above technique will be 404’s, bogus pages, redirects and some *gasp* some of them will actually have .htaccess protection.

Regardless there are plenty of working results as you can clearly see.

Digg me!