what is bit torent?

[Kuja]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent

 

[pineappledrunk]

Torrents are great, although they can go VERY slow, although that depends on your internet connection. So yea you can download Movies, Music, Games, Almost Anything. But if it's a big file, be prepared to wait a few days.

 

[mike_n_herrin]

I don't know why it's not shut down...but yes you can download very large files including entire seasons of TV shows. it is free. it's not legal to share any copy writed file so bit torrent isn't any more legal than anything else that is shareing copywrited files. To use bit torrent you need the bit torrent program. then you need a site that gives you the ..."host" file that you are wanting to download, you download that file (it's really really small and only takes a few seconds). then you open that .torrent file with bit torrent and it searches for other people who are sharing the "real" file (i call it the real one because you don't get the real file by downloading it from a site). that part then searches the web for people shareing the file. it take much much longer with torrent to download than it does with something like limewire, kazza, or napster if the file is big (like 4.2 GB). i've not noticed much of a difference if the file size is only say...300-600 MB.

 

[MetaKnight]

The thing about bit torrent is that it is not really intended to be used for illegal content. But of course, that is gonna happen anyway and it can't be controled that easily.

For example ddruk.com uses bit torrent so that you can download their simfile collection. www.ocremix.org uses bit torrent so you can download their (legal) collection of remixes. They actually encourage you to use that instead of just downloading file directly from the site as it saves them bandwidth.

 

[Corny]

I don't know why it's not shut down...but yes you can download very large files including entire seasons of TV shows. it is free. it's not legal to share any copy writed file so bit torrent isn't any more legal than anything else that is shareing copywrited files.

every torrent is a p2p network on it's own - contrary to things like kazaa or emule where you have one bimg p2p network.
so it's almost impossible to take bittorrent down. they can only take down big torrent sites or trackers.
apart from that - the BT protocol today is used for totally legal stuff quite a lot, too.
for example: world of warcraft updates are downloaded over torrent technology, valve sells entire games that you downloadf with BT tech .. many linux distrubutions are available as torrents and many other things. one of my fav bands distributed a live video of themselvers over BT - they wanted to share the video with their fans, that much traffic would have been expensive - so they spread it as a torrent.

 

[Corny]

malware/spyware. no.
downloading tv eps is still illegal.

 

[MetaKnight]

OMG - you guys talk like these lecturers at a university. I barely understood what you guys are trying to say...sorry- i am sooo dumb when it comes to computer terminology.

i am hoping to download tv series like amazing race/Lost from bit-torrent because i always ended up forgetting when the show is on. the other reason for that is because itunes don't have those series available yet from where i live.

so, my question is - if i use bittorrent, will i get into trouble????? by that i mean, will the person who provided me with the show, track down where i live etc, make my computer crash like malware/spyware etc???

thanks for helping out.

Well I dont know how they would find out, but it IS illegal. You might wanna wait for the dvd or something. I dunno.

 

[mike_n_herrin]

I thought....downloading wasn't the illegal part...i thought uploading was the illegal part? maybe i'm wrong? But if what i just said is true...i suppose you could set your shareing on bit torrent to zero.

 

[pausanias_usa]

My favorite site for music is totally legal because of its policies and team of legals; the music shared there is non-commercial stuff that has not been officially released, so unless the band complains no one is in trouble (and yes, they keep a list of banned bands):

http://www.dimeadozen.org

The range of stuff offered is incredible! Sometimes you'll have the whole concert in lossless format the day after the show!

 

[gaz1978]

My favorite site for music is totally legal because of its policies and team of legals; the music shared there is non-commercial stuff that has not been officially released, so unless the band complains no one is in trouble (and yes, they keep a list of banned bands):

http://www.dimeadozen.org

The range of stuff offered is incredible! Sometimes you'll have the whole concert in lossless format the day after the show!

One of my favourite websites.

 

[mike_n_herrin]

I download all the little version of Linux through Bit torrent, but that is legal.

 

[secondmonkey]

It may be illegal, but I'm not aware of a single case of a downloader getting in any kind of trouble. Distributors of thousands of files, yes, downloaders, no way. It would be nearly impossible to find you, and the amount of detective work necessary would far out weigh catching someone who would probably receive a small fine.


More importantly, if they're going to charge me $10 to see a movie, or $18 for a new album, I say fuck them. I would download out of principle alone. The artists and producers are getting what they've had coming for decades for being greedy fucking bastards.

You know what's really funny, my friend is an actor and he recently emailed me a copy of one of the movies he was in, which he "illegally" downloaded.

 

[theworldwithout]

It may be illegal, but I'm not aware of a single case of a downloader getting in any kind of trouble.

You do need to be careful still when using torrents. I use them, but I usually download from just private trackers. I have a friend that uses them to download tv shows from public trackers (which by the way, I have heard trackers keep a record of your IP address and what you've downloaded), and 2 weeks ago she got a letter from NBC telling her to stop downloading episodes of The Office because she was infringing on their copyright...

 

[provenlogic]

I'm downloading five movies at the moment using torrents

I downloaded 10 eps of a TV program last week by torrent - I love it

Heh, how could i keep current with Stargate otherwise!? You d@mn foreigners keep getting the new episodes months before we do!

 

[mike_n_herrin]

It would be nearly impossible to find you, and the amount of detective work necessary would far out weigh catching someone who would probably receive a small fine.

i guess i'm not sure why it would be hard at all for them to find you if you use torrents. I mean when i am downloading something or uploading it for that matter it tells me the IP address of everyone of the seeder/leachers of that file. am i missing something? i don't understand the difference between private and public trackers i guess?

 

[secondmonkey]

i guess i'm not sure why it would be hard at all for them to find you if you use torrents. I mean when i am downloading something or uploading it for that matter it tells me the IP address of everyone of the seeder/leachers of that file. am i missing something? i don't understand the difference between private and public trackers i guess?

IPs are just a number without a warrant. The only way to turn an IP address into a real address is to get it from the ISP, and they don't give it out without good reason. Even finding the IP alone isn't something available to a copyright holder without legal action.

I also seriously doubt any trackers store your IP and what you're downloading just for this reason. Nothing requires them to, so why would they?

 

[hot tamales]

Just to haphazardly add to what's already been said here:

There are a few replies claiming that bittorents are illegal. Bittorrents are NOT illegal. The content distributed by bittorents clients MAY be (although in a lot cases -- at least most of mine -- are ;-)).

Basically I use bittorrent sites & software for exchanging large files -- it's really just the latest P2P for sharing large files. I've downloaded numerous DVDs and CDs, among other files including sporting events, TV shows, discographies, etc.

If you really want to learn about bittorrents I suggest you Google it, as I highly doubt you'll learn all you need to know here.

I will say that my my critical piece of software is Peer Guardian 2, which essentially blocks your IP address from being seen by others, specifically your ISP. This is for Windows users.

http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

I'm not a regular MAC user but I know MAC users have the ability to enable this feature through Tiger. (forget what service it's called though...)

FWIW, for my bittorrent client I use Azureus, although I've used Sharezza in the past with similar success.

I predominantly use Demonoid to search for my .torrent files, and use torrentspy.com as my secondary.

You might find searching your bittorent search engine for "BitTorrent_Bible", which will likely prove to be EXTREMELY useful if you find yourself interested and in need of explanation and instruction. I picked up a few things from this myself.

 

[Corny]

i guess i'm not sure why it would be hard at all for them to find you if you use torrents. I mean when i am downloading something or uploading it for that matter it tells me the IP address of everyone of the seeder/leachers of that file. am i missing something? i don't understand the difference between private and public trackers i guess?

the nifty thing about torrents is that it isn't a large p2p network where you can download everything and more, each torrent has it's OWN p2p network just for the distribution of exactly that ONE torrent. and you can only see the people that are downloading THAT ONE torrent at the moment where you are connected. in p2p nets like edonkey it is easy to scan millions of computers that the server knows, just by searching for files. with BT you can only check single files.

 

[splurge]

Ok guys. I'm well chuffed with myself - after reading this thread, I downloaded uTorrent, played around with and opened the ports as suggested and I managed to download a 1 1/2 hour TV program that I've wanted to watch for ages (Green Wing Christmas special). It came as a 678MB .avi file.

The problem now is that I can't copy it to a DVD so that I can watch it on the TV rather than via the laptop (dell inspiron 8600 with XP home). I tried to use the DVD writer that came with the laptop (MyDVD from Sonic) but it keeps coming up with an error "Can not make thumbnail - Make sure you have the appropriate decoder installed (DVDerr -47010)". I have used this to make a DVD in the past btw.

Is there anyway of finding out what decoder I need and where I can get it from?

Many thanks.

 

[splurge]

Thanks Noelie - this worked.