Torrents, how do they work?

[pa_broon74]

Its an area of the internet I've just never looked at.

So how does it work? What do I need? Whats the best client? (If that is even the right term.)

Thanks in advance.



PS: Don't shy away from any technical terms, I work with comps but but hide it well.
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Didn't catch anything.

[Carl_steveo]

Well I'm currently using Utorrent. It's downloaded onto your computer and it's used to download the torrents. Then you just google for torrents and click download. It's simples.

Theres loads of sites to use. I tend to use thepiratebay.org or isohunt.com.

P.S somebody will come along with a better/quicker idea plus mines probablys traceable and I'm going to prison to be bummed by bubba.
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Luke "cant be arsed to read your post, but suck my balls anyway."

[pinkyfloyd]

If you have ever used the likes of limewire or any other file sharing program then you will be able to figure out torrents easy. Its pretty much the same thing only on a bigger scale.

With limewire you can look for a song and download it. With torrents you can search for the artist and download the full album or even every album they ever made.

I use bitcomet which does me fine and use torrentz.com as a search engine.

As Carl said you install the client onto the pc and use it to download torrents.

bitcomet

torrentz
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illuminateTHEmind wrote: I am just more evolved than most of you guys... this allows me to pick of things quickly which would have normally taken the common man years to master
Hockeystorm65:.well there are childish arguments...there are very childish arguments.....there are really stupid childish arguments and now there are......Pinkfloyd arguments!
Teflon-Mike:I think I agree with just about all Pinky has said.

[The Artist]

Torrents work like this.

Someone who has a file e.g. a film or music album makes a torrent file. Very small, only a few kb with details that can be read by a client such as utorrent, a very popular torrent client.

This file is downloaded from torrent sites such as www.torrentz.com which searches all the major individual torrent sites. Once you have this small file, you run it and it will open the torrent client and ask you which particular files you wish to download.

Then you start to receive parts of the file you want. Each torrent is made up of pieces which vary in size. e.g. a 700mb film might be made of 700 x 1mb pieces.

As you download, you upload aswell. This is the basis of torrenting. Once enough people have the file downloaded, they continue to upload even after they have finished downloading, these are called seeds. They have the file and continue to upload. Leeches are people who download files but don't bother uploading barely anything. Peers are people downloading and uploading at a decent rate. The more people that have the file, the faster your download will be in general although the speed will bottleneck depending on your internet connection and upload speed. If you do not upload enough, your download speed will be affected, that is how torrents work. You want a file, so does everyone else so share it.

[pinkyfloyd]

Much better explaination.

Mine I tend to leave on for a few hours at a time after I have downloaded what I want. Sharing constantly was a drain on the pc speed on the last computer and I'm a creature of habit so I download, Share for a few hours and then close the client.
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illuminateTHEmind wrote: I am just more evolved than most of you guys... this allows me to pick of things quickly which would have normally taken the common man years to master
Hockeystorm65:.well there are childish arguments...there are very childish arguments.....there are really stupid childish arguments and now there are......Pinkfloyd arguments!
Teflon-Mike:I think I agree with just about all Pinky has said.

[lihp]

To add to the explanation, the big advantage to the file being made up of smaller pieces, is that they are downloaded from multiple sources, allowing faster download times, and more privacy. It's difficult to trace and shut down the source of torrents as many seeds often provide parts of files.

It also is the main technology behind being able to pause a download and carry it on at a later date. The actual torrent file is just the instructions of how to rebuild the file into a complete usable file instead of lots of pieces.

[Ichy]

Just a bit of paranoia. On public torrents your IP is readily available for all and sundry to use and abuse. Some 'law' companies have been attempting to use the information to prove that you illegally downloaded something.

Try and find private torrent sites.

[lihp]

Though they can prove you downloaded something, it's unlikely for them to gather evidence to prosecute an individual for a download, they'd rather get the sources where they can get massive compensation and penalties from mass distribution of illegal files.

Good example of this is The Pirate Bay, I imagine it would have been easy but a waste of time to prosecute those they knew was downloading illegal files, especially since people in this country essentially get 3 warnings.

[Ichy]

I might be having bad recall but I seem to remember that ACS law collected about £600,000 from the IPs that Sky and BT/Plusnet passed on to them.

I can remember another company Davenport Lyons(?) chasing 25000 downloaders for £300 each. No idea how that went.

Another law firm has taken up the mantle since the ACS Law DOS hack and they have stated that they will pursue through the courts.

[lihp]

I imagine a DOS would attract solicitors more than downloading a single album.

Over time there have been phases of prosecutions, to make examples of people.

Illegal downloading stems from more infrastructure for electronic distribution. I know a lot of people that just buy tracks from iTunes now instead of illegal downloads, just because it's so simple and relatively cheap.

[Kloyd Niel]

Hello Guys,

Thanks for the information that i read,
BTW im a newly one in this site but i learned lot of ideas about this site.
Thanks a lot for being part of this site. God Bless.



how to treat depression

[pinkyfloyd]

[2E]

Torrenting is NOT illegal.

Downloading copyrighted material is


First things first, open your ports, if you work with computers this shouldn't be so difficult.

Utorrent is by far the easiest and i've personally tested them, its a small program too so doesen't hog resources.


Secondly, find a site that isn't suspicious, the fact that The Pirate Bay's owners are in prison and the site magically re-appears everytime doesen't sit well with me, call me paranoid but it wouldn't be the first time something dodgys going on with a torrent site.

Thirdly, use PEERBLOCK or a similar program, Peerblock is the new Peerguardian 2, what this does is block all the government IP and Anti-p2p that come bundled with public trackers therefore protecting your privacy. It allows all utorrent traffic through though so you get good speeds still!

Last of all, make sure you get a torrent thats genuine and has a high number of seeds/peers, for reference a 'SEED' is someone who has the complete file and is actively providing the file to other users, PEERS are people who are still downloading the file are are either providing the file to you (if they have more than you) or your providing to them (uploading).

Also avoid being a LEECH, which are people who download the file completely, become a SEED then switch off the download, always let supply the torrent to others and thus the torrent world lives on
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[pa_broon74]

Cheers.

That's cleared a lot of the terminology up. I've used limewire etc in the past but as I said, torrents (up until now) have eluded me.

I'll start exploring.

Thanks again.
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Didn't catch anything.

[RussG]

I use uTorrent as a client, and private torrent sites to download, less chance of being arrested :E but hard to get registered to the good ones as they're invite only
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